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Midweek Review

Alborada: Dawn Song or Dawn Rape?

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By Carmen Wickramagamage

Ashoka Handagama’s latest film, Alborada, introduces itself as “the poem that Neruda never wrote.” What is this poem? Released on February 14 to coincide with Valentine’s Day, the irony of the timing is hard to miss for Alborada culminates in the horrific rape by Neruda, the great love poet, of a female latrine cleaner during his brief stay in Ceylon as the Chilean Consul. Hardly a subject that lends itself to poetry though the recitations in the film, in the original Spanish, of poems that Neruda did write are mesmerizing. Perhaps this explains why Garcia Marquez chose to characterize Neruda as “the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language”. What is Handagama’s intention in the film?

In interviews, Handagama has spoken of his film as a challenge to Western hegemony that he claims operated to push this ignominious act under the carpet. But he has made it clear that unearthing a little-known fact about a poet hailed today as a critic of capitalism and champion of the oppressed is not his only intention. He sees his film as making an intervention into the contemporary discourse on women’s right to bodily autonomy in the age of #MeToo. Handagama is clearly well-intentioned. It is therefore necessary to examine how Alborada intervenes, through its representation of the scene of rape, in the rape culture that naturalizes masculine privilege and feminine vulnerability.

Source of the story

The source of what we know about the incident is Neruda himself. While he may not have composed a poem about the rape, he did “confess” to it in his memoirs translated into English by Hadley St. Martin as I confess I have lived: memoirs (1977). Written some forty years later, one page of the eleven pages (out of three-hundred fifty) that he devotes to his Ceylonese sojourn concerns itself with this incident. Though it created hardly a ripple in Sri Lanka, in Chile, Neruda’s admission stirred up a storm when the Chilean Parliament voted in 2018 to rename the airport in Santiago after him, with women and human rights activists vociferously protesting against the plan citing this incident. Not that the incident was completely unknown in Sri Lanka but the rumour that was doing the rounds was more along the lines of “something” between Neruda and his “domestic”. Handagama has said that he first read about it in a book by Tissa Abeysekera which, according to Sarath Chandrajeewa, went this way: “the great poet, the Nobel prize winner who loved a scavenger woman in Wellawatte”. No mention of rape there. Transferring a brief reference in Neruda’s memoirs into film and making it the pièce de résistance of a visually powerful medium is a radical gesture but how radical is it in its contribution to the ongoing conversation on rape?

Handagama has tried to distance himself from Neruda, calling the film his “creation” just as Neruda’s memoirs were his but the film is in large measure faithful to Neruda’s recollections of his stay in Ceylon, highlighting the theme of solitude that runs like a refrain through the young poet’s account and offering a sympathetic portrait of a man ill at ease in the “narrow colonialism” of the British but intrigued by the sights, sounds and people of Ceylon. Just as Neruda is the subject of his memoirs, so is he in the film. In only one respect is there a significant deviation: the representation of rape.

The Incident

In Neruda’s account, his interest in the woman begins with his curiosity about the mysterious workings of his latrine. When he finally sees the woman who cleans it, he is not repulsed, calling her instead the “the most beautiful woman I had yet seen in Ceylon” (p. 99) and elevating her above the rest through appellations such as “queen” and goddess”. But, when she disdains his tokens of love in the form of silks and fruits, he exercises his white male prerogative over native women’s bodies by raping her: “One morning , I decided to go all the way. I got a strong grip on her wrist and stared into her eyes. There was no language I could talk with her. Unsmiling, she let herself be led away and was soon naked in my bed. Her waist, so very slim, her full hips, the brimming cups of her breasts made her like one of the thousand-year-old sculptures from the south of India. It was the coming together of a man and a statue” (p. 100).

Neruda plays down the violence of the encounter in his penitential recounting, resorting instead to euphemisms. The woman does not struggle. She “let herself be led” (Is she deterred by the “strong grip on her wrist”?). She does not scream for help (Is she aware of its futility given the isolated location of the bungalow?). She was “soon naked”, how she came to be naked elided, its place taken by an aestheticized description of the female form reminiscent of classical Sanskrit poetry that deflects attention from the violence. Some trace of the woman’s resistance is acknowledged in her unresponsiveness. At the climactic moment, when he forces himself on her, she turns into a sculpture in his eyes, turning Neruda in turn into a Pygmalion in reverse. Where Pygmalion (in Ovid’s Metamorphosis) manages to obtain his heart’s desire by turning a statue (thanks to Venus’ intervention) into the woman of his dreams, Neruda’s touch turns a living, breathing woman into a sculpture. The description ends with lines that have self-loathing write large over it: “She was right to despise me . The experience was never repeated” (p. 100).

