A Positive Attitude Towards Teaching English

This was published in the Midweek Review of The Island on Wednesday 22^nd July 2009

Something that hasn’t been sufficiently recognized or appreciated where English language teaching in our country is concerned is the fact that a lot of our students who vitally need English for achieving their education and career goals do succeed in learning it. This is in spite of all the ‘bad press’ (media attention) that the government school English language teaching programme has been relentlessly subjected to since the early 1960’s, and the usually pessimistic attitude prevailing among the educational authorities and professionals, and the general public towards the subject. The many negative prognostications currently heard about the prospects of success of the Spoken English programme just launched under the initiative of the President himself with the help of the University of Hyderabad in India could be partly due to this traditional defeatist mentality, and not to a clear understanding and assessment of the real issues involved. An oft-repeated refrain of adverse commentary on any and every attempt of tackling the task of teaching English has drilled into teachers, parents, and students an unfounded belief that it is a useless undertaking that is bound to fail. A decisive reversal of such reactionary notions is, in my opinion, the need of the hour.

The usual complaint is that the majority of students who are put through the school English teaching programme do not achieve the expected proficiency level in the language, and I would say that it is a legitimate complaint, too. However, a high failure rate is not necessarily limited to the subject of English in our education system; the students’ performance in mathematics at the OL is known to be similarly poor. Yet poor results in English become naturally more conspicuous, and more worrisome, because English touches every aspect of education, and every sphere of activity that awaits students once they are out in the world at large; in the modern world dominated by IT, its lingua franca English decides the fate of far more people and societies than any other subject in the curriculum.

Many don’t hesitate to blame this general failure of English teaching (and learning) on the allegedly wrong language policies pursued by Sri Lanka following Independence. Contrary to common belief, however, at no time in the history of post-independence Sri Lanka has the importance of English in education been popularly discounted, or officially discouraged by the State (though certain individual politicians, through some imperfect understanding of official policy, or through mischievous intent, might have occasionally acted as if the opposite was the case!).

The truth is that next to the winning of universal franchise, the gaining of the right of free education for all was the most far reaching change that Sri Lanka enjoyed even before the predatory imperialists finally let go of her. The monumental Kannagara Report of 1943 proposed a change of medium of instruction from English to the mother tongue of the children, and also recommended the teaching of English as a second language from Standard 3 upwards in all schools of the country. Mr. CWW Kannangara, Minister of Education of the then State Council, was instrumental in bringing about these changes and other educational reforms after much consultation of experts, popular discussion, and State Council debate concluded with a vote taking (in sharp contrast to the seemingly ad hoc basis of numerous reforms introduced by various regimes in later, especially more recent, times). The replacement of English as the medium of instruction was done in phases. What Mr. Kannangara made available to the rural children through the new Central School system was English medium education, which had been until then the exclusive legacy of the privileged few. The switch over from English to Sinhala and Tamil was completed in the late 1950’s.

These, and other reforms introduced after 1956, were intended to ensure the participation of the ordinary people, the dispossessed masses of the country, in the democratic way of life, with particular reference to education and employment. Some people erroneously blame Mr. SWRD Bandaranaike as the architect of a language policy that eventually led to the perceived decline in English language competency among the student population today. The change of the medium of instruction actually happened in 1944, in which year the Kannangara reforms were implemented. Nevertheless, the buck should not be passed to Mr. Kannangara either, because those language policy adjustments were necessary, and had been already overdue, in the historical contexts in which they were effected.

Before free education, all education worth having was available in the English medium, and it was available only to the privileged minority. The very system prevailing then ensured the success of English language mastery: a good ‘English education’ was synonymous with power, prestige, and position under foreign rule. Those who were in education were meant to acquire the necessary literacy in English that qualified them to run the administrative machinery for the foreign rulers. This provided a strong motive for the children from affluent classes to learn English.

The rest of the population didn’t have the opportunity to receive this kind of education which would have enabled them to partake of the plums of office and other perquisites, and favours. They were nonentities living miserable lives in their own country while the resources of the country were being plundered by foreigners with the help of their local lackeys whom they let into the stolen feast just so as to retain their allegiance.

However, with the free education initiative, and the language policy innovations following it, introduced for an independent country, the overwhelming majority of the ordinary people, until then denied access to a decent education, were finally liberated. The switch to the mother tongue as the medium of instruction benefited these masses. Along with these changes, the importance of English as a second language was emphasized by the reformers from the very beginning of Swabasha education. Notwithstanding this, the importance of English in the school curriculum diminished. The elevation of Sinhala and Tamil to official status meant that, theoretically at least, English could be dispensed with in all matters of public life including education. A corollary of this state of affairs was that although the student masses were offered the opportunity of learning English, the vital factor of a cogent enough reason for learning the language was eliminated. In other words, they found that they could now get their education with good prospects of a secure future without a knowledge of English.

In this context, though, the state policy of promoting second language English teaching never wavered. Yet a rot set in. The various administrations, including the one under Mr. Bandaranaike himself, took the matter seriously, and from time to time appointed committees of inquiry, and attempted to implement their recommendations by launching ambitious programmes in order to arrest the decline and revitalize the teaching of English, to no avail.

The people responsible came to terms with the declining English standards by tacitly committing themselves to ‘a policy of benign neglect’ (to borrow a phrase from Mr. Eric J. de Silva, a former Secretary to the Ministry of Education writing in The Island of 27^th May, 2001).

The ultimate failure of all attempts at making a success of our English teaching programme is the end result of a complexity of causes such as the paucity of both human and material resources (lack of competent teachers, and experts to train them, books, and other accessories, and money, etc), uneven distribution of the resources available, textbooks of poor quality, imperfect understanding of methodologies, or total ignorance of them, and so forth. But the most important single factor that one could adduce to explain the phenomenon (the failure that is English language teaching) is the lack of a proper conceptualization of the true purpose of teaching English to our children, and the resultant failure to motivate them to learn the language.

Human beings don’t like to exert themselves unless they recognize a compelling enough reason to do so. As our students are human, we can’t expect them to learn an additional language if they find no point in learning it. Although we have been tirelessly expatiating on the virtues of a sound knowledge of English for our students, we have not been able to make it an attractive goal for the majority of them to pursue with any sense of commitment. But today the circumstances are unprecedentedly propitious for English language education. When the will is there, the way will emerge by itself.

I am one who subscribes to the view that what the vast majority of Sri Lankans need is English as a second language. Bilingual proficiency in one of the vernacular languages and English is not a choice, but an absolute necessity. Of course, Sinhalese and Tamil language proficiency must be recommended for those who are obliged to serve a mixed populace of monolinguals: government servants, services personnel, bank workers, and those engaged in communication services, medical workers, etc belong to this category.

The important principle I am emphasizing here is that a demand for someone to master an additional tongue must be backed up with the perception of a clear goal worth all the hassle of achieving it.

That English is essential or very useful for education, and employment, and for intercommunity and international communication is accepted by all without dispute. And English is justifiably given a very prominent place in our education system. I, for one, can hardly think of any other policy matter that enjoys such unanimity of opinion across the board than the need for a knowledge of English for all the students of the country.

So, the level of motivation for learning English is very high. There is an intense, popular awareness of the advantages to be gained through a good knowledge of English. It is not that such a widespread awareness of the benefits of English was not there before, but people never experienced it in such an immediately tangible and concrete form as they do now.

Today’s young live in an entirely different world from the past. Highly sophisticated communication technologies have brought all humanity closer together than ever before. The young people of our country know that English provides the key to this world of knowledge, opportunity and power. This prospect represents a strong motive for them to acquire a knowledge of English.

There is a lot of social stimulation for children all over the country to try to acquire a knowledge of English. Parental support in this connection is more than in the past. Among the Sri Lankans, English itself has almost entirely got rid of its evil image as an instrument and symbol of colonial power and oppression (for which probably it earned the nickname kaduwa (‘sword’) among university students once). English is no longer feared. There is a lot of English in circulation around – in the schools, in the media, in the workplaces, in the marketplaces, in the sports fields, and every other conceivable place that offers a context for its use. Of course, more English is being used in urban than in rural areas, but there are few regions which are completely devoid of any contact with the language in some form.

