Midweek Review

Making Sense of ‘Literary Sensibility’

Published

4 years ago

2021/03/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Dr. Siri Galhenage

(Psychiatrist)

The exclusive role of literature is the transmission of complexities of human experience, calling into play our emotional and intellectual faculties. Literary analysts observe, that great works of art and literature have the capacity to ‘convey serious truths and significant ideals’, ‘broaden our understanding’, ‘kindle our imaginations’, ‘raise our spirits’ and ‘enhance our sensibility’. Seen from a psychological perspective, such therapeutic ingredients in Literature have the potential to assist us in elevating our lives to a higher plane of existence, bringing order and meaning to the seeming chaos of daily living.

At the heart of the above observation is the concept of literary ‘Sensibility’ – an idea that has shaped modern consciousness with regard to the evaluation and interpretation of literature. Variously interpreted, the concept has undergone transformation over time. The purpose of this essay is to explore the many nuances of its meaning and to underscore its worth.

Origin and Transformation

The term sensibility is an offshoot of the word ‘sense’ with its roots in Latin [‘sentire’: to feel]. Borrowed by neuroscience, ‘sense’ refers to the faculty of ‘perceiving’ by the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. The term is broadly synonymous with the higher cerebral functions of cognition, judgement, discernment and intuition [‘the sixth sense’] governed by the ‘sensorium’ – the component of the brain that deals with receiving and interpreting external stimuli.

The word ‘sense’ has made a vast contribution to the English vocabulary by generating a range of derivatives with shades of meaning. It has given birth to such kindred words as ‘sensitive’ [being sympathetic when dealing with the needs or feelings of others]; ‘sensible’ [having good sense or judgement]; ‘sensuous’ [coined by Milton to suggest the idea of being alive to sensations], transcending the baser term ‘sensual’ with connotations of sexual arousal; and SENSIBILITY, amongst many others.

Geoffrey Chaucer, the legendary English poet of the middle Ages, widely considered to be the father of English poetry, is credited for having conceived the notion of sensibility. The idea was fostered in the 18th Century by a group of philosophers and writers who formed the so called ‘literary cult of sensibility’. Initially used to refer to individual response to physical and emotional stimuli [exaggerated and self-indulgent, implying individual susceptibility], the meaning of the word transformed into understanding and experiencing the feelings of others, akin to empathy.

The above themes were soon picked up by novelists, such as Jane Austen, who created her masterpiece, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ as a parody of emotional response, featuring two sisters who both seek love, endure loss and find happiness in their own way – Marianne: passionate and impulsive; Elinor: dignified and thoughtful, in their responses.

Sensibility, from a modern perspective, appears to cover the whole spectrum of literary activity, suggesting a highly developed emotional and intellectual capacity for both literary creativity as well as literary analysis.

The Deeper Realm in Literature

Every reader could be considered a latent literary analyst. But those with literary sensibility are regarded as having developed a more refined ability to elicit, discern, comprehend and respond to the deeper layers of meaning of a text [the subterranean realm], signifying a heightened level of consciousness.

What is the source of this subterranean realm of knowledge [wisdom] in great art and literature which the discerning mind could draw from? The legendary poet Milton believed that it is God given. But there is evidence to suggest that great literary figures drew heavily from mythological tales and folklore which the celebrated Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung asserted embodied ancient wisdom – ‘the storehouse of universally shared experience’ which he called our ‘collective unconscious’ – lying deeper than the ‘individual unconscious’.

Ancient wisdom regarded the universe as alive, and all its objects – humans, plants, animals, celestial bodies – and natural phenomena, in continuous interaction within it, bringing about both favourable as well as adverse outcomes. The preliterate humans were yet unaware of the biological and physical forces that controlled the ecosystems around them. Confined to their natural habitat, they were, by necessity, constantly in tune with their environment, inventing narratives loaded with myths, creating images on rocks, performing spiritual ceremonies with totems and taboos necessary to bring order and meaning to their lives. The experience of their daily life merged imperceptibly into mythological tales and folklore which has now gained the tag of ‘art’.

