Friday, July 30, 2010

Why the Maligawa road should not be reopened

Why the Maligawa Road Should Not Be Reopened
(First published in The Island/23rd July 2010 with some parts deleted to shorten the article)

The current proposal to reopen the road stretch adjacent to the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy is being met with a show of approval as well as opposition, though on the whole the response on the part of the local Buddhist laity as well as the clergy has been rather lukewarm either way for some inexplicable reason (may be a case of the silence of the silent majority!). In any case, it appears that a final decision is yet to be taken in this regard. The delay affords the authorities an opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of restoring an anomaly on the sacred Maligawa premises that should have been permanently removed long ago.
Surprisingly, however, the Malwatte Prelate has no objection to the reopening, while the Central Province Governor is opposed to the move as reported in The Island newspaper on July 6 and 8 respectively. We hope that the wiser counsel of the Governor will prevail.
In the opinion of many people, an alternative route to and from downtown Kandy (i.e. an alternative to the one now traversing the Maligawa compound as it were) can be provided at little cost to the country by constructing a bridge across the Kandy lake at its narrowest point. An argument against such a project is that it will spoil the beauty of the place, but this can be easily countered by saying that a highway that is too close to the stately Maligawa edifice more seriously detracts from its beauty and majesty; besides, there is nothing to prevent the bridge from being designed appropriately incorporating compatible Kandyan architectural features that will enhance the beauty of the whole landscape.
A bridge across the lake is not a new idea. More than ten years ago, appalled by the thoroughly polluted state of the Kandy lake, I wrote an article entitled “The Kandy Lake and Its Future” to The Island. It was published on Friday 26th November 1999. The article included the following paragraph:

To reduce air pollution through motor traffic a bridge may be constructed across the Lake in an aesthetically pleasing manner where it is narrowest. (Such a bridge will not only lessen problems of pollution, it will also benefit all those who travel this way and the state by reducing fuel cost and vehicular wear and tear.) The motor-boat service now being operated on the Lake should be replaced with a non-fuel-consuming device such as a canoe, because the area that the Lake covers is quite small and even a small motor-boat can cause a relatively significant amount of pollution. Wooden boats will have the additional advantage of providing employment to a number of people and of adding some rural charm to the boat-riding experience that tourists, both local and foreign, love so much.

The idea about a bridge over the Kandy lake was something that had been already mooted at that time as I remember, though there was no sign of its being practically pursued. However, about six months later, The Island (Tuesday 13th June 2000) carried a news item to the effect that the then Ministry of Transport and Highways was considering a proposal to construct a bridge across the lake. The proposal was never implemented. (No reference is ever made, as far as I know, to the environmental pollution caused by the motor-boat service in the lake. This is perhaps because many people would think that the pollution caused by the boat is nothing compared to that caused by motor-car exhaust fumes around the lake.)

There is no question about the necessity of solving Kandy’s traffic congestion and air pollution problems. But the reopening of the Maligawa road will not significantly ease the situation caused by these problems. Even if it does (unlikely though that is), the reopening should not be allowed. Instead alternative ways of eliminating those hazards must be found. The stretch of road skirting the Maligawa too close to it must be permanently closed. This should have been done long before the terrorist attack on the Maligawa on January 25, 1998 which led to its closure by the authorities.

The preservation and protection of the Dalada Maligawa is a national obligation of the highest priority because of its unparalleled importance for us, which is twofold. First, it is the most venerated Buddhist shrine for the Buddhists within the country and for those in the wider world outside. Second, the Tooth Relic’s special connection with the temporal overlordship of the island, and the importance of the city of Kandy as the last royal capital invest the place with great historical significance for the nation; the general Kandy area which sits astride the focal point (at Katugastota) from where radiate the three ancient divisions of the state of Sri Lanka known as the ‘thrisinhalay’ (Ruhunu, Maya, and Pihiti) is sanctified by the blood of our patriotic forefathers who heroically fought against rapacious foreign intruders for safeguarding the independence of our beloved motherland.

A digression into history is necessary for me to make these points clear. Those timeservers who act as if they are ignorant of this must be reminded of what any ordinary Sri Lankan with some education knows about the Dalada Maligawa and Kandy the last capital of the kingdom of Sinhalay where it stands.