The present circumstances are optimal for initiating a concerted effort to reawaken the slumbering giant that is the state department (of the Ministry of Education) responsible for managing the English language teaching programme. Where that task is concerned, we don’t have to start from scratch. What is needed is reorganization and remobilization of the already available expertise under a dedicated and inspiring leadership.

Although I am unable to make any meaningful comment on the ongoing Spoken English programme of the government as I am not still familiar with its instructional content, or its pedagogical procedures, it represents a proactive, and pragmatic response to what is felt as a cogent educational need. If this need, identified and recognized at the highest official level, is convincingly put across to the majority of our 4.5 million strong student population that really needs English, and the same level of enthusiasm is induced in them, the achievement of the expected results won’t be difficult.

As a parent and an educator, I welcome any genuine attempt, big or small, aimed at promoting a knowledge of English among our children. It’s my opinion that where learners are motivated, they derive some benefit from even the worst programme of teaching English, or the instruction of the weakest English teacher insofar as such student-course or student-teacher engagement provides for the communicative use of the language.

The principle behind this assumption is that the important thing in a language teaching- learning situation is the meaningful interactive relationship between the learner, the teacher and the instructional programme. The course materials supply a context for this kind of interaction, and the teacher stage-manages the process.

That any language manifests itself in context is well known. Mere learning of grammar rules or lexical items is not enough. This knowledge must be realized in meaningful, communicative contexts. As far as I know (I could be mistaken), no single method has been developed by anyone that could be described as the best method of teaching English. However, the methodological aspect of English teaching cannot be overlooked without undesirable consequences; this, however, is not meant to advocate any slavish adherence to the recommendations of one method to the neglect of positive elements in other methods. In fact, in an ideal teaching-learning situation, it is the job of the methodology-savvy teacher to devise his/her own strategy of teaching to suit the learning needs of a particular set of students in a specific context of place and time (something that it would be unfair to expect of the majority of our young English teachers).

Generally, though, I would say that any method or eclectic strategy that embodies functional, communicative principles has a better chance of success than any other that doesn’t. This would sound something like throwing back on the earliest beginnings of more than a century of concerted efforts at devising the best method of teaching a language that has seemingly failed: the Natural Method that formed the foundation for the Direct Method, the Situational Language Teaching Method, etc. The current Spoken English programme apparently draws on similar ‘natural’ principles.

To put it bluntly, successful second language English teaching is no big deal. It can be easily done, especially in the current Sri Lankan situation. This has been proved by dedicated young English teachers on more than one occasion. These instances are not exceptions; they demonstrate what could be ordinarily achieved with some effort, I’d dare say. I would like to refer to two cases I watched on TV. In the first of these, we were shown some children from a very rural background casually talking in fluent English; this ability they had acquired with the help of their young English teacher. The second instance, I saw on the Swarnavahini TV during a ‘Live at 8’ programme more recently (07.05.09). A teacher named Mr. Nandasiri Wanninayake, in charge of English and IT at Mahavilachchiya e-village, which is 45 km from Anuradhapaura, has taught the children of that very remote jungle area those two subjects very successfully. Some skeptics might treat this with scorn saying these are rare instances which cannot be duplicated elsewhere, but I believe that the same results can be achieved if the same sort of dedication on the part of the teachers is available. On both occasions mentioned here, I expected the high-ups in the Ministry to contact these teachers, and explore the possibility of making better use of them as exemplars of any new techniques that they themselves had probably developed; they could have been rewarded financially, or given scholarships to do advanced studies in local or foreign universities, in order to use them as resource persons in the future for training other teachers. I am to date unaware of any official recognition of their innovative efforts in a vital field interest.

Postscript

After writing this essay, I had a hunch that the pessimism of my comment on suspected official indifference in the concluding sentence above was not probably justified, particularly in the present resurgent atmosphere under our President’s inspiring stewardship, and that it would be better to browse through the web for some information about Mr. Wanninayake’s work to check this out. Sure enough, I was able to access his website, which was very rewarding. I learned that he has been engaged in his e-Village Replication Project for over ten years, and that Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President visited Mahavilachchiya in 2006, learnt about this project, and pledged support to expand it to other provinces. Accordingly, the e-village replication project is being extended to other areas under the Secondary Education Modernization Project of the Ministry of Education. This is an encouraging sign. We may reassure ourselves that we are entering upon a new era in yet another important sense.

Rohana R.Wasala.

This Business of Teaching English

First published in The Island in two parts on 21st Wednesday, and 22nd Thursday, May 2008



Those associated with the business of teaching English in the state education system – teachers, teacher advisors, applied linguists, educational administrators, etc. – would consider five factors, which are necessarily interrelated, as central to that activity: learners, teachers, language teaching methods, instructional materials, and evaluation.



Broadly speaking, English language teaching (ELT) , in common with instruction in other subjects, is better described as a teaching-learning process in which teachers and learners play interactive roles. The idea that learning is the responsibility of the learner, and that it predominantly depends on his/her own initiative, and his/her willing participation in teacher-directed activities aimed at using the target language for meaningful communication, with the teacher playing only a supportive role, is at least half a century old. This notion is embodied in such concepts as discovery learning, learner-centred instruction, etc. and is something widely recognized.



Constraints on the perfect practical realization of this principle in education in a developing country like ours are indeed formidable. But that is a different matter, and is outside the scope of this essay. For the time being at least let’s assume that such a goal, though probably not within our reach yet, would provide an important beacon for us to be guided by.



Ideally the whole teaching-learning process can be seen as a form of creative interaction between learners, teachers, methods and materials, whose synergetic (i.e. combined/coordinated) effectiveness is constantly monitored, and improved through evaluation.



What I am trying to suggest in the above sentence by ‘interaction’ (using it in a non-technical sense) may need some explaining, though the general meaning of the word is quite plain: it means ‘to work together with someone or something to make some effect on one another or on others’. The word can be applied to the relationships between the five elements (teachers, learners, methods, materials, and evaluation) mentioned above, because these relationships are actually two-way exchanges in the sense that each affects all the others: teachers’ assumptions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours shape student responses, and vice versa; methods prescribe the selection and sequencing of linguistic and experiential content of a course of language instruction, and the latter in turn may influence the way those methods are adopted or adapted; evaluation can lead to the reinforcement or modification of the nature and contributions of all the other factors to the achievement of the ultimate goal envisaged, just as they determine the shape, the objectives, and the level of difficulty, etc. of evaluation. (An important qualification of what is meant by methods here will be added later in the course of this essay.)



A simple contrast of modern with traditional attitudes to teaching and learning will suffice to clarify this point further. In the past teaching was generally considered a one-way communication of information or skills from an all-knowing teacher to a totally ignorant disciple, whereas today the assumption that in a true teaching-learning context the teacher’s responsibility, as a more knowledgeable and more experienced partner, is to engage his/her students (essentially junior colleagues in the relevant context) in an autonomous quest for knowledge and wisdom is a self-evidently valid pedagogical principle; nowadays, a teacher is required to play a variety of roles, the least of which is as a purveyor of information, while the more important roles include those of needs analyst, guide, teammate, colleague, group process manager, coach, therapist, counselor, and so on. Correspondingly, learners are expected to assume more central roles in the teaching-learning situation such as initiator, explorer, researcher, collaborator, etc., all of which may be subsumed under the term ‘negotiator’. According to Breen and Candlin quoted in Richards and Rodgers (2001):



The role of learner as negotiator – between the self, the learning process, and the object of learning – emerges from and interacts with the role of joint negotiator within the group and within the classroom procedures and activities which the group undertakes. The implication for the learner is that he should contribute as much as he gains and thereby learn in an interdependent way. (1980:110)



But the teacher is still a leader. The teaching profession is infinitely more demanding today than it ever was. The independence accorded to the learner does not in any way diminish the teacher’s importance; rather it enhances it, but s/he ‘leads from behind’. This concept of teaching accords well with what Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese American philosophical essayist, novelist, poet and artist, says in his book The Prophet (1923): ‘If he (i.e. the teacher) is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind’.



