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| Sunday, 25 April 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Television in Sri Lanka : Globalisation, nationalism and the search for alternatives by Robert Crusz It is significant that the birth of television in Sri Lanka coincided with three major national developments - the introduction of an open economic policy, an executive presidential system of government and the beginnings of the civil war between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The role of Television cannot be underestimated in shaping these events and with them the country's economic, political and socio-cultural landscape over these past twenty five years. When he swept to power in 1977, President J.R. Jayawardene forced the country on to the globalised economic stage. He began to liberalize the economy, promote competition and privatization, encourage foreign investment, and reduce the role of government in economic affairs. He opened the flood gates to the globalised, mainly North American and European, cultural influences. But at the same time he increased control on the political life of the country with an all powerful system of governance headed by his Executive Presidency. Through this latter process he set about consolidating the ascendancy in Sri Lanka of the majority Sinhala culture, Sinhala language, and the Buddhist religion - a process which had gained speed after Sri Lanka's independence from Britain in 1948. Jayawardene realized the importance of broadcast television in these twin ideologically driven processes - Globalization and Nationalism. Globalisation The phenomenon of globalisation has many facets. It is mainly the growth and acceleration of economic and cultural networks operating on a global scale. Major shifts and developments of multinational markets and corporations, communication and media technologies, and their world systems of production and consumption have resulted in a 'world' or 'global culture' which encompasses all aspects of life in virtually every country on this planet. It is argued that this global cultural space both erodes and destabilises older established forms of national culture and identity. It has been replaced by a global local dimension, and 'everyday', existing cultures are now routinely saturated with references to the global. Central to this process has been the emergence of communication technologies and media networks like television which allow for faster, more extensive, interdependent forms of worldwide exchange and interaction. At first sight it seems contradictory that President Jayawardene set out to privatize most things in Sri Lanka except broadcasting. But the political logic in having the state in control of broadcast television and radio is evident. In its early days it was just the state owned Rupavahini channel that existed. Most new technological hardware is accompanied by a basic contents or 'software' package of a cultural nature. We see this today with the influx of Information Technology. Computers and all their accessories and functions are accompanied by what we can call "American-English Globalised Culture". When we use computers, cellular phones, electronic audio-visual gadgets etc., we are forced to enter this 'culture' and get to know its language and its way of looking at, and understanding, our world. A similar situation arose when television was introduced to Sri Lanka twenty five years ago. The early programming of the Rupavahini channel saw the Sri Lankan television debut of this global culture. The hardware had been provided mainly by Japan. Programmes which were discontinued and relegated to the archives in their countries of production, like game shows, situation comedies, dramas and films, all of dubious quality, were imported from the USA, Britain and Japan and re-broadcast here. The local and multi-national corporate business world also saw the potential of television and began advertising their products and services, albeit in a very crude and unprofessional way initially. Twenty five years later, the globalisation of Sri Lankan television and radio is in full swing with the massive involvement of Indian media companies. Private television channels and FM radio channels have mushroomed. The television advertising is getting more slick and sophisticated. TV programming is arguably more variable and filled with choice, and programme production values have become more professional and of a higher technical standard. The free market economic ethos is central to these developments. The private commercial sponsorship of virtually everything heard on radio and heard and seen on television - sports programmes, television dramas, films, children's programmes, religious services - even the news and current affairs programmes, is now the standard practice. Without sponsorship, programmes rarely get broadcast on the state owned channels, and almost never on the private channels. The near complete colonization of television by the advertisers has led to a situation where television in Sri Lanka seems to exist solely for the purpose of broadcasting advertisements. The various programmes appear to be slotted in-between, as breaks in the advertisement schedules, not the other way around. This colonization is true of radio and newspapers as well. Newspaper journalists admit that in reality their paymasters are the advertising agencies on behalf of the corporate business world - that without advertisements papers would not sell and they