A Kalinga princess by the name of Hemamali travelled to Sri Lanka with her husband Prince Dantha disguised as ascetics about the year 310 BCE. She brought the Tooth Relic concealed in her hair. King Kirti Sri Meghavarna (301-328 CE) who was the ruler of Lanka at that time received them with great honour, and conducted them to Anuradhapura, the royal capital. He housed the relic within the precincts of the royal palace, and ordered an annual perahera to be held in its honour. Over the centuries it became a well established tradition to enshrine the Tooth Relic within the royal palace premises, and to hold an annual Dalada perahera. By the 12th century, a convention had developed whereby the custodianship of the Tooth Relic was accepted as conferring on the person the sovereignty over Sri Lanka. For this reason the protection of the Tooth Relic was of great religious and secular concern for the Sinhalese kings.

With the shifting of the capital city from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa, Vijayabahu I (1056-1111) built a Dalada Maligawa immediately to the north of the royal palace. Later, Parakramabahu I (1156-1183) and Nissanka Malla (1187-1196) also made imposing Maligawas to house the Tooth Relic. For the Sinhalese the link between the possession of the Tooth Relic and sovereignty over the island became indissoluble. Whenever the security situation deteriorated, the royal capital was shifted from one city to another: from Polonnaruwa to Dambadeniya under Vijayabahu III (1232-1236) who had saved the country from twenty-one years of cruel tyranny under the wicked invader Magha of Kalinga; again the capital was changed from Dambadeniya to Yapahuwa to Kurunegala, to Kotte, and finally to Kandy. The Tooth Relic was hidden in various locations, the Buddhist monks playing a major role in its protection. The connection between the custodianship of the Tooth Relic and royal power over the island was even internationally known, which attracted the hostile attention of certain foreign soldiers of fortune. Chandrabhanu was one of these. He made two unsuccessful attempts to seize the Relic and ascend the throne. He landed at Mahatittha with his Javaka army on his second attempt during the reign of King Vijayabahu IV (1271-1273). To the king he “sent forth messengers with the message: I shall take Tisihala; I shall not leave it to thee. Yield up to me therefore together with the Tooth Relic of the Sage, the Bowl Relic and the royal dominion. If thou wilt not, then fight.” Vijayabahu accepted the challenge, defeated the invader, and “united Lanka under the umbrella of his dominion” (Culavamsa , Part II, Geiger translation. Asian Educational Services, New Delhi and Chennai. 2003, p.187-88.) “Tisihala” refers, as Geiger explains on p.139, to the threefold division of the island into Patittharattha, Mayarattha, and Rohana, which correspond respectively to modern Pihitirata, Mayarata, and Ruhuna.

When Kotte was captured by the Portuguese, the monks fled the city surreptitiously carrying the Sacred Relic with them. They hid it in a safe place until it was again housed in the two-storeyed Dalada Maligawa built in Kandy by King Wimaladharmasuriya I (1592-1604) who ascended the throne there. (The present Dalada Maligawa is the same one built by King Wimaladharmasuriya, but it has undergone a number of periodic renovations since its inception.) The Kandyan Kingdom under Wimaladharmasuriya’s successors, for half of the nearly 450 years of predatory European aggression in various forms against our motherland between 1505 and 1948, had to bear the brunt of the relentless onslaughts of three European powers.

Writing about Vijayabahu III (mentioned above), who as a young warrior collected an army of combatants from the mountainous areas and attacked Magha to put an end to his depredations, the great D.C.Vijayawardane in his “The Revolt in the Temple” (1953) composed to “commemorate 2500 years of Buddhism, of civilization in Lanka, and of the Sinhalese nation…” praises the ‘mountaineers’ (as he calls them) as “always the last to be subdued and the first to revolt”.