Of course, all this is hackneyed stuff for the initiate in the educational field. Its relevance to us here is that our embracing of those ideas or attitudes goes with our implicit or explicit acceptance or approval of the sort of methodology that we happen to adopt, which is the third of the five elements that I mentioned above as vital to the English language teaching activity.



Roughly the whole of the last century witnessed one continuous contest among language teaching professionals striving to formulate ‘the single best method’ of teaching languages, in the course of which a plethora of methods emerged in opposition to the classic Grammar Translation technique (Direct, Audiolingual, Total Physical Response, Silent Way, Community Language Learning, Suggestopedia/Desuggestopedia, and so on). The movement could be described as a succession of methods or techniques, each of which was superseded or outmoded or sidetracked or eclipsed by newer alternatives that their authors claimed to be more effective and more scientific in keeping with contemporary advances in linguistics, sociolinguistics, philosophy, language pedagogy, psychology of learning, educational theory, and other allied fields. Yet the search for ‘the method’ led to no definitive result; its goal remained as elusive as ever. But by the mid-1980’s there was almost a revolutionary change from the search for a ‘method’ to the working-out of an ‘approach’, a change of direction which was seen as ‘a paradigm shift’ (to repeat a phrase that sounds clichéd today), that is, a totally different way of formulating and addressing an issue.



The difference involved more than a change of the ultimate goal of the search. More importantly it involved a shift of focus from the structure of a language to its potential for meaning communication. All language teaching methods which had been developed over the first six decades of the twentieth century were based on the principle that mastering the grammar/structure of any language was the key to learning that language. The American teaching methodology known as Audiolingualism, which claimed to have revolutionized language teaching by turning it into a science, was a structural method. But in the 1960’s the theoretical basis of this so-called ‘scientific’ method was severely undermined when both its linguistics (a structural view of language) and its psychology of learning (behaviourism) were shown to be seriously defective. On the other side of the Atlantic, Britain, the then current Situational Language Teaching approach advocated the teaching of foreign languages through the practice of basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities. This was challenged by British applied linguists who criticized the untenability of predicting language on the basis of situational-events instead of following the traditional idea that speakers and writers used utterances to express meanings and intentions peculiar to themselves in unprecedented situations, not previously rehearsed stock sentences.



Language teaching approaches and methods began to be introduced in keeping with these new trends in methodological thinking that emphasized the primacy of meaning over form, marking the beginnings of the Communicative Language Teaching Approach.

Some examples of approaches based on CLT principles which were proposed in the next forty years are Communicative Language Teaching, Competency-based Language Teaching, Content-based Instruction, Cooperative Learning, Lexical Approaches, the Natural Approach, Task-based Language Teaching, and Whole Language.



Richards and Rodgers already alluded to (from whom I have derived these examples of methods and approaches, and much else as will be evident to the informed reader) succinctly describe the difference between the two concepts thus:



Each of these approaches… has in common a core set of theories and beliefs about the nature of language, of language learning, and a derived set of principles for teaching a language. None of them, however, leads to a specific set of prescriptions and techniques to be used in teaching a language…They allow for individual interpretation and application. They can be revised and updated over time as new practices emerge.



A method, on the other hand, refers to a specific instructional design or system based on a particular theory of language and language learning. It contains detailed specifications of content, roles of teachers and learners, and teaching procedures and techniques. It is relatively fixed in time and there is generally little scope for individual interpretation. …The teacher’s role is to follow the method and apply it precisely according to the rules.(2001:245)



The broad new ‘approach’ was actually a heterogeneous selection of elements from a variety of methods, catering for varying motives for learning English (such as academic, professional, business purposes), different types of teachers (e.g. novices, experts, native, nonnative) and, disparate social and individual needs of students, etc. This all-embracing pragmatic approach is widely identified as the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Approach.



The evolution of the CLT Approach embodying a shift away from an emphasis on structure for its own sake to an emphasis on meaning with structure being only a device for the expression of meaning is described by Brown in the following words:



Beyond grammatical discourse elements in communication, we are probing the nature of social, cultural, and pragmatic features of language. We are exploring pedagogical means for 'real-life' communication in the classroom. We are trying to get our learners to develop linguistic fluency, not just the accuracy that has so consumed our historical journey. We are equipping our students with tools for generating unrehearsed language performance 'out there' when they leave the womb of our classrooms. We are concerned with how to facilitate lifelong language learning among our students, not just with the immediate classroom task. We are looking at learners as partners in a cooperative venture. And our classroom practices seek to draw on whatever intrinsically sparks learners to reach their fullest potential (1994:77).



In the choice of an approach or a method a key consideration is practicality, especially in a situation like ours where the teaching is, in most cases, entrusted to teachers who, predictably, for no fault of theirs, neither possess an adequate level of general proficiency in English, nor enjoy the advantage of having had a sound enough training in the job. In such a context a method has a number of clear advantages over an approach. An approach, because of its flexibility, relies on the individual teacher’s initiative, interpretation, skill, and expertise. Where the teacher is not equal to meeting these expectations it can easily frustrate and demoralize him or her. A method, on the other hand, would offer the teachers, whatever be their professional preparedness, cut-and-dried procedures for dealing with problems about what to teach and how to teach it, so that even untrained teachers with a limited knowledge of the language can perform their task with a sense of confidence. Another advantage of adopting a method is that it encourages cooperation among teachers who share compatible ideas and experiences. A method can also generate a wealth of language practice activities which can be adopted or adapted even by teachers whose ideologies differ.



Closely connected with methodological considerations are instructional materials. The role assigned to instructional materials is determined by the objectives, syllabus, learning and teaching activities, and roles of learners and teachers pertaining to a language course. The syllabus specifies its linguistic content in terms of structures, topics, notions, functions, etc, and also the goals for language learning in terms of the four major skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The instructional materials further define subject-matter content and suggest the intensity of coverage, the amount of time allocated, and the degree of attention and detail required for the syllabus items. They also specify the routine learning objectives, which together form the goals of the syllabus.



Richards and Rodgers specify the role of instructional materials in a functional/communicative methodology in the following terms:



1) Materials will focus on the communicative abilities of interpretation, expression, and negotiation.

2) Materials will focus on understandable, relevant, and interesting exchanges of information, rather than on the presentation of grammatical form.

3) Materials will involve different kinds of texts and different media, which the learners can use to develop their competence through a variety of different activities and tasks. (2001:30)





In the prevailing Communicative Language Teaching context materials are expected to be so designed as to maximize classroom interaction and meaningful language use. Among instructional materials used in CLT today there are three types: text-based, task-based, and realia. In Sri Lanka text-based materials consist of the government textbooks. Task-based materials may be exemplified by language games, simulations, role plays, etc. ‘Authentic’ (i.e. not specially prepared for classroom use, but ‘from-life’) language-based materials such as advertisements, signs, and newspapers, form the realia that are or could be often used in the language class.



Of the five factors we have isolated as crucial for the business of English language teaching evaluation is the last. It represents the feedback phase of the whole gamut of activity involving the dynamic interaction among the five vital elements which feature in that process. Its main purpose is to assess the success of their performance in order to make decisions about changes which should be made for remedying shortcomings, and bringing about further improvement. Evaluation serves to maintain standards, while driving the whole language teaching programme towards excellence.



(It seems that the school-based assessment programme introduced in 1999 with such enthusiasm has been abandoned?)



According to Worthen and Sanders (1973) evaluation is ‘the process of deciding on the worth of something’. Very simple though this definition is, it draws attention to its two most important functions: value-judgement and decision-making. Weir and Roberts (1994) offer a little more elaborate definition: Evaluation is the process of collecting ‘information systematically in order to indicate the worth or merit of a programme or project (from certain aspects or as a whole) and to inform decision-making’.