Jung hypothesised that the collective unconscious was a reservoir of ‘predispositions and potentialities’ to act or react in certain ways which have universal meaning. He called them ‘archetypes’. These predispositions which are inherited collectively compel us to experience life in a manner conditioned by the past history of mankind. By endless repetition such experiences have become engraved in our psychic constitution but with some modifications during psychological evolution. The archetypes generate an abundance of metaphors which make up the arts and are the building blocks of creative thought.

Thus, the arts appear to have originated in antiquity, in the real world; it’s defining quality being the expression of human experience. The works of art that endure embody universal traits that are deeply humanistic and are faithful to nature. They are judged by their precision and their adherence to human nature. Over centuries such universal themes have strengthened the creative powers of the human mind and expressed in ‘original’ works of art.

Shakespeare and the Archetypal Legends

Shakespeare, unarguably the greatest dramatist and poet of all time in the English language, and perhaps in any language, drew heavily from archetypal legends and folklore. For example, Hamlet, widely regarded as his magnum opus, has its roots in the archetypal legend of Amleth, first recorded in the Gesta Danorum written by the 12th century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus – a legend with parallel plots in the folklore of other cultures, embedded in the ‘psychological heritage of humanity’. Hamlet portrays a wide array of patterns of emotion, behaviour and relationships drawn from our deeply embedded storehouse of universally shared experience.

Shakespeare, by using this knowledge, exercised his creative genius to give dramatic expression not only to the concerns of his contemporary audiences of the Elizabethan era but also spoke to us in the modern world. Many literary analysts and others in recent history have exercised their sensibility in exploring the moral, socio-political and psychological depths in Hamlet while romancing his written word – Carl Marx and Sigmund Freud amongst them.

Possibly drawn in by Hamlet’s invitation to ‘pluck out the heart of my mystery’, Freud made psychoanalytic explorations into the psyche of the young prince and his relationship with his mother who in ‘indecent haste’ married the usurper who killed his father.

Many a psychiatrist would be in awe of Shakespeare’s descriptions of ‘Melancholia’ and ‘Mania’ in Hamlet and Ophelia, respectively, long before theoretical frameworks were developed in the diagnosis of such mental disorders. Modern day neurochemistry has established a biological predisposition to the above conditions bringing about a consilience of literary sensibility and science. Sensibility, thus, has the potential to act as a driving force in expanding knowledge.

In his monograph ‘What Is Art’, the celebrated Russian author Leo Tolstoy, renowned for his deep social conscience, asserted that a moral message should transcend aesthetic beauty in a piece of Art, including literary Art. His work is abounding in psychological insights too. All such ingredients are amply depicted in his literary artistry. If the young reader is unable to afford the much needed sustained attention in reading Tolstoy’s novels, ‘War and Peace’, ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘resurrection’, I suggest reading his popular novellas, ‘Cossacks’, ‘Death of Ivan Ilych’, ’Kreutzer Sonata’, Hadji Murad’ and ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’, which provide a window to his literary landscape.

A good piece of literature provides a basis for the cultivation of social conscience, fostering of moral wisdom, development of psychological insights and the appreciation of beauty [aesthetics] in varying degree, elevating human existence to a higher plane. In my view, the word sensibility in modern terminology encompasses the ability to explore the above matters of considerable human interest, entombed in the deeper vaults of literary treasures.

Early Reading and Sensibility

There is a close association between brain development, reading ability and literary sensibility. We are not born with reading aptitude; the ability does not develop automatically. Reading has to be learned. Helping children learn to read early in their lives facilitates neuronal development by the integration of several systems of the brain enhancing its cognitive capacity – an important dynamic in developing literary sensibility in later life. Reading a story regularly to a child and engaging him or her in meaningful conversation that flows on from the stories, helping them to look beyond the narrative, is considered to be the best predictor of later reading interest and the accomplishment of literary sensibility.

In addition, research shows that early literacy in children plays a key role in academic achievement in later life by facilitating their cognitive skills such as attention, concentration, working memory and flexibility in thinking. It also places them on a trajectory of personality development helping them in enhancing their self-esteem, interpersonal skill, organisational skill and emotional stability, assisting them to comprehend and cope with the crises that we confront in daily living – thus strengthening the structure of individual personality and by extension the nature of society and civilisation.

