BRIDGING A GREAT GULF
At a recent literary function in Colombo, former UN mandarin Jayantha
Dhanapala posed ‘three questions in search of answers’.

have – at various times in my profe-ssional career – had to introduce myself as an “extinguished ambas-sador” and still later, as a “defunct UN Under-Secretary-General”. To-day, I guess I should introduce myself as “an also-ran in the UNSG stakes of 2006”! Despite that record of being a ‘has been’, Ernest Macintyre – a friend from the halcyon days of Peradeniya, in the late 1950s – deemed it fit to invite me to make some remarks on the occasion of a book launch.

Macintyre’s book brings into print the famous play of Prof. Lyn Ludowyk (serendipitously, in the centenary year of his birth, with an interesting note on the play’s origins and some editing by Macintyre) and two of Mac’s own plays from amongst an oeuvre that has delighted audiences in Sri Lanka and Australia. I recall reading a well-known Shakespearean producer and critic saying that a Shakespeare play was like a musical score awaiting performance. The point is that plays are meant to be performed live on stage and not read in the quiet of a library. Notwithstanding this caveat, it is good to have the plays within bound covers, to be savoured from time to time.

As a prelude, however, I would like to draw attention to what is perhaps a new phenomenon in the social calendar of Colombo today: the book launch. Sociologists may see this as analogous to the horse races of the 1940s and ’50s, conducted by the Ceylon Turf Club; or the rugger matches of the ’60s and the ’70s – although we have still to have the fashion columnists record who wore what at these events!

Seriously, however, the frequency of book launches is a tribute to the recent efflorescence of creative and other writing in the English language – thanks largely to Michael Ondaatje and his generous donation of the Gratiaen Prize which has stimulated that creativity. But we must also thank publishers like Vijitha Yapa, who have combined entrepreneurial skills with a genuine concern for the literary milieu and reading public of our country. I would like to see the day when book launches of English, Sinhala and Tamil writers are held regularly, and with the same audiences being introduced to new volumes of literary and other writing by Sri Lankan authors.

My remarks this evening are not going to be in the form of a conventional review of the plays as theatre or as a contribution to Sri Lankan creative writing in English. The little ‘practical criticism’ in the I. A. Richards – F. R. Leavis tradition that I learned in the Department of English in Peradeniya has long been forgotten. Besides, the excellent introduction to the plays written by Shelagh Goonewardena in the book is both insightful and comprehensive. My approach, rather, is to view the plays in the context of the title of the book: Jaffna And Colombo – A Century Of Relationships In Three Plays. In the period of transition between the building of the railroad connecting Jaffna and Colombo at the beginning of the 20^th century, and the events of today, we have had a tragic transformation which – while being the stuff of drama – is more a sad indictment of the governance of our country, and the conduct of our interpersonal and inter-ethnic relations.

Four decades of experience as a diplomatic practitioner has taught me – if nothing else – that the best approach, especially in regard to delicate and controversial issues, is to pose questions and then to search for answers collectively, rather than to present the answers dogmatically and unilaterally. No one, after all, has a monopoly over wisdom.

Consequently, I have three questions to pose, based on my reactions to Macintyre’s book. They are: when do ethnic jokes become unfunny and politically incorrect? Why are we still looking for a road connecting Jaffna and Colombo? And finally, did the ‘Peradeniya Generation’ fail the country by not helping to bridge the ethnic divide?

Let me take each of these questions one by one.

The first: when do ethnic jokes become unfunny and politically incorrect? All countries have ethnic and other jokes targeting particular groups who become the butt of good-natured banter and fun. In Sri Lanka, we have for years had the stereotype of the frugal man from Jaffna – portrayed in Ludowyk’s play as Duraiswamypillai – frowning on his son’s acquisition of a watch when there are so many clock towers in Colombo! Likewise, we have stereotypes of the Sinhalese, the Muslim and the Burgher – as we do of the country bumpkin, Banda, who comes to town. Some of the jokes dwelt on the mispronunciation of the majority language, but two distinguished citizens of Kandy spawned a legion of jokes about their malapropisms and other mutilations of the English language. These were jokes made in a time of innocence, by and large, with no malice intended and none taken.

What we may not have realised is that while we all laughed at these jokes in more relaxed times, they did conceal some prejudice, some snobbery and certainly some insensitivity – albeit carefully disguised. They also became a vehicle to perpetuate the stereotypes from generation to generation, accentuating what divides us – rather than what unites us.

Where, then, does one draw the line between innocent ethnic jokes, and cruel and hurtful insults? In Macintyre’s strongest and best play, Rasanayagam’s Last Riot, that line is drawn when the minority Sri Lankan Tamil man’s pronunciation of the Sinhala word baaldiya (bucket) is the test that a racist mob subjects him to. His failure to pass the test ends in his murder.

Let me move on to my second question: why are we still looking for a road connecting Jaffna and Colombo? Perhaps we should be talking of a road connecting Velvettithurai with Hambantota, from where Velupillai Prabhakaran and President Mahinda Rajapaksa respectively come. My question is prompted by the graphic cover of Macintyre’s book, which has the drawing of a ruptured railroad. The railroad, built in British colonial times, linked the north with the capital city and the night mail to Jaffna – and later, the Yal Devi – allowed for a rich human interaction among all ethnic groups travelling in it. The Yal Devi was as integral a part of the railway-communication system as the Udarata Menike and the Ruhunu Kumari were. The LTTE blew up the railroad as part of its terrorist campaign and it has not been repaired since. The A9 highway – closed for years – was re-opened with the ceasefire agreement. But for security reasons, it is again impassable beyond Muhamalai. I do not wish to examine here the political and security reasons for this state of affairs, and its sad consequences for the civilian population. We have, of course, sea routes and air routes available – but fraught with danger… and of course, very expensive for the average citizen. But the point is: do we really want to commute and communicate between Jaffna and Colombo? And is the absence of a physical road between us not a result of mental attitudes?

