CHOGM 2013: A Lie Well Told

This is the slightly longer and unedited version of the same post which also appears on Groundviews.
http://groundviews.org/2013/11/17/chogm-2013-a-lie-well-told/

Art and the Rosenbergs in American Cold War Culture

Extracts from my essay on the artistic response to the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and how it illuminated  American Cold War Culture.

Reclining Buddha, Gal Vihare, Polonnaruwa April 2013

Kalkudah Beach, April 2013

65 Years Ago Today

Hoisting the Lion Flag at Independence Square in 1948 

65 years ago, today, hands were shaken, the ink dried on the paper and one flag fell as another was raised. Proud smiles, excited smiles, smiles of relief for some - this was not going to be another nightmare of partition, countless lives wouldn't end dramatically as one country became two. No, that was for another time, another age. And the men of 65 years ago could not foresee the future. Lucky them. They got to make the decisions. We got to suffer the consequences. The fate of millions decided by a few men, as always.

 'Ceylon' - 'free'?

Yes. At last! Her people no longer colonized. No longer othered. No longer demeaned? After 400 years she believes that she is free. 

65 years later Ceylon is no more. She has evolved. She has grown. She has scars - she can show you. Some say she is more beautiful than ever, paradise regained - paradise found. Others say - she is in ruins. She has failed the expectations of 65 years ago.

Sri Lanka, full of new roads and highways, hotels and ports. "Every verdant village" and "every palmy coast", milked for all it is worth. Her people have betrayed her. They look alike but are mostly divided. They speak of justice but practice injustice. All that is right has become wrong. The wise have made way for the mad. 

Sri Lanka robbed, pillaged and plundered. This was not what they envisioned 65 years ago.

65 years ago, Independence was celebrated but today, 65 years later, her people are still in chains. 

The New Sri Lanka - for Nihilists

Photo courtesy of Vikalpa

What a fantastic start to the New Year.

Vikalpa has uploaded photos of the protests that took place at Hulftsdorp today against the impeachment of the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka. Protesters who turned up to support the protest organized by the Lawyers' Collective found themselves having to deal with Government thugs and goons holding poles and ready to abuse you in choice language.  Like I said on Facebook

"This is the face of the New Sri Lanka: Post-War the fighting takes place on the streets of Colombo via Govt goons. Gotta love what the Rajapakse's have done with this country - if you have a nihilistic streak in you"

Photo courtesy of Vikalpa

These goons represent the leadership   of this country and sadly their scum of the earth look is not just about appearances - it is who they are and the type of person they represent. So what can we expect from 2013? Sri Lanka as an endangered democracy steadily ascending the dictatorial ladder for despotic regimes. 

Sri Lanka: 2012 in Pictures

Rugam Tank? maybe

The Dalada Maligawa

Pool at Cinnamon

Jesus' little lambs: Street Vendor in Slave Island

View from one of the last overhead pedestrian bridges left in the Colombo Fort

Cargills Building in the Fort

Age of Technology

Independence Square at night

Kandyan Dancers at the Vesak Perahera 

In Passing: Express to Vavuniya

T20 World Cup Match

Sri Lankan supporters at the T20

Student Leader at the FUTA Rally

Willie Blake at 90: Renowned Sri Lankan cinematographer of vintage movies such as Rekava and Gamperaliya

Dessert - Yum

Vintage Posters of Ceylon

Copyright: Deborah Philip 2012

There is a Vintage Postage Exhibition on at the Barefoot Gallery at the moment. The posters belong to the collection of Anura Saparamadu, who has also published a book titled "Vintage Posters of Ceylon" in 2011. I have no idea why he is selling off his collection but prices for the originals are fantastic as they range between Rs.95,000 - 110,000 or maybe even more. However copies are available at Rs.3000 and postcard size reproductions at Rs.350 each.

It's a fascinating collection which depicts how Sri Lanka was advertised in posters for tourists, when promoting films or even as a way of getting out a message on social order. I would also have liked to see some political posters but I don't think they had any on view at the exhibition.

Anyway if you are in the area it is well worth checking out. An ideal source for the history of material culture in 20th century Sri Lanka.

