Gananath Obeysekere: In search of Buddhist conscience (Baudha Hurdasakshiya Soya)

by Laleen Jayamanne and Namika Raby

“People were nourished by stories.” (Kathandarawalinne minissu jeewathwune) Gananath

“Man does not live by bread alone” Matthew 4:4

Dimuthu Saman Wettasinghe’s film Gananath Obeyesekere: In Search of Buddhist Conscience opens with a bravura tracking shot moving past trees, water, a splash of saffron robes. These sunlit images are enfolded in a non-religious, rather melancholy male choral chant, but soon the singular voice of Professor Gananath Obeyesekere cuts through with a kind of Dionysian intensity. He tells us a story about Gauthama Buddha, as the camera encircles, at speed, what turns out to be the Kandy Lake. His tale is about a devastating war waged by the king of Kosla against the Sakya kingdom but of the Buddha’s unshakable belief that if folk get together and discuss matters in good faith (call it diplomacy), all wars could be averted. This carefully and deeply researched, imaginative, ‘Educational Film’ of 142 minutes, with its exhilaratingly dense overture and its subtle montage, is a loving tribute to an exemplary Lankan scholar/teacher and his life work (of some 70 years) as an internationally renowned Anthropologist.

In my understanding of Classical Greek Theatre and Indian Philosophy (both studied at the University Ceylon Peradeniya in the late 60’s), ‘Dionysian intensity’ and Buddhist thought don’t sit easily together, Dionysus being the god of Greek Drama and festivity and as such, of intoxication and ecstasy, while Buddhist ideas of Reason, logical debate and introspective awareness of mental processes (Vipassana, Insight), were original contributions to perennial Indian Philosophy. But the wonder is that Gananath as a thinker was able to yolk together vastly diverse fields of scholarship and practices from many traditions, languages, and impart them to students in a memorable manner. In this two-fold activity, his voice was a powerful pedagogical instrument (in a musical sense) and tool (as in crafting words and sentences by breathing life into them). Let me elaborate with an anecdote I heard recently from a friend who was one of Gananath’s students from the mid-1960s at Peradeniya. The Anthropologist Dr Namika Rabi, who now in her retirement lives in LA, was a freshman then. She told me the following when I asked her what it was like listening to him:

One afternoon my room-mate Romaine Rutnam said to me that there is this interesting talk on campus, under the Popular Science Series delivered by Dr. Gananath Obeyesekere, with an interesting title, “Pregnancy Cravings (Dola Duka) and Social Structure in a Sinhalese Village” that we should go and listen to. The talk appealed because it was grounded in real society. I wondered where this faculty member came from, and I found out that there was a Department of Sociology and Dr. Obeyesekere was its Chair. One had to apply to the programme and get accepted and it was a four-year programme. I applied and got in, forgetting my plan to leave the campus in three years.

Professor Obeyesekere taught me Social Theory; Anthropological Methods; Anthropology of Religion; and Social and Cultural Organisation. Professor Obeyesekere brought dynamism into the classroom with his style of teaching, integrating abstract theory with how it works in practice through kathandara and carried me away with it”.

Though I myself was not a student of Gananath’s I have been to some of his seminars and listened to his public lectures over the years, both in Lanka and elsewhere. In the early 90s we organised a seminar by Gananath, (on what he called his ‘Cook Book’!), in the Dept. of Anthropology at The University of Sydney. His, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Myth Making in the Pacific, led to a major Anthropological debate with Marshall Sahllins, on Cannibalism and ‘Primitivism’ in Colonial-Anthropology in Hawaii where Cook was killed by the indigenous folk. I certainly agree with Namika on the unusual power of Gananath’s oral communication with students and fellow academics, and crucially, with the interested public. One always gets the feeling that he is thinking on his feet, with a strong awareness of the listener (as in theatre), and then he varies his colloquial tone with humour, a wise crack here, a touch of irony there. Listening to him becomes enjoyable. He manifestly enjoys communicating ideas, his self-enjoyment in explicating them in accessible ways is infectious. He had an intuitive grasp of the theatrical dimensions of lecturing, in a place within the academy after all called, a ‘Lecture Theatre’. These ‘dynamics’, as Namika puts it, are so rare in the genre of the university lecture where we drone on for an hour or two each week, reading from stale notes, tone deaf, burning brain cells of young minds instead of firing them. Tone deafness is an occupational hazard of lecturing.

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Here’s Namika elaborating on how Gananath guided her in her scholarly and professional life. It is evident from her account that visionary Mentors do not produce clones but rather draw out and nurture the talents of a student well before she knows she has some.