Its Representation

How does Handagama render this incident in film? Unlike in the memoirs, here, the audience is prepped from the start for the impending climax through the sighting of the Parvati statue by Neruda on arrival, his frolics with members of the Sakkili community that has Ratné Aiya incensed, and the rhythmic chiming of the latrine-cleaner’s anklets that wakes him up at dawn from a night of love-making. When the rape finally occurs, it is portrayed on screen in all its brutality. The woman screams, she struggles valiantly to escape, she has to be forcibly detained and stripped naked before the final humiliation of rape. There is nothing subtle or indirect about it. Why this directorial decision to deviate? Is it that Handagama wanted to dispel any illusions that his audience may entertain about the great poet Neruda? Or did he want to force his audience to confront head on the brutality of rape against the backdrop of a rape culture that thrives on misconceptions regarding women’s consent?

I find Handagama’s directorial decisions problematic on many fronts. For one thing, in the eyes of the law, ‘rape’ is sexual intercourse without consent, what constitutes “absence of consent” carefully delineated to accommodate the different scenarios that qualify as “rape” in the eyes of the law. Here, the woman violently struggles, thus confirming a misunderstanding “if there is rape, there must be evidence of struggle.” In a culture where the tendency is to hold the victim responsible for triggering the rape situation, this is dangerous. In anchoring rape in “consent”, the law recognizes the extenuating circumstances where a victim may not be able to physically resist or even say ‘no’. In Neruda’s account, the circumstances that prevent the woman from resisting or saying ‘no’ vocally are very clear. In hindsight, he too acknowledges her ‘no’: “She kept her eyes wide open all the while, completely unresponsive” (p. 100).

Beyond the issue of consent, his portrayal of the scene of rape also raises questions on how to represent violence on screen. Much has been written on the intrinsic violence of representation in attempts to represent violence. The risk is doubled when it comes to sexual violence as Laura Mulvey and others have pointed out as it turns spectators into voyeurs who wittingly or unwittingly participate in the violence enacted on screen. In Alborada, we all join Ratné Aiya at the “keyhole” or aperture to gaze at the scene unfolding within, whether we derive a vicarious pleasure from that or not. Handagama tries to draw the attention of the audience to the very real pain of the woman by having a tear course down her cheek as she stares directly at the camera and at us while averting her gaze from the perpetrator. By doing so, he restores the flesh-and-blood woman to the scene of the rape where Neruda had seen a statue. Unfortunately, the protracted violence of the rape scene is in danger of slipping from pathos to bathos. Sarath Chandrajeewa has already said that he found the scene where the predator and his prey circle round the massive four-poster bed comical. I agree. The scene was too reminiscent of “ottu sellang”, a children’s game of “catch me if you can”, for me!

Life after rape

Feminist critics such as Sharon Marcus and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan have emphasized the importance of rewriting the normative rape script which sees the woman as victim and her defilement as marking her for life. In Sri Lanka, women are enjoined to protect their character (a euphemism for sexual purity) as if it were their life, its loss a fate worse than death. Marcus and Sunder Rajan, therefore, argue that it is essential to speak of rape survivors, not rape victims, who thereby refuse the powerlessness assigned to them in a “gendered grammar of violence”(Marcus).

In Neruda’s memoirs, at the end of the account, attention is redirected to Neruda himself albeit on a note of self-recrimination: “She was right to despise me” (p. 100). The woman’s subsequent fate is of little concern to him. In the film, the lines translate into an image of Neruda trading places with the latrine cleaner, first taking up the brush and cleaning the latrine and then walking towards the sea carrying the latrine bucket on his head in a show of abject humility. As for the woman, the camera follows her out of the bedroom and into the sea where she tries frenziedly to rid herself of the defiling touch, her facial expressions indicating her disgust. She is then seen swimming deeper into the ocean, with the ocean waters gradually submerging her completely. Only the red cloth survives to create patterns in the water as it did at the start of the film. Clearly, there is no life after rape.

The film, however, adds another scene in an attempt to locate the phenomenon of rape in the present. In this scene the woman resurfaces from the sea framed against a skyline featuring a jet-ski. How to read it? Is it to remind the audience that, some one hundred years later, nothing much has changed? Or is to hold out hope that in the age of #MeToo, something is about to change?

