Midweek Review

Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu:

Published

1 year ago

2023/06/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

Irangani

Irangani Serasinghe & Rukmani Devi’s Double-Act

By Laleen Jayamanne

A precious historical document was recently ‘unearthed’ by Ranjit, son of Irangani and Winston Serasinghe. It was a theatre programme for Dhamma Jagoda’s 1960s productions of Vesmuhunu (Masks), an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. I don’t think I am being unduly melodramatic in referring to an ephemeral theatre programme as a ‘precious historical document’. Nor have I made a typo in referring to Jagoda’s ‘productions’, in the plural.

I am grateful to Ranjit Serasinghe for having kindly sent me a copy of this programme. It was indeed a most unusual document because there were details of three different productions of the play, with three different casts, in three different years, all directed by Dhamma Jagoda. And it was bilingual. In 1966, Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu was the only play performed at the Lumbini Theatre Festival, as the winner of the Arts Council’s Drama Competition that year. In that production Roma de Zoysa (a Colombo socialite and daughter of a former Finance Minister), played the main female role of Blanche Dubois the declasse Southern aristocratic lady who had lost her fortunes. In the play, she was presented as a Kandyan lady visiting her sister, who is married to a working-class man played by Dhamma and his own wife Sunethra Jagoda as his wife within the play.

According to the programme, Dhamma restaged Vesmuhunu in 1967 and 1968, in a manner that is worth remembering now, for historical reasons, after all those years. In 1967 the role of the aristocratic lady was played by Rukmani Devi, while in the 1968 production Irangani Serasinghe was chosen for it. Dhamma and Sunethra did not act in this last production, which saw film actors such as Wickrama Bogoda and Sriyani Amerasena join the cast.

Just recently I was reminded of these productions on hearing on Television A. D. Ranjit Kumara (a former editor of the Sarasawiya the weekly film tabloid), speaking of Rukmani Devi’s career. He spoke of Rukmani Devi’s immense sense of gratitude to Dhamma, for having given her the opportunity to perform in a reputable western play for the first time in her long career as a singer, film star and stage actor. He added that she bent down and worshipped Dhamma (a gesture of guru bhakthi), just before going on stage.

While listening to Kumara, I recalled that I had observed both Rukmani Devi and Irangani Serasinghe rehearse Vesmuhunu, but at a later date, perhaps in 1970, during the very early days of the Art Centre Theatre Workshop, which Dhamma directed with the support of Harold Peiris, a trustee of the Lionel Wendt Theatre. In those early days, before the theatre was renovated to house the workshops, Peiris had provided his large open portico with chairs for our theatre studies to be conducted in.

I remember these two actresses rehearsing the play with Dhamma in this very space, and also recall registering the very different timbre and texture of their most unusual, trained voices, as I think others also did. Now, I think that Dhamma was reviving the play he had already directed thrice in the 60s, for the fourth time, in the context of the Theatre Workshop. I left the country not long after and have no memory of a performance outcome, but do remember the workshop being interrupted by the insurrection of April 71. It’s not possible to verify details of a fourth production as Dhamma is long gone and people’s memories have faded away. The only way is for someone to search through the newspaper archives for reviews of the productions. But I wonder if there is sufficient interest to do that kind of arduous archival work, so as to even simply chronicle, at the very least, the 60s theatre. Perhaps, Hague Karunarathne’s Ludowyk Memorial Lecture has already done this, though I haven’t had access to it. If so, then detailed theoretical analyses can be developed by young scholars.

Ranjit Serasinghe mentioned to me that his father’s archive of papers on his parents’ acting careers await digitisation by someone interested in the field. Yet again, I feel that in another country these papers (like those of Siva Sivanandan’s on Lankan cinema), would now be safely in a specialist library accessible for research. Ranjit Kumara’s book on Rukmani Devi might lead the way, but that book too must be a collector’s item now.

Theatre Criticism

The Vesmuhunu programme had many gems. One was a concise but (as always) insightful piece by Regi Siriwardena in English, about the differences between a translation and an adaptation as it applied to Dhamma’s Vesmuhunu and more generally too. He tells us that a good adaptation imaginatively transposes an original context, into a milieu with a local resonance. He added that, in doing this, Dhamma had also improved on the original by deleting its ‘lumbering and creaking obtrusive symbolism’ and its ‘tracks of sentimentality,’ focusing on the human and social conflicts of the original which are its strengths. Knowing the original and Western drama well, Regi was able to make this sharp critical evaluation of how creative Dhamma’s adaptation was, adding that it is one of the few outstanding ones of its time.

The programme also contains a substantial discussion of Dhamma’s theatrical experiment by Vidyodaya academic Tissa Kariyawasam in Sinhala, a brilliant gem in its own right. He says that Dhamma had substantially changed his own version of the written play submitted to the drama competition, in his production for the stage. This observation highlights Dhamma’s theatrical talent as a director in staging emotional states, through physical theatrical action in space.