Losing Our Romance with the Written Word

There is a growing perception that we are losing our romance with the printed word. We live in a hurried world, and most people, especially the young, are showing a decline in the amount of time spent on reading. Intellectual and emotional engagement with a text demands time, motivation and focussed concentration. The digital age we live in fosters ‘light reading’: entranced before the computer or phone screen we cruise websites for a quick pick up of information and entertainment, and to remain connected. The Net has come to stay and it plays a vital role in our modern day living. But it does not provide a platform for ‘deep reading’ [a notion advocated by Sven Berkerts] that fosters sensibility a good text of literature can offer.

We have an ancient literary tradition, the custodian of our values – the very foundation of our civilisation. People of my generation will well remember the following verse from Vadan Kavi Potha: ‘Allata singawath rasa nethi kevili kaka/ Walkola bima athuta nidhi noleba duk thaka/ Kalgiya redhi verali henda deli kunen waka/ Elmen akuru uganivu idiri weda thaka’ – a crude translation being, ‘Learn your letters with love, for future benefit, despite having to face hardship and impoverishment’. The word ‘akuru’, here, connotes a broader education.

The decline of the printed word, and hence the decline of sensibility, and the rise of much less civilising forms of communication and entertainment, has led to the poverty and emptiness of our popular culture. The decline in morality, intimately linked to the decline of sensibility, is more degrading than the economic woes that we are afflicted with today. At the root of so much social disorder we witness around us, such as the wanton destruction of nature, our lack of understanding of our common humanity, our greed and self-indulgence and the heinous crimes that we often hear of, are but the outward manifestations of a collective soul deprived of sensibility.

[sirigalhenage@gmail.com]

References

David Mikics: [2013] Slow Reading in a Hurried Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Edward O. Wilson [1998] Consilience – The Unity of Knowledge Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. Inc.

J.A.C. Brown: [1961, 1964] Freud and the Post-Freudians, Penguin Books.

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Midweek Review

Ranil in Head-to-Head controversy

Published

5 days ago

2025/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wickremesinghe responds to Hasan during the controversial interview recorded in London

Former Commander-in-Chief and ex-President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s inadequate defence of the war-winning armed forces underscores the failure on the part of successive governments to address war crimes allegations. Wickremesinghe’s responses highlighted Sri Lanka’s collective and pathetic failure to defend its armed forces. The country missed an opportunity to question the absurdity of UN war crimes accusations based on claims by persons who couldn’t be questioned till 2030 as a result of shocking confidentiality clauses in the Panel of Experts’ report. Imagine a one sided trial where you cannot cross examine your accusers for 30 long years. No wonder much of the world is increasingly demanding urgent reforms in the United Nations as much of its system is rigged by the collective West since its formation.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Al Jazeera’s Head-to-Head presenter Mehdi Hasan and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in an interview recorded in February but released last week, dealt with the conclusion of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 without referring to the origins of terrorism here, while prolonging the narrative we were the bad guys throughout and not a word about the LTTE and how it terrorised this country for about 30 years.

The chosen audience at London’s Conway Hall, too, conveniently refrained from bringing up accountability on the part of India in sponsoring terrorism, beginning early ’80s. The issue is would there have been Mullivaikkal bloodshed if India didn’t step in here to pacify Tamil Nadu sentiments? Separatist terrorism received extensive backing in the West and there couldn’t be a better example than the LTTE being allowed to operate its International Secretariat in London, even after it assassinated former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, while campaigning in Tamil Nadu.

The discussion covered heavy defeat suffered by Wickremesinghe at the last year’s presidential election, still unfinished investigations into the 2019 Easter bombings, the failure on his part to prosecute the Rajapaksas, as well as why punitive measures weren’t taken against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and unleashing the military on Aragalaya immediately after Parliament elected him President, in July 2022.

Hasan had conveniently forgotten that Wickremesinghe earlier threw his weight behind Aragalaya . Harin Fernando, who had been a SJB member of Parliament at the time of the Aragalaya, is on record as having said that Wickremesinghe directed him to join the campaign to oust Gotabaya Rajapaksa. One-time UNP MP Prof. Ashu Marasinghe, too, disclosed the UNP’s role in Aragalaya.

UK-born British-American broadcaster Hasan aggressively pushed Wickremesinghe on the accountability issues while the UNP leader, at least ended up defending General Shavendra Silva, the wartime General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the celebrated 58 Division (former Task Force 1) accused by the US and UN of perpetrating war crimes without providing any evidence.