The great rebellion of 1818 led by Keppetipola the Maha Dissawe of Uva , a heroic reaction to British perfidy, provides a piece of evidence for Vijayawardane’s assertion. In this connection, a reference to Professor Tennekoon Vimalananda’s “The Great Rebellion of 1818” (1970) is appropriate. Professor Vimalananda’s work of scholarship mainly draws on the 10,000 page report of the Select Committee of the British Parliament on Ceylon presided over by Mr Hume, which sat at Westminster from 1849-1850 to inquire into the grievances of people and the maladministration of the officials of the British Government in Ceylon. (The report contains records of official correspondence between Governor Robert Brownrigg and the Secretary of State, records of statements by British and native functionaries, etc who directly participated in the events connected with the rebellion, and numerous other records of evidence). The authoritative findings of the select committee categorically denounces the Governor’s deliberate attempt to evade commitments made under the Kandyan Convention. Professor Vimalananda gives an authentic account of the “heroic bravery and courage displayed by the Kandyan Peasantry against the might of the British Empire in a war in which the Sinhalese nearly inflicted defeat upon the invaders” which made the British Governor General Robert Brownrigg communicate his anxiety to the Home Government about the (British) Indian Government’s delay in sending British troops from India to Ceylon to deal with the situation.

The ferocity of the suppression of the uprising can be gauged from the following passage from M.A. Durand Appuhamy’s THE REBELS OUTLAWS AND ENEMIES TO THE BRITISH (M.D. Gunasena & Co. Ltd, 1990.):

The colour sergeant Calladine wrote in his diary, “at this time there was seldom a day passed but we had parties out scouring the country for a distance round, burning all they came across and shooting those they could not take prisoners”. He waxed lyrical in praise of the atrocities committed by him and his fellow British officers:

“But British courage still prevailing
Soon we made our foes to fly,
And their villages assailing,
Caused some hundreds for to die.
See their villages a-burning,
And their temples soon laid low.
This the wretches get for joining
With the jungle rebel foe.”


During the 1818 Kandyan rebellion Keppetipola temporarily secured the possession of the Dalada by having a monk remove it secretly from the Maligawa as mentioned in the above source; the rebel leader used the Relic to rally the peasants around him in support of his cause. But the leaders and their followers gave up the struggle when the Tooth Relic fell into the hands of the British because they thought that with the Relic in their possession the British were now the legitimate rulers of the country. That was the power the Tooth Relic had upon our people.


Thus, the Dalada Maligawa is a sacred living monument to that august history; it stands on ground hallowed by the blood of our patriotic forefathers who breathed their last defending the proud independence of our land; it enshrines the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha the Enlightened One who taught his followers to extend loving kindness to every being irrespective of their colour, size, beliefs, qualities, age, importance, or whatever other attribute one could think of.

The rapacious Europeans did their damnedest to obliterate our Buddhist heritage. The Portuguese burnt down the historic Kelaniya Temple built, as the Sinhalese Buddhists have always believed, on a spot sanctified by the touch of the Buddha’s feet. The alien occupiers hemmed in the Dalada Maligawa with non-Buddhist structures to eclipse its majesty, and to reduce it into insignificance with a view to weakening the religious hold it had on our people. A statue erected in colonial times in memory of a British governor which had no religious significance was removed after Sri Lanka became a republic.

The Sri Dalada Maligawa is the holiest Buddhist shrine in the country and in the whole world. It enshrines the Tooth Relic of the Buddha which is venerated as if it were the living Buddha. For most of the period of its existence in Sri Lanka the Relic has been accorded the highest honour as a palladium, the possession of which was held to legitimize a ruler’s royal authority. A busy road in close proximity to it is not proper. That is why I believe that the Maligawa road should not be reopened, but that an appropriate alternative solution to the traffic and pollution problem must be found.

(Before mailing this write-up to the editor, I went and looked at the part of the Dalada Vidiya that still remains blockaded. I was encouraged by what I saw: the portion of the road parallel to the esplanade opposite the Maligawa was being paved with cement blocks, which I read as a sign that this road will not be reopened after all.)

Friday, July 16, 2010

What Is Happiness?

What Is Happiness?
(First published in The Island on Friday 16th July 2010)
Happiness is commonly defined as a state of mind marked by such pleasant feelings as satisfaction, contentment, freedom from anxiety, mental tranquillity, and other similar positive moods. The Chambers Thesaurus (Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd., 2004) lists twenty-four synonyms for the word “happiness” including joy, gladness, cheerfulness, contentment, pleasure, delight, gaiety, life, merriment, light-heartedness, exuberance, high spirits, elation, ecstasy, and euphoria. The list suggests the wide range and variety of feelings covered by the term happiness. No wonder the concept of happiness is sometimes described as a little too vague for precise definition.