He makes the important point that the intelligentsia (viyathun), who never thought that Rukmani Devi was a gifted actor, now have the chance to see just how good she is. This evaluation is a profound one, coming from an academic, and he implies that it happened because of Dhamma’s own rare intuitive ability to be able to see it on his own and also act on it so decisively, creating theatre history. Thereby, he enabled Rukmani Devi to excel in a play with considerable cultural capital. Because this programme was made before Irangani’s version of the play was performed, we have no account of her performance and interpretation. But in choosing to have both actors perform the same role for a second time (perhaps in 1970), in close proximity, it’s clear that Dhamma considered both Rukmani Devi and Irangani Serasinghe to be excellent, unique actors, with very different styles of acting. The revealing art photographs in the 1968 program allow us a glimpse of these differences, which I will discuss below.

The quality of Regi and Tissa’s critical writing in the 60s and 70s is exemplary of that period of a bilingual, vibrant theatrical culture in the country, developed by director/writers such as Sarachchandra, Henry Jayasena, Sugathapala de Silva, Gunasena Galappatti, and others. I remember reading the reviews Regi wrote in English in those days and also listening, as a school girl, to the regular radio programme he presented called ‘Arts and Ideas’ which was packed with fascinating information. As a script writer for Lester James Peries and as a multi-lingual translator of poetry from several European languages, including Russian, he was especially interested in the problem of translation and transposition of foreign texts into a local context with its different histories and mores. As he wrote accessibly, and was interested in a philosophy of education, his reviews and talks unfailingly widened our knowledge. So, in this case, he offered T.S. Eliot’s ideas on translation and creative adaptation and also mentioned that Shakespeare and many others adapted pre-existing texts. Thereby making the point that creativity is to be found in the quality of the final product and the craft, no matter what the source.

Another important find in the programme was the existence of an institution called ‘The Young Artistes’ Cultural Organisation’, with Lester James Peries as its advisor, and the names of its members, including Aileen Sarachchandra, Sunethra Jagoda’s mother. We also learn that there was a ‘Drama Advisory Board’, of which Professor Sarachchandra was a member, with Cyril Wickramage as the secretary. This high level of support for Dhamma as a member of the Sarachchandra family would have been of great value to him in those early days. Tisse says that Dhamma’s Vesmuhunu was the only play chosen to be performed subsequently, implying a very high standard expected at the National Drama Festival as well. So, the programme provides a clear sense of a fertile theatrical culture, and also how theatrical institutions were created in the 60s to actively encourage daring theatrical experimentation, open to international trends and practices.

Photographic Documentation of Vesmuhunu

From the programme

There are a handful of black and white photographs of all three productions of Vesmuhunu included in the programme. As what I have is a copy of the original which itself is over fifty years old, the quality of the images is very poor but there are sufficient details there to be able to read the images for signs of the kind of interpretations Rukmani and Irangani brought to presenting their versions of the Kandyan lady, Kumari Uduwela. Of course, what one can do with a few unclear photographs is very limited and would remain as conjectures at best. But I feel I can do this because (though credit is not given), it is more than likely that the photos would have been taken by Ralex Ranasinghe who is credited for décor and costumes. The only exception is with the 1966 production, where while he did the Décor, the costumes were designed by the fashion designer Kirthi Sri Karunaratne who acted in the play and also ran a column on fashion in an English-language daily, in which Roma de Zoysa appeared quite often. So, this debut production of Dhamma’s had an unusual social mix as well.

Ralex Ranasinghe, Tony Ranasinghe’s brother, was a professional photographer, and it’s very likely that he took the photographs of all three productions. The wide shot of Roma de Zoysa shows a slender figure in a Kandyan sari with her hair piled on top in a bun.

The only photograph in the programme of Rukmani Devi is an extreme close-up of her face. It’s an art photograph, in which one half of her face is plunged into darkness, while the other half is lit. Furthermore, the face is angled in such a way that her head is slightly bent and she looks up with one eye; a veiled gaze. The expression of that eye is strong, and seductive. It’s the kind of gaze associated with what the French call a femme-fatale, the fatal woman who, according to her mythical attributes, will bring ruin to men through her mysterious sexuality. Rukmani’s dark eye make-up highlights this stylised framing of her face and the suggestion of mystery. She presents a familiar type in Western literature, film and image culture. Hollywood made a special genre of film, the Film Noir, with the femme-fatale as the main attraction and there were stars who were associated with playing that kind of role. Feminist film theorists have researched the long history of this seductive but destructive mythical female archetype, locating her within Western patriarchal narratives, including Eve who tempted Adam with an apple given to her by a devilish snake, leading to their expulsion from Paradise, according to the Bible.