The preamble of UNESCO’s Constitution has the well-known words: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” Less well known is the continuation of the preamble: “…that a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace which could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world, and that the peace must therefore be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind”.

It is that intellectual and moral solidarity of humankind that we must set as our goal within our own country and in the world, as the politicians squabble about forms of devolution. The culture of violence created over two decades of conflict must be replaced with a new culture of peace. We have first to build roads among the different ethnic and religious groups of our country in our minds. The physical roads will then be opened for the free flow of people and goods.

My final question: did the ‘Peradeniya Generation’ fail the country by not helping to bridge the ethnic divide? Again, drawing on Macintyre’s play, Rasanayagam’s Last Riot, the two characters Philip and Rasanayagam – buddies from the same hall of residence at the Peradeniya campus – meet every time there is a racial riot. They wallow in nostalgic memories of their undergraduate days, get drunk and sing their bailas. But they do not discuss the fundamental majority-minority relationship in their country which has led to the riots that bring them together – until they are forced to, by Sita, at the very end… and then, it is too late. Shelagh Goonewardena notes perceptively that Macintyre uses the inter-ethnic Sinhala-Tamil marriage between Philip and Sita as a metaphor. Equally important is to see the relationship between the two undergraduate friends as a failure of the Peradeniya-educated elite to confront and solve the problems that led to the racial riots. Amidst the sloganising and emotive outpourings in the country, the intelligentsia failed to conduct a rational dialogue.

Benjamin Disraeli, in another country and another time, found two nations in 18^th-century England: the rich and the poor. We are also two nations in more ways than one. First, we are the English speaking and non-English speaking – with the English language kaduwa (sword) cleaving us apart. That gulf was, to a large extent, bridged by the bilingualism of the Peradeniya generation. As Macintyre’s character Rasana­yagam puts it: “What happened inevitably was that Sarachchandra’s people merged easily with you people to run the country.” And so, the ‘Kultur’ and the ‘Ofac’ merged – pressured by the wave of political and social changes after 1956; and more recently, by the renewed demand for English caused by the Information Technology revolution. But we are also two nations in another sense: the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil. That gulf was not bridged by the Peradeniya-educated elite. It was avoided as an uncomfortable subject – just as Philip and Rasanayagam avoid discussing it in their meetings during the riots. Perhaps, it was because at the professional middle-class level that the competition for jobs exposed the racial rivalries which were absent at the village level and the working-class level. Whatever the reason, the ethnic divide remained and grew wider as the years rolled by. Could the Peradeniya-educated elite have done more?

Let me conclude. Both plays of Macintyre have tragic endings. That is the playwright’s prerogative and his artistic licence. In Rasanayagam’s Last Riot, Rasanayagam – in a poignant final scene, faced by a murderous mob – refuses to say the Sinhala word that he knew so well and that will save him, and is brutally killed. In He Still Comes From Jaffna – Paths, the terrorist, lies dead on stage. There is a sombre and almost fatalistic message in this. I cannot accept this as the reality of the Sri Lankan situation. I am confident of a happier dénouement of our real-life drama and, as an antidote to Macintyre’s pessimism, I would like to cite from two sources.

The first is from the famous pastoral letter of the late Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe – a great and good man whom both Macintyre and I knew in Peradeniya. Bishop Lak – in apologising to the Tamil people, on behalf of the Sinhalese, for the terrible atrocities in the riots of July 1983 – wrote: “The main point, however, is that the true basis of reconciliation is admission of wrong done and appeal for forgiveness. When forgiveness is given or a mutual apology is evoked, reconciliation begins to take effect – slowly, but surely. Hardened attitudes begin to change.” We should, then, begin by apologising to each other for the wrongs we have done to each other. This must be followed by forgiveness, since “forgiveness is the well from which we draw water to wash other’s feet”.

My second source is the United Nations High Level Group of the Alliance of Civilisations, which issued a report in November last year. Headed by the Prime Ministers of Spain and Turkey, it essentially debunks the Samuel Huntington thesis on the inevitability of the ‘clash of civilisations’ and the hardening of fault lines between civilisations, separating different groups in an apartheid-like existence. That wrong-headed thesis has been seized upon after 9/11 to launch a wave of Islamophobia, provoking a virtual re-enactment of the medieval crusades between the Islamic world and Western Christendom. Thus, Danish cartoons can ignite a series of violent demonstrations in the Islamic world and the veil is mindlessly banned in the West. As a counter to this, the UN group found diversity to be a driving force of human progress.

The apparent intolerance in the world is, in fact, being reversed through migration, integration and technology. Indeed, that is the future for Sri Lanka, where our rich diversity of ethnic and religious groups in our pluralist democracy must be made both a cultural and political strength.

We cannot continue to live in an age where, in the words of W. B. Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” We must all be full of ‘passionate intensity’ to achieve a united Sri Lanka, where all ethnic and religious groups can live in freedom, equality and dignity.

Excerpted from informal and unscripted remarks made at the recent launch Jaffna And
Colombo – A Century Of Relationships In Three Plays; E. F. C. Ludowyk's He Comes
From Jaffna; Ernest Macintyre's Rasanayagam's Last Riot and He Still Comes
From Jaffna (Vijitha Yapa Publications).