But, according to Sarath Chandrajeewa (in “Beyond the Fiction of Alborada“)who claims to have traced the identity of the woman raped by Neruda, the “real” woman did not drown herself. She returned to her community but was married off by her family to an older man because she had “lost her virginity” and, when her husband died shortly after, the now pregnant woman jumped into the funeral pyre of her husband and committed suicide, which some in the community described as “Sathi Pooja”. Chandrajeewa even speculates that the husband’s death from alcohol poisoning was “either because he was delighted with his beautiful young bride or perhaps due to grief” (!). This information that Chandrajeewa says he gathered as part of his research among the Sakkili community who lived in Wellawatte and Bambalapitiya in the 1970s raises many questions for me. Did the community that the woman belonged to (the lowly scavenger caste) uphold norms of feminine sexual purity that have their basis in the genteel classes? Did they practice “Sathi Pooja” of which there are no documented cases in Ceylon and which, even in India is very much tied to region, class and caste as scholars like Lata Mani and Gayatri Spivak have pointed out? Pregnant women in any case do not commit Sathi Pooja. They wait until they give birth. How much does Chandrajeewa “know” of their ways?

This is not the only attempt at endowing the woman with an afterlife. Another account of the nameless woman’s subsequent fate has been doing the rounds of late due to an article by Kumar Gunawardena in The Island in 2020 where he, drawing on a story titled “Brumpy’s Daughter” in Tissa Devendra’s On Horseshoe Street, claims that the raped woman’s story had a happy ending. According to Gunawardena, Neruda “did the right thing” by the woman, who now has a name, Thangamma, by marrying her off to his retainer Brumpy. And when a daughter (Neruda’s) was born in due course, she was named Imelda after Neruda’s mother at his behest and supported financially by Neruda through George Keyt. Devendra meets Imelda Ratnayake (last name from the foster father Brumpy) much later when he is heading a Kachcheri where she too works and attracts his attention because of her striking appearance. She ends up marrying a Chilean, a Neruda devotee, who had worked for a while in Ceylon. After her marriage, Imelda settles in Chile with her husband and meets Devendra again at a conference in Mexico. It was a feel-good story. But the feeling was short-lived. When Michael Roberts reprinted Kumar Gunawardena’s account in his blog Thuppahi, someone by the name of Manel Fonseka intervened to spoil it by declaring “If I’m not mistaken, Devendra’s whole story was exactly that! A STORY! No basis in truth”. If Manel Fonseka is right, Gunawardena, a medical doctor by training, had failed to recognize the difference between fact and fiction!

In all this, there is no room for the subjectivity of the woman who was raped. She does not speak. For Neruda, the reason is the language barrier though he turns that into something more by comparing her to a “shy jungle animal” belonging in “another kind of existence, in another world” (p. 100). Handagama restores some humanity to her by adding that artistically placed single tear but that’s where he stops. She never speaks. The gaze in the film is predominantly Neruda’s, the camera angles adopting Neruda’s perspective on the receding figure of the latrine cleaner reminiscent of a classical South Indian sculpture although, unfortunately, her walk could well be that of a model on the runway. Similarly, her face takes on a bronze sheen when Neruda intercepts her to remind us that, in his mind, she resembles a statue. Given the race, caste, class and gender of the latrine cleaner, it is unlikely we will ever know what happened to her. Chandrajeewa, who claims he found the “real” woman, assigns her an exceptional fate as a “mad” woman (suffering from “Idiopathic Psychological Disorder”) who commits Sathi Pooja. Even Tissa Devendra’s story ultimately fails to imagine for her a life that is not defined by the rape. I like to think that there was life after rape for her, that she, though no doubt traumatized, survived the rape without having to play the prescribed role in the normative script for the rape victim–forced marriage and unwanted pregnancy–although, gender norms at the time being such, she could not cry out loud #HeToo!

(Carmen Wickramagamage is Professor in English at the University of Peradeniya)



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Midweek Review

General election: The choice before the electorate

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The key issue at the forthcoming parliamentary election should be economic recovery, based on the IMF formula, or whatever an alternative solution that the President AKD-led government can come up with if the existing remedy, already negotiated by the previous regime with one of the twin sisters of Washington, is far too difficult to swallow. All political parties, including the JVP represented in the last parliament, however, agreed to adhere to the IMF formula by endorsing the Economic Transformation Bill. Unfortunately, sufficient attention hasn’t been paid to the primary issue at hand at all as the NPP sought to consolidate its political power. The challenge before the executive and the legislature is how to turn around the ailing national economy to pave the resumption of debt repayment in 2028. None of the political parties in the fray seem to be prepared to face the daunting challenge.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The National People’s Alliance (NPP) and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) are the main contenders at the forthcoming parliamentary election. At the last general election, held in August 2020, the NPP won just three seats, including one National List (NL) slot, whereas the SJB secured 54 seats.