In contrast to this seductive gaze of Rukmani’s, Irangani is shown in full size, smiling openly, dressed in white and dark Kandyan saris, with her hair unusually short falling to her shoulders. Her gestures are theatrically exuberant and outward looking. The feeling she projects is that of a light and airy creature. Though there is one of her looking very serious and troubled, seated at a table with her sister. But one can conjecture that Rukmani presented a dark and mysterious woman, while Irangani was mostly light and airy and fragile in her duplicity. That’s as far as one can go visually analysing and imagining with a few images. But the shot of Sunethra is altogether different, she is the realist figure, contained and constrained in her working-class environment by her husband, and in her role as pregnant wife.

So, the three women have very different characters and functions and acting styles, it would appear. I believe that Ralex Ranasinghe has captured these differences perceptively. Having also done the décor and costumes he would have had a very intimate, subtle knowledge of the texture of the image, materials, light and of the feelings they evoked.

Ralex Ranasinghe, as a professional photographer, had no doubt also seen some of Rukmani Devi’s star portraits of the 50s, at the height of her stardom. There are one or two black & white close-up studio photographs of her as a star, where she does not smile, and her eyes show a dark, languorous, mysterious quality, an eroticism, such as I have not seen in any other Lankan star photograph. In this, she is rather like Ava Gardner, a famous Hollywood femme fatale. I think, the artfully noirish close-up of Rukmani Devi in the program must have been done in a studio, where Ralex Ranasinghe would have been able to control light and shadow with precision, to plunge one half of Rukmani Devi’s face into a dark void. It’s a remarkable and rare film noir image, capturing a rarely seen emotional register, on the face of that incomparable star of the Sinhala cinema. A vesmuhuna like the dark side of the moon, one might say.

Imagine if some curious scholar did unearth the reviews of all the performances, what a treasure trove they would reveal to us about Dhamma Jagoda, Rukmani Devi and Irangani Serasinghe, in their unique visionary and, yes, daring collaboration in Vesmuhunu!

Tennessee Williams’ striking title, A Streetcar Named Desire, was based on an actual street car (bus), in New Orleans, leading to a suburb called Desire.

But ‘A Bus Named Desire’ would have been farcical. The Southern milieu was the racially mixed French quarter with Blues music in the background, heard between scene changes in the first production on Broadway, with Marlon Brando in the main role. Williams mixes the realist title with a poetic register, in the heady mix of sexual violence, class-based powerplay and fantasy.

Dhamma (from the Southern town of Hikkaduwa) would have grown up with a familiarity with masks and ritual performances indigenous to that area. So, when he also chose a poetic title, Vesmuhunu (Masks) for his adaptation, he is playing with many reverberations, including the idea of social masks. In so doing he appears to be able to widen the formal possibilities of realist drama of the ‘lower depths,’ by also presenting ‘social types’, which in their abstraction, are mask-like. For this kind of experimentation, with different types of characterisation and ideas of character, and different registers of acting for each, Dhamma needed experienced actors with great reserves of talent, precise training, a depth of experience, and a desire to take risks, all of which he found in Rukmani Devi and Irangani Serasinghe at the height of their maturity.

It is around this time that Dhamma also produced Dharmasena Pathiraja’s brilliant one act absurdist play, Kora saha Andaya (The Lame man and the Blind) in a sparse, minimalist staging of remarkable intensity. It appears that Dhamma directed this play after he had returned from a research trip to both Britain and the Lee Strasberg Actors’ Studio in New York, to observe different theatrical traditions. Through their collaboration, Pathiraja and Dhamma created two mutually dependent human and social types, a blind man and a lame man. One carrying the other on his shoulder, the other leading the way, binding them into one composite figure, seeking a promised land in an existential void. The long wooden pole which supported them was the only prop, used in unimaginable ways, also to produce sounds on a bare wooden stage, sculpted with light, on which Wimal Kumar de Costa and Daya Pathirana gave unforgettable performances.

Marlon Brando had trained with Lee Strasberg and is credited with inventing a new, understated, internalised kind of masculine acting: Method Acting. It was Brando’s brutish role of Stanley Kowalski that Dhamma played in his own production of Vesmuhunu. One wonders if Dhamma left any research notes on his trip abroad and if he had seen the film of the play with Brando and Vivien Leigh, screened in Colombo in the early 50s. Despite his electrifying and award-winning performance, Dhamma did choose to focus on directing rather than on becoming Lanka’s answer to Marlon Brando.

This was indeed a lucky choice for the development of Lankan theatre. Dhamma’s foresight as an educator, in developing a Drama Curriculum for the schools, was also a major contribution to Lankan theatre.

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Midweek Review

North: A change in status ahead of Maaveerar Naal

Published

2 days ago

2024/11/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

Premier Dr. Harini Amarasuriya receives her letter of appointment from President Dissanayake. The NPP government’s success will largely depend on the duo: AKD, who entered Parliament in 2000 and new entrant HA (pic courtesy PMD).