Although we may not be able to say exactly what happiness is we know that “happy” is what we always want to be. Living and loving are two experiences we rarely ask questions about; we take them for granted. In the same way we don’t normally bother about what happiness is, or ask why we want to be happy. This may be because happiness is desired for its own sake, not as a means to an end.

In normal circumstances, there are other things that we set our minds on, such as knowledge, power, reputation, riches, and sound health. One might pursue these for their own sake, but they are still subject to the question “What for?”; and the ultimate answer may be something like “For self-fulfilment”, or “For a sense of well-being”, or “For the pleasure of gratifying sensual desires”, for which we may substitute one word “Happiness”. We follow many different goals in life; but all these are ancillary to the goal of personal happiness.

For thousands of years religions have recognized the general unsatisfactoriness of earthly existence, and have each advocated a specific course of religious conduct in order to escape from it and attain to a state of everlasting happiness after death. They also teach how people can achieve mundane as well as spiritual happiness here and now through prayer, practice of virtue, penance, pilgrimage, and fasting, etc. At any age for most people this kind of happiness is a distant ideal. For the average person, happiness consists in the pleasures of the body and mind.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE), the great Greek philosopher, explained what he considered the popular view of happiness thus: “What is the highest good achievable by action? … both the ordinary people and people of education and good judgement say it is happiness”. In all cultures in the world even today people share the same attitude towards happiness. A great tribute paid to happiness in modern times was its mention at the opening of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence adopted by Congress on behalf of the Thirteen United States of America on July 4, 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Buddhism, which inspires the majority of Sri Lankans, teaches its followers what is claimed to be the true nature of existence - its unsatisfactoriness, and the way of emancipation from that state of suffering. “Craving” is identified as the agent that perpetuates suffering by a process whereby a person comes into being again and again. The elimination of craving by the individual through the practice of the specific spiritual conduct suggested by the Master is shown to be the way to the realization of the supreme bliss of nibbana (freedom from the defilement of desire or craving). Buddhism also teaches how to live a happy life in this world in a way that is compatible with the practice of virtue. References to “sukha” (happiness) are as frequent as references to “dukkha” (suffering); on the whole, a follower of the teaching of the Buddha should always be happy, calm and confident amidst the vicissitudes of mundane existence. (The remarkable resilience that our people have demonstrated in the face of disastrous experiences such as the December 2004 tsunami and the recently concluded terrorist scourge may be attributed to the effect of this positive frame of mind inculcated in them by Buddhist teachings.) Contentment (santhutti) – a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction with one’s own lot acquired through wisdom – is praised as the supreme asset that one could possess. The Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BCE) echoes a similar view: “Good food and rich clothes, all possible luxuries, are what you call happiness, but I believe that a state of being where one wishes for nothing is the greatest of all bliss. To be able to approach the greatest happiness one must get used to being satisfied with little”. Religions which are based on other world-views too teach their adherents the way to liberate themselves from the imperfections of worldly existence, and attain to a state of everlasting happiness. All religious systems teach us how to achieve this ultimate liberation from the unsatisfactoriness of earthly life .

Generally, the ultimate happiness that each faith teaches as its summum bonum is achievable only after the extinction of an individual’s life on earth. However, the highest form of happiness that one can realize before death is that which results from a life of contemplation according to the traditions of religious and philosophical thinking both of the East and the West. Aristotle spoke about three kinds of happiness: the first is the happiness experienced by “ordinary” people (who, in contemporary terms, we may think of as those of the working class who are rightly or wrongly considered to equate happiness with immediate pleasures such as drinking, watching a play or a cricket match, etc); the second is the happiness of people of “superior refinement”, that is, the educated, sophisticated, and the materially better off who rely on achieving long-term goals such as career or business success to be happy; and the third, which Aristotle identified as the highest form of happiness, is the happiness produced by a contemplative life.