Wickremesinghe should have exploited the reference made by the audience to the 1983 violence directed at the Tamil community to remind the world of the events leading to the unprecedented riots. Let me stress that no right thinking person would condone targeting civilians, under any circumstances. However, the country wouldn’t have erupted in July 1983 if not for the Indian military training Tamil terrorist groups and for some inexplicable reason, most probably out of fear, the failure on the part of JRJ to nip the riots in the bud. There were also some extreme elements of the UNP, led by its notorious trade union arm JSS, that perpetrated some of the violence. Some in the police, too, played a part in encouraging rioters, often to make a killing for themselves by taking part of the looted items. President Jayewardene even failed to address the issue for several days. The 1983 riots should be always examined, taking into consideration how the Indian trained LTTE terrorists successfully attacked an Army patrol at Thinnaweli, Jaffna. Of the 14-man contingent, only one survived. There had never been such a devastating attack on the Army, though there were sporadic small arms attacks on police.

Strangely, Hasan and Wickremesinghe discussed war crimes, atrocities and war-related allegations without once referring to the war waged by the Indian Army in the Northern and Eastern regions as if Indians were sacred cows. The audience, too, remained silent. Those who had been demanding accountability on the part of Sri Lanka never once questioned India’s culpability or the innumerable acts of terrorism resorted to by the LTTE, probably taking more Tamil lives, especially those of its rivals and moderate Tamils, who dared to speak up, than the number of security forces personnel and innocent Sinhalese civilians it killed. The fact that India suffered 1,300 officers and men killed and nearly 3,000 others wounded in encounters with the LTTE during July 1987-March 1990 deployment of its euphemistically called Indian Peace Keeping Force here proved the massive security crisis New Delhi helped to create here.

Have you ever heard of anyone seeking an explanation from New Delhi for the 1988 PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) raid on the Maldives? Indian trained PLOTE cadres carried out the sea-borne operation, targeting the then Maldivian leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom at the behest of influential Maldivian Abdulla Luthufee. Would Hasan, born to parents from Hyderabad, and nine at the time of the PLOTE raid, dared to question India’s culpability. We haven’t heard anyone demanding to know the identities of those who perished in the failed Maldivian operation or Sri Lankan Tamils killed in India after the assassination of its one-time Premier Rajiv Gandhi by a teenage suicide bomber in Tamil Nadu.

Seasoned politician Wickremesinghe could have taken advantage of the Head-to-Head ‘show’ to set the record straight in the presence of Frances Harrison, former BBC-Sri Lanka correspondent, Director of International Truth and Justice Project and author of ‘Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War,’ and Dr. Madura Rasaratnam, Executive Director of PEARL (People for Equality and Relief in Lanka), that was formed in 2005 in the run-up to the Eelam War IV (2006 August to 2009 May). The other panelist was former UK and EU MP and Wickremesinghe’s presidential envoy, Niranjan Joseph de Silva Deva Aditya whose interventions didn’t help Wickremesinghe at all. Aditya’s declaration towards the tail end of the 49-minute programme that Wickremesinghe caused a devastating split in the LTTE, in 2003, during Oslo arranged talks, seemed absurd.

Addressing a hastily arranged press conference in Colombo, Wickremesinghe alleged that the husband of Executive Director, PEARL and senior lecturer at City University of London Dr. Madura Rasaratnam, had been an associate of LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham. Wickremesinghe asked her to correct him if he was wrong. It would have been better if Wickremesinghe reminded that the late Balasingham had been a British citizen and his Australian-born wife Adele, who promoted recruitment of child soldiers and appeared in LTTE ‘uniform’ and garlanded LTTE female soldiers with their trade mark cyanide capsule, which they always carried around their necks, as they passed out after undergoing training for propaganda purposes. She is now living in the UK, so perhaps Al Jazeera can interview Adele about her sordid role in marching those girls, many of them being underage, to a certain gory death, especially in the event of being captured, as they had been ordered by the LTTE to bite their cyanide capsules.