* One-time LTTE mouthpiece TNA is no more

* N & E Tamil speaking representation enhanced

* Fresh look at Sarath Fonseka’s performance at 2010 Prez poll in North required

The new government’s main challenge is ensuring the full implementation of the IMF-led post-Aragalaya economic recovery in line with the Economic Transformation Bill approved by the previous government without a vote. Whatever the side-shows, the focus not only of the government but the Parliament should be on preparing the country to resume debt repayment in 2028 or be ready to face the consequences.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

In a way it was a great thing for the country that the National People’s Power (NPP) scored an emphatic victory at the Nov. 14 general election. Now the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led NPPers can have no excuses for not being able to fulfill their promises as would have been the case if the preceding September Presidential election outcome was repeated with the combined Opposition having the lion’s share of the vote, which would have left the country with a virtual hung Parliament of no benefit to anyone other than creating a parliamentary stalemate, leading to fresh political chaos.

We will, however, grant the fact they have a very tall order to fulfill after the previous governments having virtually signed away our sovereignty with the deals they had inked during their tenures.

But we do have a nagging suspicion about someone working in not so mysterious ways against us behind the scene, after what the former US Secretary of State, John Kerry, publicly stated not too long after the defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 2015 presidential election when he crowed to the whole world how they had spent several hundred million dollars for regime change operations at the time in several countries, including Sri Lanka. Then we also know since then how a US engineered coup ousted the popularly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan by way of parliamentary and military shenanigans, and then the more publicised way they ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh and then virtually ruined that country as was the case during the Aragalaya here in 2022 to oust the legally elected President, with a wide mandate, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The NPP has accomplished the impossible, even in the North, in the form of securing the Jaffna electoral district at the recently concluded parliamentary election. The NPP obtained three seats, nothing but a historic watershed.

The ruling party also won the Vanni electoral district, the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting during the Eelam War IV (Aug 2006-May 2009). Securing Jaffna and Vanni consisting of Vavuniya, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu administrative districts, is as difficult as eradicating the conventional fighting capability of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The NPP won two seats in the Vanni.

The final phase of the ground offensive was conducted in a corner of the Vanni electorate where LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran met his maker.

The NPP secured two seats in Trincomalee and one in the Batticaloa districts, whereas Digamadulla gave President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party four more seats. Altogether 12 out of 29 parliamentary seats available in the five above-mentioned electoral districts ended up with the NPP.

The NPP delivered the stunning blow to those who still pursued separatist agenda, regardless of the LTTE’s demise over 15 years ago. The combined armed forces brought the war to a successful conclusion in May 2009.

The Illankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led Tamil National Alliance (TNA) that dominated the Northern and Eastern provinces since 2001 hadn’t been in the fray at the 2024 general election. The TNA that had been in the grip of the LTTE, during 2004-2009, disintegrated 15 years after the end of war, with the ITAK unceremoniously ending the partnership. Ex-TNA members, EPRLF, TELO and PLOTE contested the general election under the ticket of Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA).

The ITAK obtained seven seats (Batticaloa three, Jaffna one, Vanni one, Digamadulla one, Trincomalee one) whereas DTNA won just one (Vanni one). It would be pertinent to mention that ITAK and DTNA fielded a common list for the Trincomalee district to ensure a split in the Tamil vote wouldn’t cost the community much valued representation therein. ITAK Trincomalee leader Kathiravelu Shanmugam Kugathasan, who replaced R. Sampanthan in Parliament at the last Parliament, won that seat.

In addition to the seven elected, the ITAK that contested under the ‘House’ symbol won one National List slot. Ahila Ilankai Tamil Congress (AITC) was the only other party to secure a seat (Jaffna/ Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam) while Independent Group 17 (Jaffna/ Ramanathan Archuna) won one. Altogether Tamil political parties obtained 11 seats, one less than the NPP.

M.A. Sumanthiran (ITAK/Jaffna), Dharmalingham Siddharthan (DTNA/Jaffna) and Sashikala Nadarajah (DTNA/Jaffna), widow of slain ITAK MP Nadarajah Raviraj were some of the big losers. In the east, one-time Chief Minister of the Eastern Province Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pilleyan, formerly of the LTTE, failed to retain his Batticaloa district seat. Former LTTE field commander and ex-lawmaker Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan aka Karuna Amman made an unsuccessful bid to re-enter Parliament also from the Batticaloa district.

In the previous Parliament, there had been 16 MPs representing five Tamil political parties (ITAK, AITC Eelam People’s Democratic Party [EPDP], Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal [TMVP] and Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kuttani [TMTK]. Last week’s poll eliminated EPDP, TMVP and TMTK while new entrant NPP created political history by winning 11 seats.

