Things Fall Apart

a history of ideas - mainly my ideas

Monday, October 29, 2012

Nationalists and Sri Lankan History: Anagarika Dharmapala

Extract from a paper I wrote for my history class  'Evolution of Historiography in Ancient Sri Lanka". The paper in full dealt with how the History of Sri Lanka was depicted in Nationalist Discourse in the late 19th and early 20th century. However I have only reproduced the section dealing with Anagarika Dharmapala for this blog post. 

Introduction
Sri Lanka saw a significant development in the origin and spread of nationalism and nationalist ideas at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. Nationalism can be defined as

both an ideology and a political movement which holds the nation and sovereign nation-state to be crucial indwelling values, and which manages to mobilize the political will of a people or a large section of the population[i].

copyright: Deborah Philip 2012
The idea of the nation as an imagined political community was made popular with Benedict Anderson’s treatise on it. Likewise Ernest Gellner’s opinion of nationalism as “not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness” but an invention of nations “where they do not exist” can be taken in the light of Anderson’s definition of an imagined community invented through creation and imagination[ii]. Thus the objective of this essay is to explain and analyse how Sinhalese nationalist discourse at the turn of the 20th century depicted the history of Sri Lanka and used it to thereby create and imagine a nation, specifically a Sinhalese nation. This essay will concentrate on the writings and work of Anagarika Dharmapala, Walisinghe Harischandra, Munidasa Cumaratunga and Marie MusÓ•us Higgins. Their shaping and interpretation of the History of Sri Lanka formed the basis of nationalist discourse and in effect shaped the future of Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism in the country.  

Jonathan Spencer feels nationalist discourse is produced by insignificant personal that live between the cultural boundary of old and new and seek to ultimately suppress an ominously disruptive history[iii]. The problem of identity and history depends on the impact and influence of nationalist discourse which to a certain extent rests on an individual producer’s ability to produce a successful nationalist movement[iv].  This essay is finally an examination of how nationalist discourse represented history and thereby shaped a potentially unruly history into the history of a supposedly great nation.


Nationalists and the History of Sri Lanka
Until the British Colonial powers became knowledgeable about the existence of the Mahavamsa and thereafter had it translated from Pali to English in the 1830s, they believed that Sri Lanka did not have an authentic history as recorded in reliable literary sources. However George Turnour’s translation of the Mahavamsa in 1838 was to help establish it as Sri Lanka’s original historical text and contribute to the belief among both the colonizers and the colonized that the Sinhalese race had an unbroken magnificent past. British writers and later Sri Lankan writers contributed to this belief due to the way in which they narrated the history of Sri Lanka[v].  

John Plamenatz describes two types of nationalism (Western and Eastern Nationalism) and in his definition of Eastern nationalism he explains that there is an essential understanding that the standards the nation is attempting to aspire to are alien and not inherent. Hence for that reason it becomes necessary for the nation to transform itself culturally while yet maintaining a distinctive identity. This was accomplished by an attempt to revive a national culture which although progressive retains its unique character[vi]. This theoretical structure is apparent in the nationalist discourse of Sri Lanka during the late 19th and early 20th century. Nationalists created what they believed to be a genuine Sinhala past by linking their ideas to existing visions such as for instance the legend of Vijaya which was proved to be a most satisfactory explanation for the Aryan origins of the Sinhalese race. Oral culture and folktales were not prized as much as the Mahavamsa and with the development of archaeology the discovery of remains confirmed in the minds of nationalists and colonists that the histories narrated in the chronicles were valid[vii].

Anagarika Dharmapala: Establishing a Glorious Sinhala Past
An early Sinhala nationalist who was to have a tremendous influence on the historiography of modern Sri Lanka was Anagarika Dharmapala (1864 -1933). He considered the study of history to be essential to the expansion of a patriotic consciousness[viii]. His writings emphasize his commitment to the belief that Sri Lanka had a wonderful Sinhalese past which originated with the Buddhist religion.