Hasan accused the Sri Lankan military of depriving the Tamil people of food, medicine and other basic essentials during the war. Unfortunately, former president and six-time Premier Wickremesinghe pathetically failed to counter often repeated lies. Had Wickremesinghe perused the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts (PoE) report (read Darusman report) released in 2011, he could have comfortably defended the war-winning military. The UN report acknowledged that the ICRC (International Committee for Red Cross)-run ships evacuated the wounded and the WFP (World Food Programme) sent food to Puthumathalan until the very end. Though the programme is headlined Head-to Head, our ex-President pathetically failed to counter Hasan with credible answers on one-sided questions raised by the interviewer.

Forgotten Lord Naseby’s disclosure

It would be pertinent to mention that Wickremesinghe’s UNP never backed our fighting the Eelam War IV. The UNP quite confidently thought the LTTE could never be defeated, militarily. Actually, the UNP humiliated the military and questioned Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka’s suitability to lead the Army. One of its top rung Ministers, the late Mangala Samaraweeer,a even claimed in public that Fonseka was not fit even to lead the Salvation Army, that would have been a case of USAID money disbursed underhand to people like him, working overtime.

Hasan accusing Wickremesinghe of defending the military and the Rajapaksas seemed ridiculous against the backdrop of the latter’s treacherous co-sponsorship of an accountability resolution against one’s own security forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) by his government.

Then Premier Wickremesinghe teamed up with Yahapalana President Maithripala Sisisena to betray the warwinning military. In line with a backdoor agreement with the US and Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Yahapalana government agreed to establish hybrid war crimes mechanism to investigate alleged war crimes.

The former President could have used Lord Naseby’s disclosure of confidential wartime British High Commission dispatches from Colombo to question Hasan and the audience on war dead. Both British diplomatic cables and a UN report that had dealt with war dead placed the figure between 7,000 and 8,000 whereas the PoE estimated 40,000 dead. Wickremesinghe couldn’t have been unaware of Lord Naseby’s revelation and the much discussed Colombo based US Defence Attaché Colonel Lawrence Smith’s declaration at the first ever Colombo Defence seminar, in 2011, regarding claims of planned surrender by a section of the LTTE. The writer was present at the event when Smith responded to questions raised by Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, who had served as the Indian commander in charge of the Barricaloa-Ampara sector during the 1987-1988 period.

“Hello, may I say something to a couple of questions raised. I’ve been the Defence Attaché here at the US Embassy since June 2008. Regarding the various versions of events that came out in the final hours and days of the conflict — from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE — Nadesan, KP — people who weren’t and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE.

“So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real.

“And I think the same is true for the version of events. It’s not so uncommon in combat operations, in the fog of war, as we all get our reports second, third and fourth hand from various commanders at various levels that the stories don’t seem to all quite match up.

“But I can say that the version presented here so far in this is what I heard as I was here during that time. And I think I better leave it at that before I get into trouble”, he said.

No point in blaming Wickremesinghe for not exploiting such available information in the public domain when the warwinning team (read Rajapaksa governments) shamefully failed to mount an effective counter attack. The Rajapaksas were always in denial mode and never really wanted to address issues in a methodical way. Instead of using all available information to mount an effective defence, the Rajapaksa government squandered millions of USD for propaganda efforts in the US.

Wickremesinghe should have mentioned before the Conway Hall WikiLeaks revelations pertained to the war. WikiLeaks revealed a US dispatch that quoted ICRC Head of Operations for South Asia Jacques de Maio as having told US Ambassador in Geneva, Clint Williamson, though there had been serious violations of International Humanitarian Law, there was no genocide.

Perhaps, one of the most significant declarations that had been made by de Maio was that the Army actually could have won the military battle faster with higher civilian casualties, yet chose a slower approach which led to a greater number of Sri Lankan military deaths. Obviously Wickremesinghe hadn’t been aware of developments he should have been conversant with and as a result the former President couldn’t hit back hard.

How could Yahapalana Premier Wickremesinghe fail to mention two mega lies that had been propagated during his tenure, but subsequently exposed? High profile accusations regarding Mannar mass graves accepted no less a person than UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet and the then Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran’s claim of the Army poisoning over 100 LTTE cadres in custody proved to be nothing but lies.