The breakaway UNP faction, the SJB that had been registered under controversial circumstances in early 2020, but emerged as the second largest parliamentary group, with the UNP, the Grand Old Party that was reduced to a humiliating one seat and that, too, coming from a NL slot it managed to scrape. The SJB, in its inaugural electoral contest at the previous general election, managed to grab 54 seats, including seven NL members.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), that won the election, secured a staggering 145 seats, including 17 NL slots.

But within five years, the NPP has turned tables on traditional middle of the road parties that clearly lost their grounds due to succumbing to political expediency for too long, which caused much of the electorate to lose their trust in them, with the NPP rightly playing up all the political chicanery they had been up to over the years. But it has to be mentioned that the NPP is still very much an old wine in a new bottle with its bulwark being the JVP that cannot easily erase its bloody past.

It is now poised to win the parliamentary elections, scheduled for Nov. 14. The NPP intends to win it primarily on the strength of NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s (AKD) comparative superlative performance for a Marxist, despite so much fearmongering, rightfully or wrongly, from the established order at the presidential election, even though he couldn’t obtain 50% + 1 of the total number of valid votes.

AKD polled 5,634,915 votes (42.31%) while SJB leader Sajith Premadasa (SP) obtained 4,363,035 votes (32.76%). AKD and SP received 105,264 and 167,867 preferences, respectively. With the preferences, their respective tallies were AKD 5,740,179 votes and SP 4,530,902 votes.

Therefore the masses definitely wanted a break with the past without further political horse dealings and a clear stop to ingrained corruption that is eating into every fabric of our society. In that sense the NPP can now start with a clean slate after the general election, if it maintains the no-nonsense discipline it has shown since the unlikely victory at the presidential election.

At the last parliamentary election, the SJB received 2,771,980 votes, whereas the NPP obtained just 445,958 votes and secured fourth place in terms of number of seats won. NPP’s elected members were (AKD, Vijitha Herath and NL member Dr. Harini Amarasuriya). Although Parliament has been dissolved in the wake of AKD’s victory at the presidential election, Herath and Dr. Amarasuriya constitute the caretaker Cabinet, with AKD as its head.

If we go by the presidential election result, the NPP will be able to obtain 105 seats. If it happens the NPP wouldn’t have at least a simple majority in Parliament. In other words, AKD will be at the mercy of the Opposition. Former SJB parliamentarian Mujibur Rahuman recently declared that the SJB-led Opposition could form a government under the premiership of their leader Sajith Premadasa. The Colombo district contestant asserted that the NPP would end up with 105 seats whereas the combined Opposition could obtain 120 seats. Rahuman is certainly not the only ex-lawmaker to think so. Unfortunately, that would be nothing but wishful thinking. For one thing indications are some key Tamil parties are likely to be in the AKD-led government, after the general election, as they to see the winds of an inevitable and much needed change. EPDP leader Douglas Devananda has already declared his intention to back an NPP government.

Parliament consists of 196 elected and 29 appointed lawmakers. Let me remind readers of the allocation of seats in the last Parliament.

The SLPP obtained 145 (17 NL), SJB 54 (07 NL), Illankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) 10 (01 NL), NPP 03 (01 NL), Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) 02, Ahila Ilankai Thamil Congress (AITC) 02 (01 NL), Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) 01, Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) 01, Muslim National Alliance (MNA) 01, Thamil Makkal Thesiya Kuttani (TMTK) 01, All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC) 01, National Congress (NC) 01, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) 01, United National Party (UNP) 01 NL and the Our Power of People Party (OPPP) 01.

Fifteen political parties were represented in the last Parliament. What would be the outcome of the forthcoming parliamentary election? In spite of the Opposition assertion that the NPP may end up even without a simple majority in Parliament, the ground realities seemed to be quite different.

In addition to the main contenders, there are three other notable political parties in the fray in the South. In the Northern and Eastern regions, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is the main party, while the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) contests Nuwara Eliya district under the UNP’s ‘elephant’ symbol.

UNP leader and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, though not contesting the general election and also not in its NL, leads the New Democratic Front (NDF). That party had its symbol ‘swan’ changed to ‘gas cylinder’ recently to contest the general election. In spite of never having been represented in the Parliament, the NDF is not an ordinary political party. Since the end of the war, in 2009, the UNP fielded three presidential candidates in 2010 – the then retired General Sarath Fonseka (promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in 2015), 2015 Maithripala Sirisena and 2019 Sajith Premadasa.