In spite of the humiliating setback suffered by those who had been previously in Parliament, the NPP tally has increased the total strength of the Tamil-speaking group representing N & E in Parliament. Perhaps, the successful formation of NPP’s Tamil-speaking wing may influence other political parties to re-examine their overall political strategy. They may not have any other alternative as failure to do so can further weaken their position at the forthcoming Provincial Council and Local Government polls. PC and LG polls are expected to be held next year.

Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, who re-entered Parliament with a convincing win in Batticaloa, consolidated his position, within the party and the district, due to ITAK’s admirable performance there. If not for three Batticaloa seats, ITAK aka Federal Party would have been in an utterly embarrassing position. Batticaloa electoral district is the only one that the NPP couldn’t win. Therefore, the outspoken Rasamanickam can be really happy to have thwarted the NPP in the eastern district.

Now to bury the hatchet between the two or, more correctly, the three literally warring communities here, NPP will have to think out of the box to find a solution that may be by way of sharing power at the centre rather than the periphery, as was successfully done under the Donoughmore Constitution.

Accountability issues

At the presidential election held in Sept. the NPP couldn’t win at least one electorate in the North but did so well several weeks later, it could win Jaffna and Vanni electorates. If not for that sterling performance, the NPP couldn’t have secured an unprecedented 2/3 majority. President AKD should be ever grateful to the northern and eastern electorates for facilitating a 2/3 majority.

Since the introduction of the proportional representation at the 1989 Parliamentary election, no party succeeded in securing a 2/3 though many alleged the Rajapaksas abused such huge mandates. They were, of course, referring to the UPFA securing 144 seats and 145 seats at the 2010 and 2020 general elections, respectively. For a simple majority, the winning party needs 113 seats while 2/3 means 150 seats.

Against the backdrop of NPP’s victory in the N & E, the new Parliament should review Sri Lanka’s response to post-war accountability issues. Since the eradication of the LTTE, the TNA propagated politically motivated unsubstantiated war crimes allegations, both here and abroad. Finally, the treacherous Yahapalana government (2015-2019) betrayed the war-winning armed forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Oct 2015. The accountability resolution that had been co-sponsored by the US-led grouping and Sri Lanka was meant to pave the way for a new Constitution aimed at doing away with the country’s unitary status.

Interestingly, the war-winning Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, who had been promoted to the rank of Field Marshal, in March 2015, served in that Yahapalana Cabinet, chaired by President Maithripala Sirisena. The role played by the then Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe and the late Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in that despicable act is in the public domain. The failure on the part of Fonseka, who served President Sirisena’s Cabinet to vigorously oppose the government move is still a mystery.

The writer repeatedly discussed the failure on the part of Parliament and urged concerned political parties to raise the Yahapalana-TNA Geneva operation after the same lot fielded Fonseka as the common presidential candidate in 2010. Although Fonseka lost the contest by a massive 1.8 mn votes to war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa, he handsomely won the Jaffna, Vanni, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Digamadulla electoral districts at the same election.

The NPP’s excellent showing in the N & E at the recently concluded general election should be examined taking Fonseka winning the former war zones 14 years ago.

Having alleged Fonseka’s Army of war crimes throughout the northern campaign, the TNA had no qualms in backing the Sinha Regiment veteran. Unfortunately, political parties represented in Parliament never bothered to raise TNA’s duplicity. Instead, all of them shamelessly and brazenly played politics with the issue, seeking petty political advantage at the expense of the armed forces. There hadn’t been a single instance of a war-winning country betraying its armed forces hitherto anywhere in the world. It was only the Maithripala Sirisena/Ranil Wickremesinghe govt. that achieved that dastardly act.

The JVP, though being not part of the Yahapalana Cabinet, never opposed the government’s move against the armed forces. However, the NPP’s victory in the North, perhaps would give an opportunity for President AKD, who is also the Defence Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, to address the issue at hand afresh. President AKD retained the Defence portfolio when the new Cabinet of Ministers was sworn in last Monday.

The developing situation in the North may help post-war national reconciliation efforts. Successive governments deliberately allowed further deterioration of relations between the two communities by not taking apt remedial measures. Those who propagated lies were allowed to do so much to the disappointment of the armed forces. Parliament turned a blind eye even when the US and Australia et al denied visas to retired and serving officers and US imposed travel ban on the then Army Commander Gen. Shavendra Silva, the incumbent Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). Maj. General Chagie Gallage, now retired, is another victim of external reprisals.

Maaveerar Naal (Great Heroes’ day)

The Tamil Diaspora must have been quite surprised by the outcome of the general election. Some interested parties played down the importance of NPP victory in the North on the basis of low turnout of voters. It would be interesting to observe how the Diaspora and political parties here mark this year’s Maaveerar Naal. Commencing 1991, the LTTE used to celebrate Nov. 21-27 week as Great Heroes Week. During the period the group wielded power, the weeklong celebrations and activities received even international media attention.