Like most vitally important things in life, evaluation is a common everyday experience. All sorts of mundane decisions that we are required to make in order to forge ahead in our day-to-day life – whether they relate to our domestic or professional, personal or social, formal or casual situations – are based on evaluation. If, for example, we decide to replenish our food stock with some extra provisions fearing an imminent break in supply due to a threatened strike or natural disaster, that decision would be usually based on our assessment of our past experiences in a similar situation, of our present circumstances and likely developments in the future, and also of the relative value of the courses of action we have taken to date; if we are required to vote at an election, we resort to the same process of evaluation. In both these cases our aim is to enhance the efficacy of our responses in a problematic situation.



On the macro level, however, evaluation involves an infinitely more systematic approach, which consists of scrupulous data collection, strict determination of value or worth, and informed decision-making and in that order.



This is relevant to the language teaching situation. When the subject of evaluation is broached in this connection, the popular tendency is for most people to focus on the performance of students at various tests and examinations, and either praise or blame, as the case may be, the students, their teachers, the language teaching programme, the authorities, or the government. Nothing can be more mistaken! The actual performances of teachers, methods, and materials must be subjected to regular evaluation as well. And it must be a routine thing, a constant feature of the instruction process. The teachers must be under regular supportive supervision; methods or approaches must be constantly reviewed, and improvements proposed and implemented; instructional materials must be appropriately scrutinized, revised and brought up to date.



In addition to this developmental purpose of introducing informed changes to a programme of study, evaluation serves an ‘accountability’ aim. Since Sri Lanka is a democracy that is also a welfare state, decision-making in respect of the implementation of welfare policies necessarily involves the general public as stakeholders. They are stakeholders because they both influence and are influenced by decision-making. The system of free education is free for its beneficiaries, but not free for the country as a whole. It is run on public money, and the public have a right to demand ‘value for their money’.



The task before all those engaged in this business of teaching English at the present time is to ensure that the five elements learners, teachers, methods, materials, and evaluation coalesce into a powerful engine for achieving enhanced educational productivity. This, no doubt, is a tall order. But it will take nothing less to resuscitate the miserably failing state English language teaching programme that is being currently run.





REFERENCES

Brown, H.D. 1994. Teaching by Principles. Prentice Hall/Regents

Richards, C. and T.S.Rodgers. 2001. Approaches and Methods in

In Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press

Weir, C. and J.Roberts. 1994. Evaluation in ELT. Oxford. Blackwell.

Worthen, B.R. and J.R.Sanders. 1973. Theory and Practice of Educational

Evaluation. Belmont CA: Wadsworth



Rohana R. Wasala

Aba - the mega Sinhala movie

Previously published in Satmag/The Island on 6^th September 2008

Aba, the mega Sinhala movie directed by the versatile filmmaker Jackson Anthony, constitutes an impressive cinematic adventure for both its creators and its audiences. The film is a historical epic based on an independent and informed reconstruction of the Pandukabhaya story found in The Great Chronicle (the Mahavansa) of the Sinhalese. While providing a valuable opportunity for a delightful engagement of the aesthetic sense of the many local and foreign cinema-goers that it is sure to attract, it will boost the morale of the Sri Lankan people by dramatizing a most plausible explanation of their truly heroic origins, controversial though this may prove.

However, I personally believe that Jackson Anthony is as much concerned with maintaining a reasonable balance between the commercial success of his film and its artistic excellence as with ensuring, within permissible limits, the historical accuracy and verisimilitude of the details presented, and that, if this is truly the case, there is nothing blameworthy about it.

Aba can legitimately claim the status of epic cinema. Dealing with the childhood and adolescence (the early years of life from birth to the age of sixteen) of the title hero the film presents human drama on a magnificent scale. Its production costs are a staggering (for a developing country like ours) 60 million rupees. The filmmaker has gone to great lengths in his attempt to choose the right location for shooting his epic venture, and to construct the appropriate sets so as to create the feel and atmosphere of the 5^th century BCE Lanka. The historical setting is rendered further captivating by the addition of rich fantasy. The drama that is acted out against this backdrop is an imperial conflict (because it concerns a matter of royal succession) that determines the course of the history of a whole country and its people. This central conflict is between Pandu Aba, the royal prince condemned to death even before his birth, and his murderous challengers who are none other than his own uncles. (In media releases before the launch of the film Jackson Anthony was careful to stress the fact that this conflict was not between two ethnic groups, but between two clans or tribes for supremacy.) To create an authentic representation of the progress of events resulting from this discord the filmmaker uses a very large cast of ordinary people in supporting roles with the main cast comprising well over ten actors of established fame. These epic features of the film are complemented by an enchanting musical score by a reputed musician and fascinating dance sequences by an acclaimed choreographer.

Drama in this case involves the precarious survival of Aba the young prince in the face of repeated attempts made on his life by his uncles hell-bent on murdering him in order to thwart the course of destiny predicted for their nephew that he would, on coming of age, kill all of them to become king; but the protection afforded by his natural and supernatural guardians makes possible the successful completion of his education and military training under the Brahmin tutor Pandula.

The clash that occupies the whole film is that between Pandu Aba who represents the dominant native tribe the Yakkhas and his uncles the brothers of his mother who are actually considered as foreign invaders. Pandu Aba’s miraculous escape and his triumphal emergence out of a dangerous childhood into promising adulthood as a patriotic warrior in the end mark the resolution of the central conflict. Historically, the real struggle between the uncles and the nephew starts only after this and is outside the scope of the film Aba. However, the events covered in the film determine the direction of the nation’s history, which confirms the epic character of Aba the movie.

For most non-Sri Lankans the film’s appeal may be almost entirely due to its high cinematic quality, its magical fantasy, spectacle, music, and pageantry. Local audiences, however, will find something strongly inspiring in it in addition to its unmistakable art. The excellent quality of the film results from the effortless assimilation of its central message into the complex art that it bodies forth. It is because of this that they walk out of the cinemas after the show with their minds imbued with a sense of pride in being native to this country.

It is ennobling for us to realize that we have a far more heroic, honourable ancestry than the traditionally claimed ‘Aryan’ roots (though the ‘Hela’ language most probably acquired its Indo-European character as a result of north Indian influence including conquest). The founders of our nation stood up to foreign invaders from India and prevailed. Pandukabhaya (Pandu Aba) was the heroic warrior prince who saved the country from continued foreign domination and brought the various tribes together to forge a single nation.

This, of course, runs counter to the Mahavansa tradition according to which Prince Vijaya from north India was the progenitor of the Sinhalese race. What Jackson Anthony has in effect done is a kind of ‘deconstructing’ (to use the term in an informal sense) of the Pandukabhaya account of the Mahavansa.

There cannot be any doubt in the minds of those who have done even a cursory reading of the Mahavansa that its author Thera Mahanama meant it to be a record of what was then popularly believed to be the history of the island from the arrival of the north Indian conqueror to the 5^th century CE when the book was composed in fulfillment of a royal commission given by King Dhatusena. It is true that it could be regarded as a work of literature: a poem in the Pali language conforming to the rules of a specific literary genre that originated in India; it can also be described as a historical religious poem that enumerates the services of the pious monarchs of Lanka to the Buddhist church.

However, the Mahavansa cannot be dismissed as mere fiction. It is a sophisticated work that grew out of previous similar works and contemporary oral traditions as the author himself hints at the beginning. When shorn of literary embellishments and other elements of poetic license – determined in part most probably by deliberate design as the work was commissioned by the king in a time of trouble due to external threats to the state, the Mahavansa is revealed to have a solid factual base. With all its shortcomings as history the Mahavansa remains a cherished national monument.

In the opinion of a fair number of authoritative scholars the details of the Pandukabhaya legend in the Mahavansa suggest the likelihood that there was a struggle between the native royals and the successors of the conqueror Vijaya, who were Indian aliens.

In prelaunch comments on Aba in the media Jackson Anthony has made his patriotic goal clear: to serve the country of his birth by providing “a cinematic insight into the perennial question that has plagued the Mahavansa”. The question relates to the mystery about the identity of Pandukabhaya’s father.