Actually Sri Lanka’s type of democracy is a mystery. Having been involved in the UNP-led presidential campaigns in 2010 and 2015 and also part of that camp during the 2009-2019 period, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) discarded its ‘bell’ symbol in 2019 to field AKD on the NPP ticket at the last presidential. Even prior to that, the JVP has had honeymoons with both Presidents Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa and helped them gain their electoral victories.

SLPP in tatters

The SLPP that won a near 2/3 majority at the 2020 general election is in tatters. The party had been so weakened, that Namal Rajapaksa (NR), widely believed to be the current SLPP Chairman Mahinda Rajapaksa’s chosen successor, sought the protection of the NL. Having polled just 342,781 votes (2.57%) at the recently concluded presidential election, NR must have realized his inability to re-enter Parliament from the Hambantota district by winning the required votes as a candidate.

At the last parliamentary election, the SLPP polled 6,853,693 votes (59.09%), the SJB a distant second with 2,771,984 votes (23.90%) and the NPP a hopelessly positioned third with a paltry 445,958 (3.84%). What really influenced the electorate to give such a mega boost to the NPP at the presidential election five years later?

The issue at hand is whether the NPP can attract more voters at the parliamentary election than it did at the presidential.

The SLPP has been badly divided into three groups, with the largest joining hands with Wickremesinghe, the failed independent candidate at the presidential election, to contest the parliamentary polls under the ‘gas cylinder’ symbol. Another group that included Prof. G. L. Peiris and Dallas Alahapperuma placed its faith in the SJB, leaving only a handful SLPPers with NR. Quite a number of former SLPPers had decided against contesting this time with the curtain coming down on war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s political career. Regardless of him putting a brave face the other day by declaring that he would be back and the SLPP could secure a simple majority, the dye was cast in wake of the humiliating defeat at the presidential election.

The possibility of the SLPP being reduced to just one NL seat cannot be ruled out. The UNP suffered a similar fate at the 2020 general election. The UNP that had 106 MPs in 2015-2019 (Yahapalana Parliament) was unceremoniously reduced to just one NL seat.

The SJB, too, despite putting on a brave face, is facing a huge challenge in at least retaining the same number of seats won at the last election. The SJB, beset by internal strife, may not be able to cope up with another heavy defeat at national level in less than two weeks.

Sarvajana Balaya received quite a significant media attention due to Pivithiru Hela Urumaya (PHU) leader and ex-parliamentarian Udaya Gammanpila’s battle with the NPP government over the refusal on the part of the latter to release two Easter Sunday reports commissioned by AKD’s predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Gammanpila earned the respect of many for taking an unwavering stand in the continuing controversy but it may not help Sarvajana Balaya at the general election. While the Catholic Church has thrown its weight behind the NPP government in continuing to seek justice for victims of the Easter carnage, without being politically neutral, at least in public, UNP leader Wickremesinghe strongly disapproved of the stand taken by the government and the Church. However, the Church has dismissed Gammanpila’s assertions, as well as the much touted committee reports, out of hand. Therefore, the NPP can be sure of receiving the backing of the influential Catholic belt at the general election.

The outcome of the general election must be examined taking into consideration the unbelievably huge number of voters who skipped the presidential election. About 1/5 of 17,140,354 registered voters refrained from voting at the Sept, election. Although some of them had been overseas, political parties, under any circumstances, cannot ignore the danger in a significant group of electors keeping away from polling booths. Of 17,140,354 electors, only 13,619,916 (79.46 %) had exercised their franchise and of them 300,300 (2.2 %) votes were rejected. The total number of valid votes at the presidential election was 13,319,616 (97.8 % of the total polled).

The NPP is confident that at the forthcoming general election it can definitely improve on its performance at the presidential election. Addressing rallies at Katunayaka (Oct. 20) and Polonnaruwa and Trincomalee (Oct. 23), President AKD called on the electorate to wipe out the Opposition at the general election. The writer was present at an NPP rally at Katunayake where AKD explained why the next Parliament should be overwhelmingly dominated by NPP lawmakers.

The NPP leader, who is also the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (both are registered political parties recognized by the Election Commission), said that the defeat of no-confidence motions moved against Ravi Karunanayake (UNP), who, as a Minister giving evidence in the bond scam probe, claimed he could not remember the name of the person who had provided him with a luxury penthouse, and Keheliya Rambukwella (SLPP), in June 2016 and Sept. 2023, underscored the need to overhaul Parliament. That couldn’t be achieved unless the new Parliament was filled by members of the NPP, the President declared.

The Joint Opposition-led no-confidence motion against Karunanayake over the Treasury bond scams was defeated by a majority of 94 votes. The no-confidence motion received 51 votes in favour and 145 against, while 28 didn’t turn up at the time of the voting on June 09, 2016. Among the absentees were Mahinda Rajapaksa and the late R. Sampanthan.