However valuable or exalted the happiness derived from a tranquil life of meditation may be, not everyone can pursue such happiness except perhaps occasionally; it will appeal to only a handful of individuals as we implied before. It is not suitable for ordinary people who want to raise a family, follow a profession, and fulfil obligations towards others, in short for people for whom “renunciation” is still not an option. Therefore let us focus on the temporal sort of happiness that is relevant to us all.

I mean the kind of less ethereal happiness that certain seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) defined. They argued that happiness correlates to the number of pleasures in one’s life. University of London psychology teacher Michael W. Eysenck, the author of HAPPINESS – Facts and Myths (1990), says that this attitude corresponds more closely to contemporary thought and that it manages to rid views of happiness from what he calls “moralistic overtones”: “… pleasure enhances happiness regardless of whether our pleasure derives from disreputable and reprehensible activities or from noble self-sacrifice”. As I understand it, the author means that according to contemporary thinking happiness is amoral (non-ethical, morally neutral like the gods in ancient Greek mythology). But perhaps, this is not what he actually means, for one of the philosophers Eysenck refers to approvingly, Bentham, holds that all actions are right that promote “the happiness of the greatest number”. Will “disreputable and reprehensible activities” promote the happiness of the greatest number?

Where there’s a society there must be common ethical standards of behaviour that ensure its survival and the freedom of the individuals within it to enjoy all the benefits of living in such a community; individuals cannot conduct themselves in ways that obstruct the others’ freedom to do the same. Can a person indulge in an activity that brings them pleasure, but simultaneously wrecks the happiness of others (like rape for instance), and still be described as happy? However, there may be societies, or societies within societies, that hold a different view.

I think that, except in a totally selfish materialistic society, a pre-requisite for happiness is relative freedom from the idea of self. Reaching out to others is essential for personal happiness. Long time Oxford University social psychology professor Michael Argyle (1925-2002) who was fondly called the “Professor of Happiness” on obituaries on his death at 77 in September 2002 after a swimming accident from which he never recovered believed that good relationships are one of the factors that account for an individual’s happiness. His book “The Psychology of Happiness” (1987, 2nd edition 2001) contains a discussion of his empirical findings. One of these findings is that happiness is certainly enhanced by relationships, sex, eating, exercise, music, success, etc, but probably not by wealth. He, together with his colleague at Oxford University Peter Hills, developed the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (containing twenty-nine items) with simple instructions for computing an individual’s Happiness Score. I am reproducing below some sample questions (with their serial numbers) from this questionnaire:

1) I don’t feel particularly pleased with the way I am.
2) I am interested in other people.
15) I am very happy.
28) I don’t feel particularly healthy.
29) I don’t have particularly happy memories of the past.

In a later comment, Professor Argyle said that an averagely happy person gets a score of 4 (in terms of the scoring method that is explained, which I have not given here).

Positive psychology researchers like Michael Argyle describe three kinds of happiness (not very different from the three types identified by Aristotle): pleasure, engagement, and meaning. According to him, happiness consists not only of positive emotions, but positive activities as well. Argyle believed that dancing is the happiest activity that one can participate in. Professor Argyle himself had a passionate love of Scottish country dancing.

We know when we are genuinely happy, because we feel happy when we are happy. But it is not so easy to say if someone else is truly happy or not unless we see evidence of the same in their verbal and non-verbal communication. This is because people try to hide negative feelings from others; they consider it improper or unseemly to betray such feelings to those around, something that psychologists call “social desirability bias”. British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) claimed that “the most universal and distinctive mark of the happy man” is zest. However, a person could still be pretending to be happy, unless their happiness is borne out by other signs as well.



Sources:
Eysenck, Michael W., Happiness – Facts and Myths, 1990. University of London.
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.

Concluded

Friday, July 9, 2010

Much Ado about Nothing

Much Ado about Nothing?
By
Rohana R. Wasala
(First published in The Island in two parts on 2nd & 3rd July 2010)

As an ordinary citizen and an English language teaching (ELT) professional with some experience, I have no quarrel with the notion of Sri Lankan English/es or the idea of a standard form of it being advocated for teaching in our country, provided that the two basic questions of what Sri Lankan English is, and why it should be promoted are answered to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, authorities, and the general public), and the move supported on a principled basis. Unless and until this is done the current debate will prove to be much ado about nothing.