The Fonseka factor

Wickremesinghe could have mentioned conscription of children by the LTTE and indiscriminate use of women in high intensity battles, particularly in the Northern theatre. The ex-President failed to do so. Perhaps, Wickremesinghe should have reminded the Conway Hall crowd that the people of the Northern and Eastern Provinces had clearly disregarded unsubstantiated war crimes accusations by overwhelmingly voting for retired General Sarath Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. Although Fonseka lost by a staggering 1.8 mn votes, he comfortably won eight predominately Tamil-speaking administrative districts, including Jaffna, just nine months after the conclusion of the war.

War crimes allegations ended up in a wastepaper basket the day the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), one-time LTTE mouthpiece, declared its support for Fonseka. Against the backdrop of the TNA backing Fonseka, whose Army had been accused of human rights violations on a massive scale, often repeated allegations seemed untenable.

Wickremesinghe cannot, under any circumstances, forget that episode as it was his project that brought UNP-TNA-JVP-SLMC and CWC together in 2010. WikiLeaks exposed US dispatches from Colombo pertaining to the US hand in the political project.

We haven’t heard of PEARL or any other organization with similar vision requesting the LTTE to release civilians held during the last phase of the fighting as a human shield by the besieged LTTE. Having forced over 300,000 people to accompany retreating LTTE units, they used them as human shields. The bottom line is that the Diaspora remained blind to civilian sufferings as long as they felt the LTTE could deliver a knockout blow to the Army on the Vanni east front. Canada-based veteran journalist, D. B. S Jayaraj, then considered as an authority on the conflict by many, confidently predicted, in late Dec. 2008, an impending devastating LTTE counter attack and the rolling back of the Army. Then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had been a frontline combat officer during his entire military career till he retired in the early ’90s , told the writer at the time that the LTTE was not in a position to reverse the situation. Within two weeks, the Army overran Kilinochchi, the headquarters of the LTTE. That was the end of the story.

Wickremesinghe and none of those seated at the Conway Hall ever anticipated the fall of Kilinochchi in early January 2009 and the total collapse of the Tiger fighting formations, within five months.

RW’s response to Aragalaya

Hasan questioned Wickremesinghe regarding his response to Aragalaya as well as what was known as the Batalanda torture camp that existed in the late’ 80s.

Hasan never sought Wickremesinghe’s opinion on the alleged US role in Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ousting, in spite of recent US declarations about USAID interventions in many parts of the world and accusations the US intervened in support of Aragalaya. Interestingly, Hasan found fault with Wickremesinghe for ordering the military to restore law and order while the former President recalled massive destruction caused by Aragalaya and the bid to storm Parliament. Wickremesinghe reminded Hasan how Aragalaya activists killed SLPP parliamentarian Amarakeerthi Atukorale at Nittambuwa. Atukorale was the last MP killed in violence. The LTTE and the JVP killed over 50 serving and ex-parliamentarians and many lesser politicians.

Batalanda operation, whether we like it or not, had been in line with President JRJ counter insurgency strategy at a time the JVP threatened to overwhelm the UNP-led dictatorial government, taking advantage of the Indo-Lanka accord and the deployment of the Indian Army here to inspire violence. Countries that had been threatened by terrorism adopted controversial measures such as ‘extraordinary rendition’ (apprehending/kidnapping suspected terrorists and detain them in countries where torture is widely practiced. The US-led operation received the backing of many countries, including the UK and Sri Lanka).

The second JVP insurrection had to be crushed, whatever the consequences were, though President JRJ should be held responsible for the catastrophic political measures that plunged the country into turmoil. Wickremesinghe had been a member of JRJ’s Cabinet and should be held collectively responsible for the mayhem the then President caused.

Proscription of the JVP in the run-up to the 1982 presidential election and the postponement of parliamentary election that was to be held in 1983 to 1989 caused resentment among all communities and set the stage for terrorist campaigns in the North and the South. The UNP that had caused so much political destruction is today represented in Parliament by just one MP (CWC member as the party contested under the Elephant symbol).

Wickremesinghe should be grateful to Hasan for not asking him to explain how under his watch the UNP deteriorated to such an extent that it was reduced to zero in Parliament. It would have been better if Hasan asked Wickremesinghe to explain why the Yahapalana administration from 2015 to 2019 borrowed billions of dollars from the international bond market, at high interest, and contributed to the economic bankruptcy of the country in 2022.