Jackson Anthony the historian explains for us the genealogy of Dutugemunu, the warrior prince from Ruhuna who rid the country of foreign rule in the 2^nd century BCE thus: Dutugemunu’s father was Kavan Tissa, Kavan Tissa’s Gothabhaya, Gothabhaya’s Yathala Tissa, Yathala Tissa’s Mahanaga, Mahanaga’s Mutasiva, and Mutasiva’s Pandukabhaya, and poses the question as to who Pandukabhaya’s father was.

The filmmaker’s self-assigned patriotic mission is, as stated above, to stimulate a creative insight into the question through the medium of cinema. Says Jackson Anthony, “In this endeavour we shall strive to reawaken the origins of the illustrious Royal Dynasty of the Ruhuna, which is shrouded in mystery and has been a subject of great debate and controversy. As is fashionable among some academic and scholarly circles, it is inappropriate to consider as myths, the stories or legends revealing the birth of a nation, be they orally carried or recorded. The enduring historic and human relationship ingrained in those legends, tales or stories, have a timeless and universal value. We are strongly persuaded to believe that our cinematic effort to bring forth this exposition involving an epochal event, (the) birth and the childhood of Pandukabhaya that occurred about 2300 years ago in the history of this nation – will help instill a great measure of positive thinking into our present-day society whose consciousness has been unremittingly ravaged by centuries of colonial bondage and such other disconcerting experiences”.

Although there is a gap of sixteen centuries between the Mahavansa and the film Aba, in terms of topicality in their respective periods they have great affinity with each other. The Mahavansa was composed when the country was facing the threat of foreign invasion. The film Aba has a similar relationship to the current situation in the country embattled with a separatist terrorism. Hence both are of great national significance. In spite or rather because of this there is the possibility of adverse criticism leveled against Jackson Anthony’s attempt as being an exercise in tribalism, as it is usual in Sri Lanka nowadays for any talk of patriotism to be reviled as an advocacy of racism. However, there is nothing in the film that any section of the Sri Lankan community could take exception to, for it speaks for the whole country.

Turning now to the entertainment aspect, the artistes and the technical staff should be commended for a job well done. Malani Fonseka (as Bhaddakachchayana, the Sakyan princess who is brought to Lanka to be consecrated queen to King Panduvasudeva), Ravindra Randeniya (Brahmin Pandula who trains Pandu Aba), Sabitha Perera (Unmaada Chitthra, the last and eleventh child, and the only girl born to Bhaddakachchayana), Kanchana Kodituwakku (Diga Gamini who secretly visits the well-guarded Chitthra), and Neil Alles (Panduvasudeva, the third and youngest son of King Vijaya’s brother Sumitta, sent to Lanka to succeed Vijaya as the latter had no son of his own to be his heir) – all these act with a clear conception of their roles. Bimal Jayakody and Wasantha Moragoda play convincingly the deeply emotional roles of the two apparently very popular Yaksha generals Chitthra Raja and Kalawela put to death by Panduvasudeva for failure to protect Unmaada Chitthra being secret allies of Diga Gamini. The young duo Saumya Liyanage and Dulani Anuradha – obviously well trained in fighting and dancing - bring to life the roles of Habara and Gumbaka Butha who are entrusted the task of conveying the royal baby to Doramandalawa, by putting up a spirited performance. Jackson Anthony’s son Sajitha Anutthara plays with skill the title role of Aba, Pandukabhaya. Music is by Nadeeka Guruge, photography by Suminda Weerasinghe and choreography by Chandana Weerasinghe. The lyrics are by Professor Sunil Ariyaratne.

I wish to reserve special praise for Jackson Anthony for his rare creativity and unmatched versatility. The common English idiom ‘Jack of all trades (master of none)’ usually applied to a person who can do many different jobs, but none of them so well, could be given an absolutely positive twist in the case of our Jackson Anthony thus: ‘A Jack of all trades, and master of many’. He is an actor, a director, a singer, a scholar, a scriptwriter, a novelist, a lyricist, an explorer, a traveler, and a communicator par excellence.

We are lucky to be able to revisit our historical origins in his company.

Rohana R. Wasala

Hey! Biased Western Media! Call It Quits!

First published, in a slightly edited version, in The Island on Tuesday 26th May 2009



(Note:- The informal expression ‘Call it quits’ is used in its normally accepted sense of ‘agree that an argument or dispute or financial exchange between two parties has been settled’, not in the (erroneous) sense of ‘quit’ (leave, give up); the newspaper version gives the impression that ‘Call it quits’ carries the latter meaning, which is wrong, a result of editorial error. The following is my unedited original essay, where the phrase ‘Call it quits’ is used correctly.)



We, Sri Lankans, have just emerged out of over three decades of terrorism that caused us untold suffering. You probably cannot understand the deep sense of relief and joy that we are experiencing at this victorious moment of our final liberation from that terror; and that may be why you seem to persist in your anti-Sri Lanka slant in your reportage of the momentous event that has just taken place in our country. Intentionally or unintentionally you, as media people, chose to connive at the LTTE’s brutal acts of violence against us while it was in existence. We feel that you have been well and truly duped by the massive anti-Sri Lanka misinformation movement executed mainly through some members of the large community of Tamil economic refugees in the West miscalled the Tamil Diaspora, and other LTTE sympathizers in influential positions there, ostensibly determined to promote their unjust and unrealistic separate state goal; it is also possible that the LTTE itself has been taken for a ride by you in pursuance of the barely concealed objective of sustaining the threatened western hegemony in a geopolitically sensitive region of the world.



Whatever the motive behind your zeal for slandering Sri Lanka, it is we who have been the innocent victims of thirty three long years of incessant terror, which cost us dearly in terms of thousands of mostly young men and women dead or injured, the economy of the country wrecked, and intolerable mental trauma inflicted on millions. And we, the ordinary people of Sri Lanka, feel justified in blaming you, among others, fair and square for helping the LTTE terrorists to survive and flourish (until a few days ago), thereby prolonging our agony for so long through your consistently adamant misrepresentation of the truth about Sri Lanka’s predicament in the face of the terrorist scourge.



I, the writer of this, who have been following your media channels, especially the electronic media, from the birth to the death of LTTE terrorism, can hardly remember any instance where you cared to represent Sri Lanka’s point of view regarding this matter with adequate impartiality or some minimum concern for truth; you have always been partisan towards the LTTE in spite of its irrefutable record of heinous crimes against humanity. (I hasten to exempt unbiased media organs such as the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times from this general censure.)



We, the common citizens of this country, know at first hand that there is no ethnic, religious, or linguistic discrimination or resultant disharmony that could justify separatism or any rebel movement aimed at such a goal. There has never been any genocide against any community by Sri Lanka except the genocidal violence unleashed by the LTTE against all Sri Lankans in general. The very few communal eruptions that took place after 1958 were isolated incidents deliberately incited by certain chauvinistic or merely criminal elements from among both the Sinhalese and the Tamils without any firm popular support. Their repetition in the future is unlikely when certain outstanding issues relating to the common welfare of all the communities are addressed. However, such unfortunate aberrations as racial riots in the recent political history of our country have been repeatedly exaggerated and exploited by interested parties with political or personal axes to grind. Internationally, we have already paid a heavy price because of this. The truth is that no community has been free from horrendous Tiger terror, be it Sinhalese, Tamil, or Muslim. The extermination of the LTTE terrorists has brought great relief and hope to the vast majority of Sri Lankans. Therefore the mood of celebration that is sweeping across the country on this occasion should not be interpreted as a show of triumphalism.



We have had to suffer so much for so long mainly because of the nefarious behaviour of the West, one of whose agents you seem to be. The most recent demonstration of your usual attitude became evident in the way your TV channels such as the BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera reported the news about the crushing defeat of the LTTE at the hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces. You tried to represent the Tigers as heroes who have suffered a temporary setback; you completely blotted out the truly professional and heroic conduct of the patriotic Sri Lankan army soldiers. The chimera of LTTE invincibility that you helped conjure has now been exorcised for good; it was as false as the recent doctored tamilnet picture of an amused Prabhakaran gazing on his own corpse being shown on TV! We won’t be surprised if you too decided to flash the latter on your own channels!