It is not that these questions have already been dealt with by those competent to do so; what is identified by linguists as Sri Lankan English is even being codified it is claimed. However, apparently, it is only now that public discussion of the matter with a real sense of seriousness is taking shape. This is the time that the future course of the whole exercise (i.e. the implementation of the Standard Sri Lankan English proposal) is to be charted.

My sincere wish is not to tread on the toes of scholars who are known to have done much painstaking research in the field, or challenge their conclusions, but to explain, for what it’s worth, a commonsense opinion that I have had for a long time regarding the matter, something that may have been implicit in my earlier articles about ELT in Sri Lanka.

If the language of the writings of the scholars should be taken as exemplifying the Standard Sri Lankan English that they are advocating as a model – and I believe it should - , then those who fear that Sri Lankan English is “broken English” or a “substandard” variety will definitely come round to supporting their idea, and stop raising objections. The reason is that the English employed in the writings of the researchers represents a specimen of what used to be, and still is, popularly perceived as “Standard English”. This is also why I am tempted to believe that adherents of that variety (for which other names could be suggested such as international English, English English, global English, supranational English, etc) need not fear that the adoption of Sri Lankan English will be tantamount to an unwarranted adulteration of English for our children.

Although I cannot claim to have a complete understanding of what Sri Lankan English (SLE) specifically consists of in the experts’ view, my assumption is that it cannot be significantly different from what used to be taught in Sri Lankan schools in the past in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. (The so-called “elocution English”, by the way, was rarely part of the language fare placed before our children in the past, except perhaps in a few urban schools .) As to the multiplicity of acceptable SLE dialects, one might say that it is impossible to accommodate all of them in any basic language teaching context where a single identifiable “standard” must perforce be the basis of instruction, and where the extremely unhelpful, chaotic “anything goes” linguistic permissiveness should be avoided. It is clear that there’s no reason to worry on this score.

An English language aficionado of an earlier generation than mine (a “master” of English, a so-called “compound” bilingual, but engaged in another discipline) in a casual discussion with me some time ago about what possibly might be termed Sri Lankan English, piqued by my sympathy for a “newfangled” idea that he strongly disapproved of, condemning the deviations from “the Standard” that he suspected SLE involved, asked me how I would describe the English I was taught as a kid at school in the 1960s (While my interlocutor was a product of English medium education, I learned my English as a second language at a later time); it was obvious to me that he expected me to say “Standard (British) English”. But I said “Sri Lankan English (!) although probably it was not identified as such at that time”. And I went on to explain to him what I meant by that answer.


What else could you expect us to learn from our teachers who were our compatriots except Sri Lankan English? True, they most probably believed that they were using British English; but they used it as Sri Lankans, infusing typically Sri Lankan elements such as a characteristic Sinhalese or Tamil accent in pronunciation, colloquial coinages reflecting the local social and linguistic backgrounds, or even slightly modified grammatical features into their English, thereby unconsciously turning the supposed “British English” into a form of “Sri Lankan English”, but experienced no difficulty in being well received both among their own people and outsiders who similarly used “Standard” English.


However, our teachers didn’t make an issue of this involuntary “Sri Lankanness” of their English; they helped us to speak English “our way” without saying so, and also to avoid what were condemned at that time as “Ceylonisms” – identified as errors which were due to sheer ignorance or negligence. But when we had an occasional opportunity to listen to native British or American speakers of English, we were able to understand them without difficulty; they understood what we said to them in “our” English. When we encountered other foreigners who had learnt English as a foreign or second language like us, again we were able to carry on a conversation with them in English quite easily. We understood without being taught that different people from around the world, and even within the country, spoke English differently, but that English was English whoever spoke it in whatever way they found it natural for themselves; but we never thought about English in terms of varieties (and this didn’t harm our learning English). We grasped instinctively that English is one language, though spoken in different ways.

Much later in life we realized that what we had been taught was actually a local version of British English, which could have been described as Sri Lankan English. And it was not considered inferior to the “real” thing, but identical with it in grammar and vocabulary with a negligibly few naturally inevitable deviations. As to formal written English, we expected to find no difference between “our” English and “their” English.