Midweek Review

Guru Geethaya:

Published

5 days ago

2025/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A Melancholic Song for Public Education and Social Enlightenment

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

Guru Geethaya , the song of a teacher, the Sinhala version of Chingiz Aitmatov’s famous novel, The First Teacher, is one of the most inspirational novels among Sinhala readers. Rendered to Sinhala by the veteran translator, Dedigama V. Rodrigo, the novel entered the Sinhala literary scene through the admirable efforts of the Progress Publishers of the former Soviet Union. And like many other Russian and Soviet classics, Guru Geethaya was available at a cheap price. Progress Publishers must be commended for that service. With the fall of the Soviet Union, one of the phenomenal entities that shaped our literary knowledge and taste, the Progress Publishers fell apart. Now, those Russian classics are not easily available, certainly not at an affordable price. Perhaps, a separate essay must be written about the progressive contribution that the Progress Publishers made to enrich Sinhala literary culture. And of course, those Russian classics were translated into Tamil as well.

Sinhala film of a Soviet Novel

Upali Gamlath has made a Sinhala film out of Guru Geethaya, and after waiting in line for many years, the film was recently released. It was heartening to see a sizable audience attended an evening show of Guru Geethaya last weekend at Kandy. I came to know that the film was doing well. Guru Geethaya, the film, regardless of its quality as a work of art, must continue to attract audiences, and it has potential to contribute to the rebuilding of the Sinhala film industry.

As a work of art, I have mixed feelings about Guru Geethaya. After all, it is the first film by the director. Here and there, there are glimpses of cinematic excellence. The actors in the leading role make an admirable effort to create the Duishen and Altynai, one of the best-known fictional couples in the Sinhala literary world. The Sinhala film version of the novel focuses mostly on the latent romantic relationship between the central couple. When Duishen arrives in this remote Kirgiz village in 1924 to establish a school, Altynai was just fourteen years old, and Duishen is, perhaps, in his late twenties. Just seven years after the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union is in the process of propagating modern education even to distant villages in massive Soviet Russia. This idealist young teacher from the communist party wants the children of these backward hinterlands to receive modern education. When he arrives there, both parents and children of these mountains are illiterate and trapped in a tribal mode of existence. If there is anything called ‘education’ they have received, it is the religious dogma passed on to them by Islamic mullahs.

Youthful Idealism

In an extremely patriarchal world, a fourteen-year-old girl, an orphan, living under the oppression of distant relatives, Altynai has no hope for a happy future. And there is no hope for modern education. Right at that moment, Duishen arrives at the village as an agent of the Russian revolution and as a harbinger of revolutionary modernity. He is passionate about establishing a school there. By the third decade of the twentieth century, education is a right, and every child born into this world must be educated. In Soviet Russia, educating the Russian population was a goal of the revolution. ‘Abolition of illiteracy’ was a revolutionary goal often articulated by Lenin himself.

Among those village kids, only Altynai can share the idealism of Duishen. She has never known a school. But she instinctively knows that education is something desirable and the only way to get out of the trap of ignorance and poverty. In that male-dominated world ruled by Mullah-ethics, she is sold to be the second wife of a much older man. Duishen must liberate the girl from those uncultured men before she is sent away to Moscow for an education institute newly established by the Soviet government. The teacher manages to get her away those men but not before she was abducted and raped.

This slim novel, less than one hundred pages, captures the essence of what the agents of revolution had to face when modernising distant Soviet lands. Of course, they had to engage in this process of social development while the liberal West led by the US, and the religious West, led by the Catholic church, were unitedly working to defeat the revolution. Ironically, the Russian revolution shared many ideals of Western modernity. For example, the liberal West could have supported what people like Duishen were doing in these remote Kirgiz villages in the 1920s. But geopolitics did not work that way, especially during the cold war. It may be cold, but it was certainly ‘war’, and the West was so sure of it. We may have all kinds of issues about the brutality of Stalinist Russia, but the early idealism of the Russian revolution represented in this slim novel, The First Teacher or, Guru Geethaya, has been so inspirational for many of us in the developing world.