The no-confidence motion moved against Keheliya Rambukwella, on Sept. 08, 2023, over corruption charges, pertaining to the procurement of medicine and surgical equipment, was easily defeated by the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government. The motion received 73 votes in favour, while 113 voted against it.

AKD repeatedly declared that the actions of the MPs resulted in Parliament earning the wrath of the public and widely considered as the most hated institution in the country.

Elpitiya PS result

Comments on the result of the Elpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha election, held on Oct. 26, indicated that politicians and other interested parties took advantage of the outcome to pursue their own agendas. Some asserted that the Elpitiya result meant that the NPP’s decline has started quite early and portends the likelihood of a significant setback for the ruling party at the parliamentary election.

Others asserted that the SLPP has done well at Elpitiya though the party suffered a humiliating defeat at the presidential polls.

Eight registered political parties, and one independent group, contested the Elpitiya Local Government election. The UNP was not among them. The 30-member Elpitiya PS was shared by NPP (17,295/15 members), SJB (7,924/06 members), SLPP (3,597/03 members), People’s Alliance (2,612/02 members), People’s United Freedom Alliance (1,350/01), National’s People’s Party (521/01) and Independent Group (2,568/02).

The NPP polled 17,295 votes whereas the seven registered political parties, and the one Independent Group, polled 19,010 voters.

However, pertaining to Elpitiya, the issue at hand is why out of 55, 643 registered voters only 36, 825 exercised their franchise in spite of growing interest in the general election. Of 55,643 registered voters, 18,818 didn’t turn up to vote.

Having compared the Elpitiya PS result with that of the Elpitiya presidential polls outcome, some have come to the conclusion that the SLPP has made a strong comeback by increasing its percentage of votes from 3.56% to 9.89% while both the NPP and the SJB recorded a drop in their respective percentages.

The security scares caused by the alleged threat on Israeli tourists visiting the east coast continues to dominate the media attention, with the Opposition and various other interested parties, too, seeking to exploit the developing situation.

The Opposition found fault with the government over the way the police and higher security authorities had handled the threat, whereas the incumbent administration stressed that the relevant alert was received on Oct. 07 and local authorities were in the process of addressing the threat when the US Embassy issued a public warning, almost three weeks later.

The crux of the matter is whether the Arugam Bay fallout can influence voters at the forthcoming parliamentary election. The issue has to be examined taking into consideration Sri Lanka’s response to the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza and Lebanon and the extremely dangerous developments in Iran-Israel lethal exchanges and the Houthi threat to international shipping.

Unfortunately, those who find fault with Israel for the continuing bloodshed are silent on Hamas invasion of southern Israel in October last year that created an environment conducive for the Jewish State to unleash war on Gaza and then extend hostilities to Lebanan and Iran with the backing of the US and the UK.

Recently, some interested party posted a video of a pro-Israeli march in Batticaloa. The video was meant to deceive the electorate that the AKD government has allowed such a controversial public display of support for Israel in the wake of the ongoing war and security crisis caused by alleged threat on Israelis here. However, inquiries revealed that the video had been taken in 2015 during the Yahapalana administration. A similar demonstration had been organized in 2019 by the same non-Roman Catholic Church group based at No 118, Bar Street, Batticaloa.

The government should be mindful of the accusations directed by the breakaway JVP faction Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), or Peratugaami pakshaya, regarding the government role in facilitating, what the party called, Israeli military tourism. The FSP insists that the project that had been launched during the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa administration posed a major security threat and the new government should re-examine the controversial decision.

The government should pay utmost attention to the developments pertaining to the Arugam Bay security threat or be prepared to face the consequences.

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Midweek Review

The Western Gaze: Orientalism and Middle East Conflict

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A file photo of Israeli attacks on Gaza

by Amarasiri de Silva

After moving to the United States a decade ago, I quickly noticed how people from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim backgrounds were often viewed through a peculiar, almost mystifying lens. In conversations, media portrayals, and even school settings, these communities were consistently depicted as fundamentally different—exotic, foreign, and, at times, dangerous.

Hollywood frequently portrayed Middle Eastern landscapes as barren deserts filled with shadowy figures, while news stories reduced entire cultures to images of conflict and chaos. This persistent thread of “otherness” seemed to frame anyone with my skin tone, a similar cultural background, or shared religious beliefs as unfamiliar and fundamentally separate from the Western norm. Over time, particularly after reading Said’s book ‘Orientalism,’ I understood that this wasn’t coincidental but part of a legacy of Orientalism. This framework has long influenced how the West perceives and engages with the Middle East. Examining the origins of this mindset, I began to see how these deeply ingrained misrepresentations continue to fuel political and cultural misunderstandings that shape conflicts to this day.