would be unemployed. Nationalism While the process of globalisation and its multinational corporate free market advocates would like to see Sri Lankans more as consumers and less as citizens of a particular nation, the political agenda of the Sri Lankan ruling and influential classes continues to insist on the false reality of what is basically the "imagined community" of the nation. A 'nation' is understood as distinct and separate from all other nations. It is often used in the sense of a 'nation state' - a sovereign state with its own government, geographical boundaries, a national flag, defence forces, a national anthem, a national currency etc. The dictionary definition (and common sense definition) of 'nation' is that it is a large number of people of common ethnic descent, language and history, inhabiting a territory bounded by defined limits. But this definition does not reflect the facts. Language, culture or religion, even geography, do not necessarily define a nation. Most modern nations are multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-cultural (like Britain and the USA) and some, like the Jewish and Islamic nations, are 'diasporic' - dispersed over many geographical areas. The majority of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese by race (nearly 80%) and Buddhist by religion (nearly 70%) The largest minority are the Tamil race and Hindu religion. These statistics have defined the Sri Lankan nation for centuries and has been the painful burden which the Sri Lankan people have had to carry throughout the country's modern history. The conflicts within the 'common sense' definition of nation with its parallel idea of the democratic right of majority rule versus minority rights to self determination, have been at the heart of the brutal twenty year ethnic war in Sri Lanka. The position of the mass media here, specially television, has been crucial. Even though Rupavahini television had news bulletins in the three major languages, Sinhala, Tamil and English (at different times of the day), much of the other programming in its early years was mainly in the Sinhala language - aimed at the Sinhala speaking majority of Sri Lanka. The multi-episode Sinhala television dramas made up the staple diet of viewers. This would have specially alienated the Tamil speaking communities from this new world of television, an alienation which was further increased because the television signals in the early 80's were weak and not well received in the Tamil speaking majority areas in the north and east. Another alienating factor would have been the fact that the Rupavahini channel began its daily broadcasts with a Buddhist religious service. So from its very inception, state television in Sri Lanka identified itself with the majority Sinhala-Buddhist culture of the country. This pattern of state control and use of the Rupavahini channel, for the partisan political purposes of the party in power, continued with each change of government. The Rupavahini Corporation soon expanded into two other state controlled television channels - ITN and Channel Eye. On the international stage Sri Lanka paid lip service to the tenets of a free and fair media but the reality inside the country was different. As the civil war worsened with no resolution to the ethnic problem, governments were forced to recognize the needs of the minority communities, specially the largest among them, the Tamil community. Channel Eye was set up solely for Tamil and English language broadcasts. But they all towed the government political line. Prior to this, the first government of President Kumaratunga tried a bold experiment by appointing a Tamil as chairman of Rupavahini in 1994. But his position became untenable under immense pressure from the large contingent of Sinhala nationalists within the corporation. He was accused of being an LTTE sympathizer and ousted with a few months. More private channels also emerged, with one - Shakthi TV - being a Tamil language channel in its entirety.; The political positions of these private channels generally favoured the market and business friendly United National Party, the party of President Jayawardene. One in particular is well known for being the semi-official channel of this party. On the Tamil separatist side, the LTTE set up their own television broadcasting service - Nidharshan TV - in the areas under their control. Needless to say, its programme content is completely dedicated to the separatist cause. It is usually during the time of a General or Presidential election that the ideological biases of the media, specially television, are truly exposed. The campaigning period prior to the General Elections of 2nd April 2004 saw a polarization of the state media vs the private media in the battle between the parties and the various ideologies vying for votes. Today in Sri Lanka the picture is thus one of twin ideologies at work within its media systems, specially its television broadcasting networks - one being the ethic of the so-called free market via the process of globalization, and the other, that of the promotion of a dominant national identity based on the Sinhala race and the Buddhist religion, rather than the obvious reality of a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Sri Lankan identity. This is the edited version of an article in the publication "25 years of Television in Sri Lanka" to be launched shortly by the Catholic Media Institute. To be continued |
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