Growing up as a son of a working-class family in rural Sri Lanka, I would not have become a professor at a university without the free education system of our country. When I first read Guru Geethaya as a teenager in the mid 1980s, I literally fell in love with the novel. Of course, like many others, I too idealised the teacher, Duishen. Many years later, I learned that there were greater novels. Even among Russian novels, this is not the greatest. I would rate Doctor Zhivago, a critique of revolutionary violence and idealism, much higher than Guru Geethaya. Aitmatov himself has written greater novels- many of which have been translated into Sinhala. But people adore this slim novel about a devoted teacher. Perhaps, the love for our free education system is unconsciously projected onto Duishen. Sinhala people often liken good schoolteachers to Duishen.

As I said earlier, the focus of Upali Gamlath’s film version of the novel is on the unexpressed romantic love between Duishen and Altynai. In the novel as a man of revolution and as an adult, Dushen controls his emotions about the pretty and intelligent Altynai. In the Sinhala film, his love is much more pronounced though never expressed in words. In the novel, Altynai from her Moscow school writes a letter to Duishen expressing her love. We do not get to know whether he ever received it. By this time, World War II was around the corner, or the war had already arrived, and the counter-revolutionary forces in Russia were also creating troubles. Stalinist state machine is doing all the bad things that we now know. So, Duishen must have been preoccupied with other things. Or being an ideal teacher, he did not want to accept her love.

Creative Readings and a slim novel

It may be slim in terms of number of pages, but Aitmatov’s novel offers so much to an inventive reader. One could even argue that it is implicitly critical of the Soviet education endeavor. For example, with all due respect to the idealism and kindness of Duishen, he is an extremely limited first teacher. Except for his idealist loyalty to the communist party, he does not have any serious idea of education. In that sense, the novel can be read as an implicit critique of the kind of education the Soviet government established in distant villages. Except for just one girl, we do not know how many others were freed from illiteracy. During much of the early decades of the twentieth century, Lenin wrote extensively about the need for ‘proper education.’ Many of those writings have been collected as On Public Education (1975), again, by Progress Publishers. Writing to safeguard the revolution, by education Lenin meant, a kind of indoctrination aimed at liberating people from ‘bourgeois ideologies’ and getting them under the dictatorship of one party. For me, it is an extremely limited understanding of education. But when he firmly believed that “Russia is the country assigned by history the role of trailblazer of the socialist revolution(p. 77)”, it was easy for Lenin to see education as a huge propaganda programme intended to establish the dominance of a single party, by extension the dominance of a single ideology. When Duishen starts his school in the Kirgiz village, he pastes a photo of Lenin on the wall. There Duishen is an instrument of spreading the ideology of a single party. But with all those ideological limits, the revolutionary government was trying to make the Russian population literate. In a short essay called, “About our schools” written in 1913, included in the book mentioned above, Lenin explains how badly funded and poorly administered Russian schools were under the Tsar administration and religious authorities. It was clear that for the Tsar regime illiteracy was a tool of ruling. The role of teachers such as Duishen needs to be appreciated in that context.

By now history has given Guru Geethaya its proper place. It is a simple, short novel, about a teacher who attempted to live an ideal life within his own historical context.

In the novel, Aitmatov does not tell us what Dushen teaches. The content of that education is not known to us. Reading the novel now, and of course watching the movie, exactly one hundred years after Duishen arrived in that village, we are experienced and theoretically equipped enough to see beyond the context of the novel’s original context. The Sinhala movie, however, does not provide us with such rich artistic experience.

Saving the Girl/Women

When the revolutionary guards arrive in this remote village to assist Duishen, Altynai has been abducted and raped. If the education system was better planned the girl would have had a much more dignified life without going through that humiliation. Her traumatic experience is so much that she does not return to her village until after she becomes a professor, and she is invited to attend a function.

The Sinhala film industry seems to be making a comeback. And it needs a wide variety of movies to regularly attract a diverse audience. In that sense, I am more than happy that Guru Geethaya is doing well. At the same time, in the context of recent political change, where the need for revitalising our free education system is voiced from many quarters, this film is a melancholic song for an uplifting education. Not to get everyone under the ideological will of a single party, our education must be one that liberates us from all forms of dominance and authority.

Though written in 1962, the novel is set in 1924, which was also the year of Lenin’s death -an incident beautifully described in the novel. There he is represented as a visionary man who wanted to create a better future for these rural children. Within a very different context those who initiated the free education system in Sri Lanka also envisioned a better future for us. That is perhaps why Guru Geethaya has been a beloved piece of literature that draws crowds even to its film version.