The Middle East conflict is a deeply rooted and multifaceted struggle involving political, religious, and territorial disputes that have spanned centuries. At the heart of many modern interpretations of this conflict lies the pervasive influence of Western intervention, particularly through the lens of orientalism. Edward Said’s groundbreaking work, Orientalism, provides a theoretical framework for understanding how the West’s imperialistic endeavours shaped perceptions of the East, particularly the Middle East, leading to centuries of misrepresentation, exploitation, and ongoing strife. By examining the Middle East conflict through Said’s concepts of Orientalism, we can better comprehend how Western ideologies of superiority and domination have exacerbated and, in many ways, sustained this protracted crisis.

In this essay, I will explore the historical context of the Middle East conflict, focusing on the influence of European colonialism and its lingering impact on modern-day geopolitics in the region. Drawing on Said’s theory of Orientalism, I will analyze how the West’s misrepresentation and dehumanisation of Middle Eastern peoples have contributed to the perpetuation of violence and instability. Through this exploration, it becomes clear that Orientalism, far from being an abstract academic concept, is central to understanding the ongoing power dynamics and struggles in the Middle East.

Historical Context of Western Involvement in the Middle East

To fully appreciate the relevance of Said’s theory to the Middle East conflict, it is essential first to understand the historical context in which Orientalism emerged. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, European colonial powers such as Britain and France expanded their empires into the Middle East, driven by economic interests, strategic motivations, and a desire for political dominance. The British occupation of Egypt, the French control of Algeria, and the carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I are just a few examples of how European imperialism shaped the region’s political and social landscape.

One of Said’s key assertions is that colonialism/orientalism was not just a physical act of territorial expansion but also an intellectual and cultural project. In Orientalism, Said argues that the West constructed an image of the “Orient” as backward, irrational, and barbaric to justify its colonisation. This process of “othering” created a stark dichotomy between the “civilised” West and the “primitive” East, allowing European powers to rationalise their domination over Middle Eastern societies.

The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Ottoman territories between Britain and France, exemplifies how colonial powers viewed the Middle East as a region to be divided and controlled for their benefit. The arbitrary borders drawn by Western officials without regard for ethnic, religious, or historical realities have had long-lasting consequences, sowing the seeds for many of the conflicts we see in the Middle East today. For example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most enduring and contentious disputes in the region, is deeply rooted in the legacy of colonial intervention and Western-imposed territorial divisions.

Orientalism as a Justification for Colonial Domination

At the heart of Said’s Orientalism is the idea that the West’s representations of the East were shaped not by objective observations but by a desire to assert dominance over a perceived “other.” Said explains that Orientalism served as a justification for colonial domination by portraying Middle Eastern societies as incapable of self-governance and in need of Western intervention to “civilise” them.

This sense of Western superiority is reflected in many of the cultural artifacts produced during the colonial era, from travel writing to scholarly works. European artists and writers often depicted the Middle East as a mysterious and exotic land, filled with danger and intrigue, but ultimately inferior to Europe’s rational, orderly world. These representations were not mere fantasies; they had real-world implications, shaping public opinion and government policy in ways that reinforced colonial power structures.

Said highlights the work of European scholars and colonial officers who produced knowledge about the Middle East, noting that this knowledge could have been more neutral. Instead, it was designed to reinforce Western hegemony and justify the exploitation of Middle Eastern resources and people. As Said states, “knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his world” (Said, 1978, p. 40). In this way, Orientalism became a tool for maintaining Western dominance over the region, as it allowed Europeans to assert control over the land and the narrative surrounding its inhabitants.

The Impact of Orientalism on Western Perceptions of the Middle East

Gaza Strip (Image courtesy of BBC, https://www.bbc.
com/news/newsbeat-44124396)

One of the most insidious effects of Orientalism is the way it has shaped Western perceptions of the Middle East and its people. By consistently portraying the region as violent, irrational, and backward, Orientalism has contributed to a widespread dehumanisation of Middle Eastern individuals and cultures. This dehumanisation is evident in the ways that Western media often depicts conflicts in the Middle East, focusing on images of chaos and destruction while ignoring the underlying causes of the violence or the humanity of those affected by it.