Namika Raby: A Student’s Perspective

“As a cultural anthropologist Gananath’s ability to communicate abstract thinking into the classroom through dramatic performance is an integration of scientific Reason and Dionysian intensity. Beyond his voice, in my time, he was a performer. I remember him explaining the role of the sanni demon, a lowly creature in Sinhalese Buddhism, mimicking the demon, Gananath hopped with a banana on his toe to portray the demon.

Gananath had many illustrious students over time. However, I was a unique case because of my ethnicity and gender and a lifetime of what I call my Gananath “interventions” beginning during my days in the Department of Anthropology, Peradeniya. Nagging me to apply to graduate school and persuading my parent with a home visit to send me to graduate school abroad are a couple of examples of these interventions. Our ties are enduring, accompanying me throughout my career and life. So, I could say our ties evolved in multifaceted ways over half a century, as a teacher, a mentor, and my adoptive family with Ranjini in La Jolla into a holistic relationship. My husband and I had Sunday dinner with the Obeyesekere family, Gananath, an excellent cook, did Sunday dinners. One time we arrived and lo and behold a duck was hanging upside down from Gananath’s study window. He was preparing Peking Duck.

In my early training under Gananath, a memorable example was learning to do fieldwork. As undergraduates it was mandatory to do fieldwork during college breaks. As he said, “don’t come into my class if you don’t muddy your feet in the field.” He assigned us a location and ideas to study. He looked at me and said, “you’re a girl, you can go from home and study the Kachcheri, it is fascinating.”

I think of the irony of a researcher studying the meaning of exotic rituals advising me to find meaning in a bureaucracy. Kachcheri Bureaucracy in Sri Lanka: The Culture and Politics of Accessibility was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis, and my first publication. Once I learned to bring in the meanings of culture as they interfaced with rational structures, procedures, I was trained at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) to apply my insights to irrigation bureaucracy and technology of irrigation for practical solutions. This became my life’s work. When I applied for a Post-Doctoral fellowship at IWMI, Gananath wrote a letter in support. With IWMI’s interdisciplinary team I researched and published on Mahaweli System H and Irrigation Management for Crop Diversification to be followed by work in the northern Philippines; This experience led to my recruitment and training by the World Bank. I worked on designing and evaluating National Irrigation Projects for The World Bank, in the Philippines; UN/FAO in India; and in Imperial Valley, California.

This eldest daughter of Muslim parents from Matara, Kotuwegoda, who boarded a plane for the first time to go to graduate school in California, was able to travel back to Sri Lanka to walk the rice fields of Galnewa; climb the hills of Northern Philippines to study the zanjeras (community managed farms); walk 22km of the Indira Gandhi Canal in Rajasthan, with my team, in darkness and pouring rain with a Jat elder leading us with his torch made of palm leaves and chanting jai hind; see the beauty of ancient Rome on my way to work at the Investment Center, FAO; work for the World Bank in the highly secured environment of Cali, Colombia; and study irrigation under drought in arid Imperial County, California by walking the extent of the All American Canal, and farms cultivating fruits and vegetables. Perhaps my most rewarding work came as an academic, (without time constraints, and fortunate to be funded by a grant by the American Institute for Lankan Studies) when I completed my case study of Ridi Bendi Ela (Alla) and Magallavava, Nikerawetiya, where the Government of Sri Lank did a pilot study of a Farmer Company established under the Companies Act. Farmer organizations based on purana, and newly settled villages. A total of 11 villages covered the command area of the tank.

Prof. Obeysekere with folk masks

In his very earliest work Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Gananath challenged the western notion of the homogenous village of kinship and landownership and showed in great detail how land holding patterns defined what a village was.

In Ridi Bendi Ela, with a few exceptions, landholding cut across villages and during droughts farmers practiced thattumaru (rotated land holdings seasonally), as described in Gananath’s work. In my villages the relationships based on landholding patterns were complicated by landless outsiders settled as colonists by the Government. In these villages I also observed the doctrine/thought vs practice dimensions of Buddhism with relation to rice cultivation.

This pilot project trained farmers to undertake off-farm income generation activities, and progressively undertake self- management of the canal network. Magallavava, the tank, dates to 276-303 AD, constructed by King Mahasena (according to historical records), and according to some villagers, by king Pandukabaya. According to local legend, during the time of Lord Buddha, a prince and princess from India heard of the plight of the drought ridden villagers and brought silver coins to build the anicut to Magallavava, hence the name Ridi Bendi. Gananath often told us, “history matters.

These experiences became teaching tools in the classroom at California State University, Long Beach. Gananath’s film Kataragama: The God for All Seasons (story of Kareem included), remained a favourite with our students at every level.

Isn’t it interesting Dr. Obeyesekere, you asked me to muddy my feet in the field and I ended up spending my career doing just that?”