Have you ever even referred to the abominable fact that the LTTE hadn’t spent a single dollar out of the billions contributed to it by the various INGOs and Tamils working abroad on any development work in the area that they illegally held for so many years? Apart from enriching themselves, and living a luxurious life in their palatial houses (albeit in the jungle), they squandered all that money on procuring massive stocks of modern weapons (apparently far in excess of what would be needed to resist the Sri Lankan army attacks), and building bunkers destroying the lush environment with its rich natural resources. They held captive their own people in abject poverty and misery. How did the government treat these innocent civilians (claimed by the LTTE to be citizens of their self-styled ‘Eelam’) while they were being thus ill used by those deadly fanatics? Through its agencies still functional in that territory the government sent them food, in fact, more food than the actual numbers needed, knowing very well that the number of residents in the area had been deliberately exaggerated by the terrorists with a view to acquiring extra supplies for maintaining buffer stocks for their own use in their intended future military campaigns against the government. Sri Lanka’s is probably the only government in the world that has been feeding a terror outfit that sought to destroy it and the country, and nearly succeeded in their attempt! Didn’t you hear George Master (a former postmaster of the Sri Lanka Postal department who later served the LTTE as its translator) telling on a TV interview that he drew his pension from his post office just before he joined the civilian trek towards the safety within the army lines, where he was identified and detained, but well treated by the soldiers?



When the LTTE exploded human bombs among the escaping Tamil civilians, using women and children for the purpose, in order to cause mayhem among the soldiers and the civilians to discourage the latter from trying to flee LTTE captivity and reach the safety of the area liberated by the Sri Lankan army, the soldiers offered their own lunch packets to the hungry escapees, though they themselves had to starve by doing so. Often the soldiers were seen supporting, even carrying, the sick and the wounded and the infirm among the escaping hostages (for the Tigers shot at , and injured or killed, these civilians for refusing to obey their orders to stay back as human shields); they provided emergency medical succour for them. Many such acts of human kindness were seen in the operational area, which earned the soldiers the respect and gratitude of those people. That is also why they were bold enough to rebuke the foreigners for criticizing the temporary welfare camp arrangements put in place by the army.



Do you know that the overwhelming majority (about 90%) of these young soldiers are from rural villages? They are heir to a rich culture steeped in the most humane Buddhist values. We feel that the very phrase ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ could be anathema to you. Yet it is principally the Sinhalese Buddhists of the South who have been sending donations for relieving the sufferings of the Tamil IDPs in the North from the day they began to escape from the Tiger clutches in their thousands when the army breached the LTTE defences. Buddhist monks in Colombo went on their ‘alms rounds’ to collect provisions and other needs to be sent to the North. I heard a government minister who represents the Hambantota district saying during a TV programme that nine lorry loads of things were collected and dispatched for the use of their displaced compatriots of the North by the poor folk of that district. Something that you will find it hard to believe is that very recently a number of massacres of innocent civilians by shooting and by bus-bombing were carried out by the LTTE in the same area, and that the threat of further such attacks was still lurking.



Have you ever talked about such things in your ‘news’ broadcasts? You have always relied on the lies that the Tiger propagandists fed to you. As ‘free, but responsible’ media, did you ever think of verifying, at least for the sake of some semblance of journalistic decency, what you heard from Tiger sources against the claims of the Sri Lankan national media (not all of them state-sponsored) reporting live from the battlefront? You can’t have missed regular video footage broadcast by the national TV channels showing Tamil civilians being corralled by the LTTE at gun point, and even shot at to prevent them breaking up the human shield that protected the terror leaders from the besieging Sri Lankan army. Didn’t you see the camouflaged heavy guns mounted in the very midst of civilian huts in the no-fire zone declared by the government from where the Tigers fired at the army, trying to provoke retaliatory fire from them in order that the LTTE could then claim that the army was massacring civilians? But the Tigers were actually putting to test their own conviction that the highly disciplined Sri Lanka army would not retaliate for fear of injuring civilians, strictly obeying the government’s explicit instructions to protect the civilians at all costs.



You failed to talk about these things, but falsely claimed that the army shelled the no-fire zone. One woman ‘journalist’ (a Canadian) was mean enough to refer to the temporary welfare camps hastily put up by the army to house the escaping thousands as ‘detention’ camps! (We strongly suspect that many of these ‘journalists’ were in the pay of the LTTE.)



All such fabrications that you tried to lend credence to were, we feel, meant to invite some sort of foreign intervention under the pretext of protecting civilians from alleged human rights violations by their own government, the real motive of this ploy being to throw a lifeline to the sinking Tigers, thereby prolonging our suffering indefinitely.



However, we still believe that the journalists, who represent those impersonal media organizations of the West with such names as the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and so on, are also human beings like us with a common sense of justice and fair play. We, as civilized human beings, expect them as similarly civilized human beings to desist from disseminating biased news about our beloved Sri Lanka. We expect them to be fair minded in their reporting. We know that justice is on our side. Actually, we wouldn’t care what individuals or organizations chose to say about our country if not for the fact that it could help perpetuate the undeserved shabby treatment that our country is being subjected to at the hands of the powers that be in the current unjust exploitative global power structure, and that it could obstruct the essential and inevitable demolition of the separatist ideology that had formed the basis of the terror movement. If you can’t comply with this innocent expectation of ours, please avoid talking about our country. Online opinion polls such as the ongoing CNN International Desk poll on Sri Lanka are also meaningless because of the mismatch between the Sinhalese and the Tamils in terms of their numerical strength (about 15 and over 80 million respectively), which will leave little room for a fair result to emerge.


(Image stolen from blueroof.wordpress.com)


You have already done enough and more damage to our international standing as a sovereign nation. This is in addition to the (im)moral support you extended to the bloodthirsty terrorists by whitewashing them, terrorists who wreaked havoc in our beloved land drenching it in innocent blood for thirty three years. If you had any grudge against us before, you have paid it off with interest. Now we are quits. So, please leave us alone. Thank you!





Rohana R. Wasala

Sri Lankan Identity Will Prevail

First published in two parts in The Island on 21^st and 22^nd July 2008

What impelled me to write this essay was Mr RMB Senanayake’s article entitled ‘Sri Lankan identity is dead – a response to Anne Abeysekera’, in The Island of Saturday 5^th July, 2008 where the opening paragraph concludes thus:

“In the past in the social environment she and I grew up, the social environment was not dominated by the Sinhala Buddhist ethos. It was a more humanist tradition inherited from the West.”

I had a feeling of respect for Mr Senanayake on the basis of the quality of his numerous articles in The Island which let me believe him to be an ethical, rational, and broadminded person. So it was painful for me to read the words quoted above coming from his pen; many other readers sharing my attitude towards the subject in question may have been similarly affected by the implications of those words.

In fact, Mr Senanayake was only responding to Ms Anne Abayasekara’s contribution under the title ‘Am I a Sinhalese first, and a Sri Lankan afterwards’carried in the same paper on Monday 30th June, 2008, which in turn was a reaction to an even earlier article entitled ‘How does one BECOME Sinhalese or Tamil in Sentiments’ by Dr Michael Roberts in The Island of 30th April, 2008. Following Ms Abayasekera’s essay Dr Roberts had another short piece, which was on the subject of “Debating and quantifying the label ‘secular’” in The Island of 3^rd July, 2008.

I reread all those three articles before sitting down to write the following, which will contain my personal views apropos of the points raised, for whatever they are worth.

First of all I wish to add a caveat: I felt rather diffident at the beginning about the task I must address myself to on this occasion, because I am neither a historian nor a political scientist, not even a politician (the least intellectually demanding vocation in our country at the present time!). I am someone Dr Roberts could justifiably include in the ETDH (Every Tom Dick and Harry) category, and I hope I am not trespassing too much on his academic preserve; mine are humble views based on commonsense; I don’t want to make a fool of myself by challenging Dr Michael Roberts whose scholarship and fame I very sincerely admire. However, with the realization that history is not at issue here and that Dr Roberts’ enlightened liberal views regarding the limited value of history (whether ancient or most recent) for the resolution of the current conflict situation in our country are essentially identical with mine, I feel I have managed by this point to shed some of my initial inhibitions.