Dharmapala embodies an unquestioning acceptance of the island’s mythical past as depicted in the chronicles and his depiction of Sri Lankan history according to exact dates and years illustrates his unwavering belief in the authenticity of the past. He depicts the Sinhalese as the descendants of the Aryan colonists “whose ancestors have never been conquered and in whose veins no savage blood is found”[ix]. His comparison of Sri Lanka’s ancient civilization against that of Britain, Greece and Rome find the latter three lacking in comparison[x].

Anagarika Dharmapala’s use of binary distinctions conveys his negative perceptions of non-Sinhalese such as the ‘pagan Tamils’ or the ‘European vandals’[xi]. He propagates ethnic nationalism and makes the general claim of most nationalists who say that they represent “ancient racial, religious and linguistic communities”. Anthony Smith’s argument that the root of national identities is found in the continuous bond beyond ethnic ties and sentiments is a comprehensive theme through most of Dharmapala’s writings[xii]. The idea of great and victorious past is consolidated in the history of the Sinhalese which is equal to the history of Sri Lanka. For there is “no race on this earth today [with] a more glorious, triumphant record of victory than the Sinhalese”[xiii]. Significant is also the fact that the history of Sri Lanka is not just founded on the Sinhalese race but also on the Buddhist faith, archaeological artifacts and the literary chronicles. No other nation is able to boast of such a ‘history of the island’, of such ‘a history of Religion’ and it is only the Sinhalese race which has a “Dipavansa” and a “Mahavansa”[xiv]. Dharmapala’s strives to match his exaggerated importance of the history of Sri Lanka with a 19th century empiricist approach to history which would perhaps be a more convincing representation of the past.

Nevertheless in the process of glorifying Sri Lanka’s history Dharmapala is obviously imagining and creating a pure and honourable history in which no blood was shed or cattle killed due to the superior influence of Buddhism. Good kings such as Gamini, Buddhadasa and Parakramabahu were Aryan Sinhalese who were able to preserve the splendid inheritance of their Aryan past[xv]. Interesting is the fact that although Dharmapala wholeheartedly condemns the foreign conquerors (i.e Portuguese, Dutch and the British) who contaminated and contributed to the decline of the Sinhalese nation he subscribes to the Aryan theory which was introduced by the British Colonial powers. According to R.A.L.H Gunewardana, by the beginning of the 20th century the Aryan theory was very much a part of Sri Lanka’s intellectual baggage. 19th Century British historiography played a considerable part in influencing the writing of history at this time and the Aryan theory which posited the Sinhalese as superior to the Tamils in language and race was to thereby ensure a significant following among producers of Sinhala nationalist histories[xvi]. Dharmapala's discourse on Sri Lankan history illustrates a process of inclusion and exclusion where the non-Sinhalese, non-Buddhist are evil outsiders who ruined the pure and magnificent Sinhalese past. A return to Buddhist principles – Buddhism being the “religion of the conqueror”-  is the only way in which the nation can be restored to an era reminiscent of its splendid historical past[xvii]



[i] Lloyd Kramer, ‘Historical Narratives and the Meaning of Nationalism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol.58, no.3, (1997), pp.525-526
[ii] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London. New York, Verso, 2006, p.6
[iii] Jonathan Spencer, ‘Writing Within: Anthropology, Nationalism and Culture in Sri Lanka’, Current Anthropology , vol.31.no.3 (1990), p.287
[iv] Ibid
[v] Nira Wickremasinghe, Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: a History of Contested Identities,  Sri Lanka, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2006, pp.88-89
[vi] Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse?, Tokyo, Zed Books, 1986, p.2
[vii] Wickremasinghe, p.89
[viii] Anagarika Dharmapala, Return to Righteousness, Ananda W.P Guruge (ed), Ceylon, 1965, p.506
[ix] Ibid, p.479
[x] Ibid, p.479-480
[xi] Ibid
[xii] Kramer, p.540
[xiii] Dharmapala, p.481
[xiv] Ibid
[xv] Ibid, pp.489 - 496
[xvi] Marisa Angell, ‘Understanding the Aryan Theory’ in  (eds) Mithran Tiruchelvan and Dattathreya. C.S, Culture and Politics of Identity in Sri Lanka,Colombo, ICES, 1998, pp.49 - 63
[xvii] Dharmapala, pp.482-489
[xviii][xviii]

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