This year, Maaveerar week is scheduled to commence on Nov 21 (tomorrow), the day the 10th Parliament meets. What would those elected from the NPP, ITAK and other parties do this year? Would interested parties seek to cause some unnecessary commotion in a bid to embarrass the government. Let us hope the government would handle the situation cautiously as opportunistic elements on both sides seek to exploit the developments. ITAK’s Sivagnanam Shritharan paid tribute to fallen Maaveerar at Kanagapuram, Kilinochchi.

The NPP’s unexpected victory in the north may compel not only Tamil Diaspora but Western countries, particularly Canada, to review their position.

Canada declared May 18 as Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day as Premier Justin Trudeau’s government sought to appease Canadian voters of Sri Lankan origin. Canada cannot under any circumstances ignore the Tamil vote received by the NPP as people discarded unsubstantiated war crimes allegations directed at the government, for the second time. Had the northern electorate believed the Army wantonly killed civilians on the Vanni east front in 2009, as alleged by the UN, they wouldn’t have voted for Fonseka. Perhaps, the people wanted the government to bring the war to an end at any cost. Having waged two terror campaigns in 1971 and 1987-1990, the JVP should be able to comprehend the need and the responsibility on the part of the government of the day to take whatever measures necessary to deal with the challenge.

The NPP was formed in 2019 just months ahead of the presidential election as the JVP realized it couldn’t push ahead on its own but needed wider public support. The NPP achieved that with ease within six years.

In August 2006, the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa went ahead with an-all-out campaign against the LTTE after failing to convince them to negotiate for a final settlement. President Rajapaksa had no option but to go on the offensive after the failed LTTE assassination attempts on the then Army Commander Lt. Gen. Fonseka (April 2006) and then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Oct. 2006). The TNA remained committed to the LTTE’s murderous cause until the very end.

A matter for serious concern

An unbelievably large number of voters skipped the general election. All political parties, including the NPP, should be concerned over the unprecedented deterioration of voter interest, especially after a thrilling presidential election brought AKD to power just six weeks ago. A substantial increase for the NPP from 5,634,915 votes (42.31 %) at the presidential to 6,863,186 (61.56%) at the general election just weeks later shouldn’t be allowed to divert attention to the massive drop in public interest. Well over half a million rejected votes, too, must worry all.

The NPP won 159 seats, including 18 National List slots, nine more than required for a 2/3 majority. At the presidential election 3,520,438 voters refrained from exercising their franchise. But that figure increased to 5,325,108 at the general election while the number of rejected votes, too, recorded a significant increase. According to the Election Commission, at the presidential poll, the number of rejected votes was 300,300 while the general election recorded 667,240 rejected votes.

What really caused such an increase in the number of rejected votes was when the number of polled votes dropped from 13,619,916 votes (79.46%) to 11,815,246 (68.93%)? In other words of the 17,140,354 people eligible to vote, a staggering percentage decided not to. Voter apathy is not healthy. Not healthy at all.

A rethinking on the part of the SJB and New Democratic Front (NDF/consisted of former SLPP lawmakers and UNP) is necessary as they couldn’t at least retain the number of votes received at the presidential election. SJB that polled 4,363,035 votes (32.76 %) at the presidential poll could muster only 1,968,716 (17.66%) at the general election, while NDF could secure 500,835 (4.49%) having polled 2,299,767 (17.27%) just weeks ago. The SJB and NDF ended up with 40 seats (including five NL slots) and five seats (including 2two NL slots) while the SLPP that won 145 seats at the 2020 general election had to be satisfied with three seats, including one NL slot.

Both Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe should seek remedial measures before the EC announced PC and LG polls. Perhaps, divided groups have to unite under one banner either under SJB or UNP or face annihilation at the PC and LG polls. For Premadasa and Wickremesinghe time seemed to have run out.

The SLPP obtained 350,429 votes (3.14%) at the general election up from 342,781 (2.57 %) at the presidential election. For the SLPP a rapid recovery process will never be possible as its only NL member and leader of the minute group Namal Rajapaksa is likely to be the target of corruption investigations. The SLPP group consists of Namal Rajapaksa, newcomer Chanaka Sampath (Galle) and D.V. Chanaka (Hambantota).

Fifteen political parties represented the last Parliament. They were SLPP (145), SJB (54), ITAK (10), NPP (03), EPDP (02), AITC (02), TMVP (01), SLFP (01), MNA (01), TMTK (01) TMTK, ACMC (01), NC (01), SLMC (01), UNP (01) and OPPP (01). The new Parliament will be represented by 13 political parties and one independent group – namely NPP 159, SJB 40, ITAK 08, NDF 05, SLPP 03, SLMC 03, Sarvajana Balaya (NL), UNP (01), DTNA (01), ACTC (01), ACMC (01), Jaffna Ind. Group 157 (01) and SLLP (01).