This Orientalist framework has played a significant role in shaping Western policies toward the Middle East, particularly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the broader “War on Terror.” The United States, in particular, has frequently invoked Orientalist tropes to justify military interventions in the region, framing its actions as part of a broader effort to “civilise” or “democratize” the Middle East. However, as Said’s work clarifies, these justifications often mask underlying economic and political motivations, such as securing access to oil or maintaining geopolitical influence.

The American involvement in the Middle East post-World War II is deeply tied to Orientalism. The rise of the United States as a global superpower after 1945 coincided with the decolonisation of much of the Middle East. Still, rather than marking an end to Western domination, this period saw the U.S. take on the region’s ” protector ” role. According to Said, the U.S. approached the Middle East much like Britain and France, viewing the region as a place to exert control for strategic purposes, particularly in terms of oil. This is reflected in America’s foreign policies, which have often involved backing autocratic regimes in the name of stability or supporting Israel without fully addressing the complexities of Palestinian sovereignty.

The Middle East Conflict Through the Lens of Orientalism

One of the central components of the Middle East conflict is the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, a dispute with roots that extend back to the early 20th century, when Zionist migration into Palestine began. Western support for the creation of Israel in 1948 is often seen through a humanitarian lens, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. However, Said’s Orientalism allows us to view the establishment of Israel—and the subsequent displacement of Palestinian people—through the framework of colonialism. The Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, treated Palestine as another piece of territory to be “managed” and divided without adequately considering the rights and aspirations of the indigenous population.

Moreover, Said’s work draws attention to how Western media and political discourse have framed the conflict. Palestinians, especially during periods of violent uprising, have often been portrayed as irrational and inherently violent, while Israeli actions are justified as necessary for self-defense. This asymmetrical portrayal mirrors the Orientalist dichotomy of a rational West versus an irrational, violent East.

In the broader context of the Middle East, Orientalism has also influenced how the West views and interacts with other nations in the region. The Gulf Wars, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq can all be seen as extensions of the Orientalist mindset that views the Middle East as a place in need of Western intervention, whether for “liberation” or “stabilisation.” The dehumanisation of Middle Eastern peoples through Orientalist tropes has allowed Western nations to engage in military actions that have had devastating consequences for the civilian populations of these countries, often with little domestic scrutiny or opposition.

Orientalism and the War on Terror

The events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent War on Terror offer a stark illustration of the enduring power of Orientalist thought in shaping Western policies and perceptions. In the wake of the attacks, the U.S. government launched a series of military interventions across the Middle East and Central Asia, framing these actions as part of a broader struggle between the civilised, democratic West and the barbaric, extremist forces of the East.

This narrative, deeply rooted in Orientalist tropes, ignored the complex political, economic, and social factors that contributed to the rise of extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, instead reducing the conflict to a simple clash of civilisations. The War on Terror not only perpetuated violence and instability in the Middle East but also reinforced negative stereotypes about Muslims and Middle Easterners in general, contributing to a rise in Islamophobia and xenophobia in the West.

Moreover, the War on Terror has had devastating consequences for civilian populations in the Middle East, with millions of people killed, displaced, or otherwise affected by the violence. Yet, these human costs are often downplayed or ignored in Western media, which tends to focus on the actions of “terrorists” rather than the suffering of ordinary people. This selective coverage is a direct result of the dehumanisation of Middle Eastern people fostered by Orientalist discourse.

Conclusion

Edward Said’s Orientalism provides a critical lens through which to examine the Middle East conflict, revealing how Western perceptions of the region have been shaped by centuries of colonialism and cultural imperialism. By constructing the Middle East as the “other,” Western powers have justified their domination and exploitation of the region, often at the expense of its people.

The Middle East conflict, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and the broader War on Terror, cannot be fully understood without recognising the influence of Orientalism. As long as Western nations continue to view the region through this distorted lens, the cycle of violence and misunderstanding is likely to persist. For true peace and stability to be achieved in the Middle East, it is essential to move beyond Orientalist stereotypes and engage with the region in a way that respects its history, cultures, and people on its own terms.

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Midweek Review

Rigorous Imprisonment

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By Lynn Ockersz

A dazzling ray of sunlight,

Pierces the entombing gloom,

Of his sprawling bedroom suite,

And he hears the sing-song prattle,

Of birds outside his window,

But his heart is gripped with fear,

And his hand goes for his pistol,

Under his sweaty pillow,

As he hears a roaring vehicle,

Screeching to a halt outside his gate,

‘Maybe the cops are here’,

He frenziedly wonders,

‘Maybe they have tracked me down,

In spite of this posh camouflage’,

But he adds by way of self-assurance,

‘Such panic for me should now be usual,

And I must somehow live to tell the tale,

Of this thrilling life of a hundred deaths.’

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