My favorite poster . Badly in need of more of these now although there generally is no room for people to move into when travelling by bus!
photo copyright: Deborah Philip 2012

Copyright: Deborah Philip 2012

A Poster within a Poster: Barefoot/Author remakes a poster to advertise the exhibition. Poster actually says  "Hagenbeck's Ceylon Thee "

copyright: Deborah Philip 2012

The best part is it did become a CLASSIC!

Who will Stand in the Gap? Country underwater but the Government and the People happily swim along

A midst the troubles that Cyclone Nilam brought to the island, life in Sri Lanka continues on as usual and by usual I mean the usual nonsense of bad governance, worsening human rights and deteriorating social and economic conditions. We are true blue islanders because at the end of the day none of the events that are systematically ending the rule of law in this country affects any of us (myself included) seriously. How many of us are actually concerned about the fact that the judiciary is being crippled and we cannot expect the media in the country to report it properly because the media has been crippled and that actually happened a long time ago. Do we worry about the fact that if someone gets abducted in Sri Lanka (and as we all know abductions are not a rare occurrence over here) you probably cannot rely on the police to help solve the crime. Free education is on a downward spiral and its the Urban and Defense Ministry that continues to get the biggest share of the financial budgetary pie.

Why-o-why do we not CARE? We the public, the people of this country, the so called patriots, who carry citizenship cards and proudly proclaim that Lonely Planet has named Sri Lanka the No: 01 destination in the World to visit in 2013! Why do these issues not dominate our day to day conversations and plague our subconscious when we go to sleep. More importantly why is it that even if we talk about the issues and gripe about all the corruption and inadequate leadership we are still not motivated to personally take on the challenge of doing something to change the status quo. Instead we are happy to complain, to gripe and to draw cartoons but we are not willing to actively take a stand and fight corruption at the micro level, stand up for the rights of the poor and the downtrodden, highlight injustice and speak up against violence, intimidation and hate rhetoric that have become very much part of Sri Lanka's socio-political culture. Instead we buy into all the defamatory rubbish re-hashed by politicians and the media alike that replaces the serious issues with character assassinations and demonizes anyone or anything that stands in their path. Because we have bought into the propaganda of the powers that be, we do not even realize it, but we have begun to associate terms like 'dissent' with traitor and 'foreign conspiracies' with civil society, NGOs and people movements.

Basically we are an apathetic nation and when our apathy ends it usually takes the form of violence, racism and chauvinism  This is why we  had an ethnic conflict that begun not in 1983 but probably in 1956 and 1958 and beyond as its history spans back to the end of the 19th century and some will argue to the beginning of time. This is also why we have had two youth insurrections in the south. The boil eventually comes to ahead and then bursts and in Sri Lanka when it bursts it has so far not ushered in an era of good will and peace whatever they may have you believe. Instead it has ushered in more evil and more violence and more impunity even if it can be temporarily hidden under slogans such as "Miracle of Asia", "Suba Anagathayak" and "Land like no other".

Today the Daily Mirror and Groundviews carried Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu's article on the proposed impeachment of the Chief Justice. He points out the lack of interest the public have in issues that do not directly affect their lives.

"the public at large were unmoved by the dismantling of the Seventeenth Amendment and its unseemly replacement by the Eighteenth.  The slow death of the Thirteenth is very much on the agenda and now the possibility if not the probability of a frontal assault on founding principles of democratic governance - the separation of power and the independence of the judiciary.

It has been argued that the public-at-large is unmoved by constitutional issues or indeed any outside the cost of living that directly impacts their daily lives. The regime knows this and through its extensive apparatus of propaganda, coercion and intimidation it will have its way.

L'etat, c'est moi, - The state, it is I

It is time to show the regime otherwise and that time is surely now!"

Like he said the time is surely now but will we rise up to the challenge or will we mirror these words, written by the prophet Ezekiel for another time, place and nation but yet capable of striking a chord within me

"I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land ............ but I found none"

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 19^th century and at the beginning of the 20^th 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 20^th 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 Musӕus 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 19^th and early 20^th 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 19^th 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 20^th century the Aryan theory was very much a part of Sri Lanka’s intellectual baggage. 19^th 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]

[xviii][xix]

---

[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]

[xix]