But I do not share his convictions about the existence and significance of what is usually condemned as ‘Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism’ ( or of a Tamil version of the same sort of chauvinism for that matter) among the ordinary people of this country. These charges of chauvinism relate especially to the Sinhalese Buddhists’ agitation prior to Independence aimed at regaining what they believed was their due status as the majority race of this island with a well established history along with the other communities, and to certain political and legislative measures attempted since in order to eliminate longstanding anomalies.

To my mind both Dr Roberts and Mr Senanayake take ‘Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism’ for granted, of course, with different degrees of tolerance or disapproval of the same between them. (Ms Abayasekara is apparently free from such an attitude.) In addition to this, all three stand socially and culturally more or less at the same distance from the ordinary Sinhala Buddhists whom they are implicitly passing judgement on. Dr Roberts’ purportedly cold scientific approach contrasts with Ms Abayasekara’s empathetic attitude of a certain fellow feeling, understanding and tolerance. Mr Senanayake provides a foil to both in his downright condemnation of ‘the Sinhala Buddhist ethos’ as lacking in humanism (whatever he means by the last term).

Since it was Ms Abayasekara’s attempt to answer a riddle in the form of a number of questions formulated by Dr Michael Roberts towards the end of his article and offered to the Sinhalese (and as a second thought to the Tamil) readers for their own education through reflection that has triggered this colloquy, and since in my view his barrage of questions presumes the existence of a certain morbid state of mind that impels the Sinhalese to think fanatically of themselves as a race, let me start with those questions.

What makes you FEEL that you are a Sinhalese?

How did you become Sinhalese?

What made your parents think and feel themselves Sinhalese?

And are you at the same time a Sri Lankan in sentiment?

Or is the last question redundant in that Sinhalese is equivalent to ‘Sri Lankan’?

Dr Roberts deletes the last question for the Tamils, as he maintains, because of their recent experiences (presumably their sufferings at the hands of fanatical Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists as often alleged).

Kan Butani feels in his article ‘Make money not war: A recipe for peace’ ( The Island, Tuesday 8^th July, 2008) that Dr Roberts’ question is ‘the most absurd question and every answer will be confronted by an unanswerable why.’ I would not call it absurd; I would say that , though apparently silly, it is well-meaning, its purpose being to stimulate rational analysis of a certain undesirable sentiment – fanatical emotional attachment to one’s race- which will result in the analyst being cured of that illness. The practical intellectual exercise that Dr Roberts recommends for those readers who FEEL and have BECOME Sinhalese ( the capitalizing foregrounds the notion that ethnic identity is more a subjective emotional construct than a scientifically provable fact) is meant to pave the way for some sort of communal rapprochement between the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, who, in his perception, are engaged at present in ‘the competitive jostling-cum-conflicts’ that determines ‘…the present impasse in the politics of Sri Lanka’.

In fact, Dr Roberts’ article appeared on the web on April 23^rd (before it did so in The Island a week after). It has attracted a number of comments (some commending, some disparaging his views) from bloggers. Acknowledging their comments Dr Roberts says on the same website: “My intention… was to underline the complex process (really processes) through which we become Sinhalese, Tamil, Scottish, Japanese, etc”. He illustrates this by referring to the case of Greek migrants to Australia. According to him some of them identify themselves as Australian, some as Greek-Australians, and some as Greek, the last being positively anti-Aussie in sentiment! He further adds: “ Arguably some of the most rabid Sinhala and Tamil chauvinists can be found among elements living abroad”.

In his reply to an individual blogger Dr Roberts acidly comments: “Since he also asserts that HOME of Tamils is Tamil Nadu his contention in effect suggests that the Tamils of Sri Lanka can bugger off to that country. I have it on good authority that some politicians of the present regime occasionally voice the same idea which is PLAIN WRONG…It is only the paranoid attitude of the Sinhala Buddhists or Sinhala extremists that render them into a threatening force and a looming ally of the LTTE..”. (Such extremist claims as those made by the reader who said that the home f the Tamils is Tamil Nadu are often provoked by similarly PLAIN WRONG assertions by Tamil extremists. But we must realize the fact that extremists, in spite of their notoriety and loud noise, are only a handful on both sides.)

Dr Roberts’ questions were meant for the “introspective examination” of such morbid notions as those that give rise to extremism..

Later, however, he qualifies this apparently totally damning assessment, for he admits that “There are always a few, maybe even more, with whom – and WITHIN whom – collective identity sits lightly”. My own contention is, as it has always been, that despite all appearances to the contrary, with the vast majority of ordinary ‘Sinhala Buddhists’, especially ‘within’ Sinhala Buddhists, ‘collective identity sits lightly’ to an extent generally unusual among many other communities (I am risking a charge of the popularly condemned ‘We Vs Them’ syndrome here). Consider, for example, a very obvious cultural trait of the Sinhalese Buddhists: their names and their manner of dress do not reveal their racial or religious identity; the absence of painted marks on the body that distinguish them from others reinforces this anonymity. (This may be due to the influence of the Buddhist teaching that emphasizes the harmfulness of obsession with one’s self and advocates its effacement.) Only close association and familiarity with the Sinhalese Buddhists will reveal how non-racist most of them are in their social outlook despite their awareness of their identity as Sinhalese Buddhists in a world where racial, religious, cultural, social and other numerous kinds of divisions are normal. The unfortunate thing is that foreigners and the equally alien representatives of the elite who wish to sit in judgement over them are usually unable to get near enough to them to understand and assess them properly. They arrive at their damning conclusions only by looking at a handful of really rabid chauvinists doing politics among the Sinhalese who claim to represent the Sinhalese Buddhist masses (but such extremists among the Sinhalese are far outnumbered by similar elements in the opposite camps). Which community is free of such elements?

Dr Roberts summarizes his questions thus: ‘how did each of you become Sinhalese or Tamil and develop attachments to that entity?’ If I had any objections to such a poser, it would be because it begs the question in that it takes for granted the ‘rabid chauvinism’ the admission or denial of which should form part of the answer; for example, one cannot respond ‘I don’t FEEL Sinhalese, and didn’t BECOME Sinhalese either, I AM Sinhalese because I was born to Sinhalese parents, I speak Sinhalese, I follow the cultural traditions generally associated with the Sinhalese, etc, etc, just as you would say, if pressed for an answer to the question ‘What’s your race or ethnicity?’ that you ARE a Burgher or some version of it such as Ceylonese Burgher, Sinhalese-Burgher, or whatever, for similar reasons; but such an answer would amount to a rejection of the question; in other words, only those who admit to have made such a big deal of their Sinhaleseness as to be discriminatory towards other communities could take the question up as part of some sort of a psychological counseling process, and hopefully benefit from it. And if there are any Sinhalese who have really made themselves Sinhalese, and who do feel themselves Sinhalese in the judgement of these counselors, but refuse to accept the fact, they will simply scoff at the questions as nonsense.

I flatter myself that as an ordinary citizen I too share the same liberal values that I believe Dr Roberts subscribes to. We don’t set much store by our ethnic identity or other identity that serves to isolate us from the rest of humanity. And that, surprisingly for their detractors, is the attitude of most Sinhalese Buddhists. By writing what might look like a defence of the majority of ordinary Sinhalese Buddhists against charges of extremism I am not trying to defend the indefensible. What I am attempting to show is that Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinism is itself a chimerical creation of vested political interests especially over the past one hundred years or so.

An ordinary citizen like me could easily realize it if the Sinhalese Buddhists who form the majority of the population discriminated against the minorities at every turn, and behaved in ways that would amount to a deliberate violation of their rights as free and equal citizens living in a democracy. There is no evidence of such chauvinism among the Sinhalese Buddhists.

Chauvinism is the fanatical adherence to one’s race, religion, language, morals, and political and military power, based on the belief that these are superior to anyone else’s. The majority of the Sinhalese Buddhists are the ordinary people you see wherever you go in the country – peasant cultivators, pavement hawkers, mechanics, clerks, teachers, shop assistants, health workers, and the rest in all walks of life. There is no tradition of lording it over the members other communities by these people in any way.