Midweek Review

‘Ramayanizing’ Sri Lanka by Courtesy of SriLankan Airlines

Published

2 days ago

2024/11/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

Srilankan advertisement

(The author is on X as @sasmester)

SriLankan Airlines’ five-minute commercial promoting the so-called ‘Ramayana Trail’ in Sri Lanka is being accepted very naively as an enticing and heartwarming advertisement by Sri Lankan and Indian viewers across social media. Predictably, the video has also gone viral. It shows a young child being educated about aspects of the Ramayana legend by his grandmother, while zooming in on locations in Sri Lanka where local mythology has made associations with some narratives of the Ramayana. Beyond the rave reviews of the commercial in Sri Lanka and India, an astute observer would in fact see it as a very problematic rendition for one simple reason. That is, when viewed from the perspective that it is paid for by SriLankan Airlines, a government entity funded by local taxpayers, what is said and promoted, in effect, would be through the voice of the state and the government. Therefore, for instance, when the granny tells the child, “all the places in Ramayana are real. Today, we know Lanka as Sri Lanka”, in one careless and ill-thought-out fell swoop, SriLankan Airlines has given credence to belief as evidence, myth as history, fiction as fact, asserting Ramayana’s Lanka as present-day Sri Lanka when numerous Indian renditions of the story locate parts of Ravana’s Lanka well within contemporary India.

Admittedly, the commercial will certainly attract Indian tourists and pilgrims, particularly from the northern parts of the country. The question that comes to mind however is whether this is the only way to promote the trail? Many of my friends have already made the trip without the nudging of the new advert. The advert also begs the question, whether local sensitivities and cultural meanings linked to the Sanskrit epic were ever considered when it was conceptualised, or at any point even after in the process. More importantly, who gave the final seal of approval?

The hegemonic narrative in the commercial is what one might call a ‘North Indian Brahminic’ approach to the Ramayana, which erases other versions of the epic including the Ravana-centric myths in Sri Lanka itself. Unfortunately, it is this hegemonic narrative that has been making the rounds for some time in India with Rama as its protagonist and Ravana as the absolute villain, the all-evil-encompassing antagonist. In this rendition, it is no longer simply an ancient epic or a story of innocence and faith, but a contemporary political narrative with considerable cultural power, authority and reach, performed and used by the state itself. This narrative feeds directly and indirectly into the somewhat imperialist designs of certain contemporary Indian political forces so aptly encapsulated in the hegemonic political concept of Akhand Bharat. However, in real life, understandings of the Ramayana have never been this simple or linear.

The title of Prof A.K. Ramanujan’s seminal essay, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation’ offers a clear indication into the many versions of the Ramayana and the complex narrative traditions of both India and lands beyond where aspects of the epic have become part of local myths, folktales or performance traditions. Interestingly, Prof Ramanujan’s essay was dropped from the Bachelor of Arts in History (Honours) degree programme at Delhi University in 2011 amidst considerable agitations lead by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a right-wing students’ organization, precisely because its contents complicate the way in which the political narrative that is the Ramayana today is presented.

It is truly unfortunate that the narrative given prominence in the Sri Lankan Airlines advert stems from this dominant, parochialized and utterly politicized version of the Ramayana which sweepingly demonizes Ravana. This broad-brush demonization reaches its peak in India during Dussehra, the festival during which effigies of Ravana are burnt to symbolize the vanquishing of evil (Ravana) by good (Rama). However, interestingly, in many of India’s tribal areas, the narrative is closer to that in Sri Lanka, where Ravana is seen as a hero, and importantly as a source of knowledge and ethics. In 2017, in the Katol area in the State of Maharashtra, tribal people forced the local administration to stop the burning of Ravana effigies during Dussehra. In Nashik, also in Maharashtra, tribal folklore suggests that the area was part of Ravana’s kingdom and was governed by his sister Surpanakha along with her husband. This understanding of Ravana’s kingdom is nowhere near Sri Lanka as promoted by SriLankan Airlines. In some tribal Gond villages in Maharashtra, Ravana is worshiped as a god, clearly evident during Dussehra. He is also worshiped in many other locations including, Mandsaur and Ravangram in Madhya Pradesh; Bisrakh in Uttar Pradesh; Kangra in Himachal Pradesh; Mandya and Kolar in Karnataka, and Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Similar practices are seen in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal as well.