Of course, at that time, as we still do perhaps, we had an insignificant minority of locals – members of the “Kultur clique” as we heard them nicknamed - who put on a “posh” accent. This we knew to be fake, and we reserved the deepest contempt for the accent and the people who stupidly flaunted it as a mark of prestige which they arrogated to themselves. We even discovered, in a few cases at least, that they didn’t know enough “good” English to go with their “posh” accent! Once, in the first half of the 70s decade, we heard about how a high official of the country’s educational establishment, a left-leaning academic from the university, dealt with a female English teacher (a Sinhalese and one of the “posh” crowd) who had come to him to complain about being denied success at her final exam at the training college because, as she assumed, she had failed in the compulsory elementary Sinhala language paper. She angrily referred to her successful colleagues, the hoi polloi, who, in her opinion, didn’t know good English, but knew their Sinhala, and passed the exam: “Un Sinhala dannawa ne!” (They know their Sinhala!) she said. The Sinhalese pronoun “un” was in this context an insulting equivalent of the English pronoun “they”. The official quipped: “Un dekama dannawa!” (They know both!). This might be an apocryphal story, but it was an indication of the already diminished prestige of the so-called English speaking elite and their English about forty years ago. (I wonder why we should be talking so much about the alleged “hegemony” of this class over ELT in Sri Lanka today.)

We considered it a great achievement for us to be able to converse with an English speaking tourist, especially a native English speaker, if we got a chance for that kind of experience as we occasionally did! It represented for us encouraging proof of our proficiency in the language. (Many present-day youngsters learning English, particularly from rural areas, display the same attitude, which I have had the opportunity to observe; they like to talk in English with foreigners because, in such a situation, they feel compelled to use English as the only medium of communication available, and also least worried about making “mistakes” unlike in the presence of their own teachers. It is not that they want to speak like native speakers; but they seem to believe, like their parents probably, that what the British or Americans speak is “real” English, the origin of the English language they are actually trying to learn.)

I think today’s young Sri Lankans, including the English teachers among them, are almost totally impervious to the servile “colonial mentality” which some of their counterparts in the pre-1956 era were guilty of, in contexts involving English. I have a hunch that to talk about elitism, hegemony, etc is just flogging a dead horse! It is more a case of students, teachers, and parents (who are aware enough of the controversy) being concerned that what is going to be foisted on them (as they see it) is something that will sound a mere lingo to the outside world, though there’s no doubt that such an attitude is unwarranted.


Since a language is a thing that constantly changes in the hands of its users in response to numerous conditions such as the nature of the purposes for which it is used and the contexts in which it is used, both defining and clinging on to a standard are wellnigh impossible tasks. This is true of all human languages including global English/es and Sri Lankan English/es. A language is a tool that changes as we use it, which makes both teaching and learning it problematic, especially a foreign language like English (We shouldn’t forget that English is a foreign language to the vast majority of our people, although it is sometimes claimed to be an indigenous language based on the 10% (?) or so of the population who have any proficiency in the language). Since ELT matters touch the destiny of the whole population, concern should be shown when what is deemed to be commonly acceptable to this minority as a standard dialect is recommended for all to follow.

The reason for saying this is bound up with the basic question “Why should we teach/learn this particular brand of English?”. First, there’s the need to justify the teaching/learning of English. Justifying the English language cause is the easiest task in this context. In spite of the fact that English is still identified by the majority as something that came from outside in unfortunate circumstances that subjected a proud nation to political subjugation, national humiliation, economic exploitation, and cultural subversion, its utilitarian value for us has always been appreciated since Independence. We still court English despite the inglorious history of its association with Sri Lanka because of its utility. But in what way is English useful to us? Is English needed for general domestic communication? No, we have Sinhala and Tamil for that; there are minority communities with their own native tongues such as Malay, Bengali, Vedda language, etc. A minority use English as their mother tongue. The majority of those who learn English do so to use it as a second language in the academia, in work-related situations, in business, law, politics, and so on. Some may use English as their first language in such contexts (if the term “first language” is taken to mean the language that one functions in). Such situations do not exclude a choice between English and a local language, even though a sound enough education is unthinkable without English. In addition to this, there is a sphere that leaves us with no option other than English as an adequate linguistic medium: international communication that affects every aspect of our country’s existence. In the highly globalized world of today, we are obliged to possess an effective medium through which to interact with other nations in every conceivable area of activity, be it politics, trade, diplomacy, education, research, technology, justice, communications, entertainment, sport, or anything else.