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In Search of Buddhist Conscience

(Baudha Hurdasakshiya Soya), skilfully interweaves the multiple strands of Gananath’s life and work. They are: his family background in a village (his multi-lingual father, an Ayurvedic physician trained in Calcutta and writer, and an anti-colonial thinker, as was his maternal grandfather); his married life with Ranjini Ellepola and their profound shared ethic of education, love of language, a feel for the aesthetic and generous hospitality to students and friends; his robust education locally which made him fluently bilingual and in the US; discussions with a large number of scholars, including Gananath and Ranjini, and also a Pattini Kapumahattaya, providing illuminating, lively commentaries on his work; explication of a series of his key texts and their concepts across his very long career; a rich array of images (stills and film clips) from Gananth’s extensive ethnographic archive where we see a young Gananath in the field with his multi-ethnic research teams. The filmmaker Dharmasiri Bandaranayke’s ‘teacherly documentary voice-over’, synthesises some of the facts, which helps, as there is so much rich material and new ideas to take in. Because of the careful interweaving of these many strands through the montage and the long duration of the film overall, it has a relaxed tempo, but one also feels a sense of urgency, the urgency of the ‘search’ (for Gananath and these dedicated young filmmakers too), in the Lankan historical political context of cycles of organised state violence against Tamil people including the long civil war, since political Independence in 1948.

Together, the very title ‘In Search of Buddhist Conscience’ and the melancholy chant (not a gatha but playing with its sonic memory, given the mise-en-scene of the iconic Temple of the Tooth, Dalada Maligawa glimpsed in the background), which opens the film, suggest a ‘loss’. A loss of conscience, the loss of a Buddhist conscience which was once robust in Lanka as manifested in the expansive, tolerant folk traditions, presented as incontrovertible ethnographic evidence. The film examines Gananath’s anthropological work as an intellectual (historical, ethnographic, theoretical, and yes, aesthetic) reclamation of the syncretic richness of the Buddhist and Hindu folk traditions as they intersected in all their hybrid multiplicity and presents the multi-ethnic folk of Lanka, both men and especially the women, who embodied their values so vibrantly, eloquently, intransigently and therefore unforgettably.

I am blown away by the suggestive power of this film for possible research on the Lankan folk archives of the Tamil Hindu traditions and what may be called an inclusive, vital, Buddhist folk imaginary, and material culture, through Gananath’s scholarship. One learns about Lanka’s deep cultural connections with South India from the ethnographic record as analysed and theorised by Gananath. For a lapsed Roman Catholic like me, the film is a profound revelation about my country of birth where I lived my first 23 years. Walter Benjamin wrote his essay ‘The Story Teller’ at a moment in Western modernity when the richly diverse European oral traditions were long gone and yet his essay, shot through with melancholy, catches light like a little gem every now and then, depending on how and why one might reread it under the pressure of the present moment baring down like a tonne of bricks, obliterating a future, inconceivable without a sense of a deep past, linked to legends, stories, ‘folk lore’ of the people. The film indicates that much of what the film dramatizes is now archival material, the living traditions mostly lost in processes of modernisation and westernisation of Buddhism itself. However, Gananath is no melancholy European Jewish intellectual like Walter Benjamin.

The ’dramatis persona’ ‘Gananath’ who comes across in Dimuthu’s film is an intellectual whose scholarly and indeed existential understanding of the tragedy of our post-independence etho-nationalist history, has not dampened his irrepressible sense of humour and a feel for the comic in public life and in the Lecture Theatre. After all, Dionysus presided over the genres of tragedy, comedy and the Satyr plays in the Civic Theatre Festival in Athens, the City Dionysia. And I have no doubt that Gananth has read his favourite thinker Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy in the Spirit of Music. But then Gananath has also imbibed the theatrical comic ribald humour and delight in high farce from our robust folk rituals. Two walls of his beautiful home in Kandy are shown decorated with a rare collection of comic-grotesque-scary folk masks (of the Sannyas and Demons) of Lanka, awaiting a museum that would house them. There is a precious group photo of Anthropologists at the famous Folk Art Museum in Bali, in Ubud, where a young Gananath is seen in the company of the legendary Margret Mead and others. I saw a Lankan Demon mask there when I visited the museum and now imagine that Gananath probably arranged for that demon to join his South Asian ‘na yakku’ (kith and kin demons) – this phrase in Sinhala makes me crack up! Gananath has brought both intensity and laughter into the intellectual arena of the academic lecture, making his pedagogic style unforgettable. This film is also a testament to that evanescent, spirited performance of a singular modern Lankan ‘guru’, in the sense of mentor who incites students to learn to think for themselves and strike a path of their own. By his own example he teaches us the irresistible art of critical thinking.

(To be continued)