Recently I got a ‘paint baas’ (a painter) to paint the wall in front of our house which faces a main road. I knew he was a Sinhalese and a Buddhist, a member of the much maligned majority. On seeing the logo ‘May Budungay daysayayi’ (This is the Land of the Buddha) painted on the rear windscreen of a bus that passed, he said with a wry smile, ‘Munta pissu!’ (They are crazy). Though I understood perfectly well that he was expressing his contempt for those extremist elements who thought up that slogan, I asked him,’Why?’ The answer was: ‘How can any person say that? Isn’t this country the land of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and other religionists, as well?’

To understand and appreciate the attitude of ordinary Buddhists towards intercommunal coexistence analysts must interact closely with those people. It is not right to judge them entirely by what politicians say, or by what one speculates.

More than half a century of anti-Sinhala-Buddhist propaganda has demonized the Sinhalese majority in the eyes of the world, and this I see as a mere gratuitous development, principally due to our (Sri Lankans’) failure to emerge whole out of the stranglehold of British colonialism. This failure was the net result of the discriminatory treatment by the imperialists of the subject majority as against the minorities. When the time came for the rectification of the historical wrongs perpetrated on the majority Sinhalese Buddhists, disagreements and rivalries between the different communities gave rise to centrifugal, instead of centripetal, tendencies in the national struggle towards independence.

Apparently Mr Senanayake is not unaware of this history of ‘Sinhala Buddhist nationalism’ because he says:

‘The national cake is of fixed size and if the Tamils got a disproportionate share of it then the Sinhala Buddhists would inevitably get less…’ There is a gap in his logic here for he then implies that the Sinhala Buddhists should have taken this lying down, but that they didn’t, as a result of which the ‘manufacture of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism’ came about. Then he asserts that this Sinhala Buddhist nationalism ‘led to a similar Tamil nationalism’.

When he compares the ‘Sinhala Buddhist ethos’ unfavouably with ‘Western humanism’ Mr Senanayake’s logic snaps again. He himself gives a few examples of Western humanism such as the case of the 14-year old black boy Emmet Till who “could be hunted down and murdered by a Mississippi gang simply because he had supposedly made suggestive remarks to a white woman”. Therefore I need not say anything about his denunciation of the ‘Sinhala Buddhist ethos’.

The Right Honourable D.S.Senanayake, acting as a true patriotic Sinhalese Buddhist leader without publicly assuming that name to gain narrow political advantage, managed to achieve a degree of national unity sufficient to inaugurate a progressive march towards the establishment of a single, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilinguistic nation amidst much opposition from extremist elements from both sides. But this march was cut short with the untimely death of D.S. in 1952 just three years into his tenure of office as the first Prime Minister of independent Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

It is not right to apportion blame exclusively to the so-called Sinhala Buddhist nationalists for ‘the present impasse’. One could argue that the members of the Tamil elite pampered under the British provoked a naturally hostile reaction from their Sinhalese counterparts by opposing the accommodation by the colonial rulers of the latter’s demand for the fulfillment of their legitimate aspirations.

However, if we look back over the past century occupied successively by the final fifty or so years of colonial rule of our country, and six decades of independence we can realize that communal harmony has broadly held, and with it a sense of Sri Lankan identity in spite of some serious setbacks; but these setbacks were not due to any real Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism.

National unity was seen at two levels of society inherently hostile to each other: 1)at the level of the pampered minuscule elite, the comprador class – the native collaborators of foreign imperialism – for whom their original ethnic identity and culture were of little import in the face of the power and prestige they gained through Christianity and English, and 2)at the level of the vast majority of the oppressed masses of the native population consisting of the poor of all the Lankan communities. Naturally it took different things to unite each class within itself. Imperial patronage and privileges united the one, while the misery attendant upon imperial exploitation, being the common lot of the dispossessed, united the other. This is a theme I alluded to in passing in an artcle entitled ‘Language for Peace and Progress’ in The Island (Midweek Review) on Wednesday 3^rd November 1999:

In the past there were situations in our country in which Sinhalese,
Tamils, Muslims and Burghers lived and worked together in complete peace
and harmony in spite of their divergent ethnic backgrounds. Even now,
ordinary Sinhalese and Tamils realise such peaceful co-existence. From
history, we know that the English-educated, mostly westernised elite of our
country under the British formed a close-knit community despite their
varied racial backgrounds. In such harmonious situations, what is important
is not race or language, but the community of interests and the opportunity
to promote those interests without hindrance. Of course social elitism,
which depends on a system of exploitation of the majority by a privileged
minority, cannot be a model for us to follow. I merely alluded to it here
as an illustration of my belief that shared goals and mutually beneficial
means of reaching them are a more potent factor in generating communal
harmony, than language.

Readers who wish to view this article in full may go to (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/act/message/263)

Both Ms Abayasekara and Mr Senanayake grieve over the alleged disappearance of the Ceylonese/Sri Lankan identity or national unity enjoyed at the brown sahib level (the former perhaps with some reservations, the latter without any).

I had reached this point in my essay when Dr Mahes Ladduwahetty’s article ‘Is Sri Lankan identity dead?’ appeared in The Island of Monday 14^th July, 2008, which is a patient and fair-minded response to ‘Those who condemn Sri Lankan nationalism/patriotism while extolling a theoretical “Western humanism” and post nationalism…”, and is certainly better than what I am attempting here.

By a happy coincidence I find myself able to bring my discourse to an end by quoting, in confirmation of my thesis, the concluding sentences of an article by Dr Dayan Jayatilleke under the title “The coordinates of national consciousness” in The Island of Tuesday 15^th July, 2008. Dr Jayatilleke’s article is a reaction to a critique by a local writer in The Sunday Leader of 13^th July, 2008 of a new nationwide public “Peace poll” published last month by the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool in the UK and commissioned by The Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo.

Summarizing the general implications of the statistical findings of the said survey Dr Jayatilleke winds up his essay with these sentences:

“…Taken together, the totality of the Sinhala views, on national priorities, the war, the Tigers, devolution and discrimination, present a picture not of a fanatical, chauvinist community but of middle-of-the road mass sentiment; of a majority on the Middle Path. Running against the collective wisdom of the current crop of Cassandras, the scenario turns still more optimistic when one recalls just how reasonable Tamil opinion is on many issues, revealing that there is no unbridgeable chasm between the communities.”

As for Mr Senanayake’s presumed near-realization in the West of ‘post identity’ ideals – ‘post nationalism, postmodernism and multiculturalism’ (from Mr S’s article)- which prompts him to say, “Obama’s candidacy is thrilling because it carries with it the notion that the gap between the races may be beginning to close”, he may find little confirmation of his view in the news item ‘Former President Clinton warns of polarization of electorate’ on page 7 of the same issue of The Island. According to this news dispatch Mr Clinton opines that “Underneath the apparent accommodation to our diversity, we are in fact hunkering down in communities of like-mindedness, and it affects our ability to manage difference”.

Contrary to Mr Senanayake’s totally pessimistic assessment of the chance of an Obama type of “accommodation to diversity” (Clinton’s phrase) being achieved in our country, it has been proved more than once that persons from the minorities are acceptable to the Sinhala Buddhists as their political leaders when they are perceived to champion the national interest rather than their individual communal agendas. It is also my own hunch that a young generation of Sri Lankans are emerging both in the embattled north and east and in the relatively calm south, who, by education or instinct, due most probably to the combined influence of the tolerant humanist traditions of Hindu and Buddhist cultures which predate the Western ‘humanist’ culture at least by half a millennium, seem to embrace more meaningful ideals such as shared prosperity, good jobs, and a peaceful life of personal and social happiness than self-destructive sectarian goals. No more proof of this would be necessary than the case of the former LTTE child soldier Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan (Pillayan) who has been elected the Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council. Our fervent hope should be that the present old guard labouring under various fanaticisms may not scuttle this epochal trend which is steadily gaining ground.

Rohana R Wasala