In Tamil Nadu in India’s south, there are many people who align themselves with ‘Dravidian’ ideologies, promoting Ravana as a politico-cultural icon. One source of motivation for this stems from the manner in which Ravana is eulogised for his valour in Kambaramayanam – the Tamil version of the Ramayana – even though here, too, the main premise of the hegemonic account is maintained. The more obvious source for this reverence is Ravana Kaaviyam written by Pulavar Kuzhandhai and published in 1946. It is a 20th century attempt to deconstruct the Ramayana based on the argument that the mainstream Ramayana was an attempt to establish the supremacy of the ‘Aryan race’ who lived in northern India, over the ‘Dravidians’ in the south. Here, Ravana is seen as a ‘Dravidian’ king, and in essence very similar to the Sinhala renditions of Ravana. In both these popular Sinhala and Tamil versions, he is presented as a noble king, epitomising justice, courage and compassion, and also a wise person and scholar. While categories such as ‘Dravidian’ and ‘Aryan’ as ethno-cultural references as opposed to linguistic references are not part of my academic vocabulary, the attempted deconstruction is nevertheless interesting as it also offers a glimpse into the manner in which 20th and 21st century hegemonic North Indian politics are understood by some sections in the country’s south.

What is evident is that a counterculture movement is currently mobilising tribal and Dalit communities in several Indian states such as the above to vindicate Ravana and ‘rescue’ him from the negative light in which he has been portrayed in the current dominant version of the Ramayana, the one SriLankan Airlines has blindly based their commercial on. Due to this blindness, these interesting and telling complexities and intriguing political and cultural references have no resonance whatsoever in the SriLankan Airlines advert.

I come again to the question posed at the beginning of this essay: is this the only way to do such a promotion funded by the Sri Lankan government? Cannot the state-funded national carrier attract Indian tourists and pilgrims by presenting the places the local tourism industry and Indian tour and pilgrimage operators want these travellers to visit by offering the local interpretation? After all, Sri Lanka does not have a performance tradition of the Ramayana and hardly any concrete memories of the epic and its numerous episodes as a specific text. Instead, fragments of these exist scattered on the landscape throughout the island as places where specific incidents related to the Ramayana had supposedly happened. These manifest through several local folk tales and myths where Ravana is ever present as a local hero and Rama is virtually absent except when contextually required. Moreover, some of these places refer to many other stories too, which have been historically more prominent locally than the Ramayana-related narratives. However, right now, the Ramayana ‘stories’ are given considerable local and national prominence as a rational economic decision taken by people in these areas in the interest of tourism which translates into simple commercial gain. This is understandable.

The question is, what prevented SriLankan Airlines from beginning its advert with the famed flying machine of Ravana known in Sinhala as dandu monaraya (and in India as Pushpaka Viman), often referred to in influential local interpretations as the first of its kind, and predating the Wright Brothers’ invention? Is it a lamentable lack of imagination and creativity, or sheer ignorance? After all, the logo of Air Lanka, the predecessor to SriLankan Airlines, found its genesis in this story, which continues to date in a different form. This way, potential tourists could have been shown the same locations referred to in the current advert, but viewed from the sky, as if one were flying in the dandu monaraya like Ravana may have done in mythical times. This would also be very similar to the way ancient Sri Lankan poets of the sandesha tradition described local landscapes and built environments from the point of view of a bird in flight taking a message to a king, a Buddhist monk or some other such personality. Salalihini Sandeshaya and Hansa Sandeshaya written in the 15th century during the Kotte Period come to mind.

In this manner, the core places in the ‘Ramayana Trail’ could have been flagged for tourist and pilgrim interest while maintaining a distinct sense of local culture and identity that SriLankan Airlines should ideally be marketing. This is not to make Indian tourists and pilgrims cast aside their own beliefs, narratives and interpretations when visiting Sri Lanka. That is their right and not in any doubt. The crux of the matter is, why would SriLankan Airlines be so north Indian and Brahminic, and willingly succumb to the dominant and exclusivist version of the Ramayana promoted by the Indian state and many ordinary people to the exclusion of all other narratives in India itself? By doing so, SriLankan Airlines is taking itself, the government, the state and by extension all of us Sri Lankans, right into the bosom of the Indian state’s cultural and political colonialism typified by the concept of ‘Akhand Bharat’ as noted earlier. If picked up by opposition forces in the politically polarised Sri Lankan society, the advertisement can become a political statement, which has the potential to create needless rifts within Sri Lanka itself.

But then again, one cannot expect these complexities to be understood by the decision makers at SriLankan Airlines who obviously are far removed from the local cultural terrain as well as existing cultural hegemonism emanating from across the Palk Strait. The national carrier, in its haste to soar, as well as absence of foresight and lack of enlightenment of local culture has imprisoned Sri Lanka in a hegemonic North Indian politico-cultural narrative. This is also a sign of lacking national pride despite constant and oftentimes annoying rhetoric. One can only hope, the Sri Lankan government will revisit how this was done in the first place and ensure this kind of culturally crude reductionism of our own traditions and folklore does not take place in the future in state-sponsored activities carried out with public funds.

I cannot but be reminded of a quote by Voltaire when reflecting on the manner in which politics of this kind flow, emerge, and reemerge in Sri Lanka while nothing is ever learned: “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”