Someone might say, not every Sri Lankan is going to or is required to communicate with the outside world. Well, I am sure that at least in one area every Sri Lankan will be compelled to take part in international communication. This area is the world of information, the dotcom world. And, through which language will it be most convenient for us Sri Lankans to access this world? English, of course. This needs no arguing.

If, in ELT, we are compelled to decide on the type of English we must teach our young in order that they will be best equipped to profitably access the treasure-house of world knowledge through the computer, should it be a variety of the language that naturally alienates them from that world, or one that will integrate them into the global community of English language users? Obviously, the latter.

Sri Lankan English would be more relevant in contexts of day-to-day informal communication within the country, and in the production of creative literature than in the academia, and other domains such as international diplomacy, media, trade etc where an educated, formal, scientific, regionally unmarked form of English is demanded. For most Sri Lankans, the latter forms the main motive for learning English. And much of the English they must learn lies beyond the borders of Sri Lanka, as it were.

It is a fact that the English that we must teach our children lies more outside the country than inside. There’s an ever expanding world of knowledge, science, technology, literature, and the rest beyond our tiny island which is accessible to our children, whether they be in urban or rural areas, through the Web, provided the necessary facilities are supplied. Literature both scientific and creative generated in other languages gets constantly translated into English. And nothing but English is the gateway to this world. The English we teach our children should enable them to access and utilize this great resource not only for gaining knowledge about various subjects, and sharing information with their counterparts beyond our borders, but also for enhancing their mastery of the language itself. The Internet offers the richest, most easily accessible, and the least expensive resource for help with English, once the basic facilities are provided; there are so many free English teaching/learning websites (along with commercial ones for those who can afford them); teachers must be trained to find these for their students.

Professor J. Donald Bowen of the US (FORUM, 1977) refers to four useful criteria that should be considered when determining the degree of importance of a variant of an international language like English that is offered as a model for language instruction. He considers the relative importance of a variety as a key factor that affects its choice as an appropriate standard. The four criteria are: the number of its speakers, the quality of the literary tradition established in the particular variant, the amount of non-literary creativity expressed in research and development, and the function of the variety. Only a very small percentage of the Sri Lankan population speak any English; there’s not much to talk about a highly developed literary tradition, to which context perhaps Sri Lankan English would be most relevant; research publications, if any, are required to be in a formal academic register usually addressed to an international audience, leaving little room for regional dialectal features to be prominent; in terms of function Sri Lankan English could be important in informal conversational situations, but the real value of English for Sri Lankans lies in its being a vehicle of knowledge and global communication, which domains demand as regionally unmarked a form of English as possible.

So, my opinion is that we should leave such fine distinctions as those between British English, American English, Indian English, and Sri Lankan English to be the concern of linguists, language experts, and course designers. It will be a futile exercise to ask the students or parents or even the average young English teachers that we have today to express their opinion about the choice of “Sri Lankan English” as our standard, because we can’t expect them to be generally well informed about the relative merits of various varieties of English. When I say that those two basic questions (what’s SLE and why?) should be explicitly answered, I may appear to be contradicting myself. What I am suggesting is that by doing so the course designers will be removing the misgivings that have arisen in the minds of those concerned about the usefulness of promoting what is described as “Sri Lankan English”, instead of just “English”.

The popular wish among the English language learners and their parents is for the former to be taught English, not what they tend to view suspiciously as a devalued form of English called Sri Lankan English, however mistaken they may be from the experts’ point of view.

Let’s ensure that our teachers master the kind of English that the advocates of SLE themselves write (their speech can only correspond to this); let’s give them a good pedagogical training, and compile appropriate textbooks and other materials, incorporating sections that encourage the learners to draw on the Internet for autonomous learning. Let experts talk about varieties among themselves, but let us teach our children just “English”. I am sure this will not involve any changes to what is already being done, but perhaps an appropriate shift of focus from linguistics to applied linguistics.


Concluded