Midweek Review

The value of aesthetic sentiment and its role in our lives

Published

4 years ago

2020/12/16

Figure 2: ‘I see me’ a dance work choreographed and performed by Kanchana Malshani, Choreography Lab, Goethe Institute, Colombo 2019. Photo credits Malaka Mp Photography.

Pleasure or Purpose?

by Saumya Liyanage

This paper is based on a guest speech delivered at the annual lecture series titled ‘Medicine and Beyond’ organized by the Galle Medical Association at Karapitiya Teaching Hospital in 2019.

Introduction

Artistic practice as a creative endeavour is regarded as a second-rate activity when it comes to considering science and scientific truth claims. Plato wanted to remove artists from his utopian State. He argued that arts generated moral issues and bad sentiments so this type of human actions should be removed from the society. This tendency of marginalising the arts and artists’ works increased in 18th century Europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a tendency of ‘faculty psychology’ started identifying higher and lower faculties of sense experiences and those psychologists categorised human sense experience in a hierarchical manner. Along with this, there are higher faculties that are believed to correspond with human intellect and there are lower faculties which are defined as non-cognitive and bodily. These bodily faculties produce subjective experience (Johnson 2007).

Mark Johnson here refers to the eye of the human being as one of the higher faculties which are believe to produce human intellect. The eye gathers information which is processed in the brain, and the brain orders the body to take action. This is the ‘Nature-idea-response’ model that Western science has propagated for the last few centuries. We observe worldly phenomena, process data in the brain, and come to certain conclusions. Therefore, information which is gathered through the eye and processed in the brain, dominates our knowledge and we assume that our intellect is developed through the information gathered through the eye. The eye also refers to the mind or ‘mind-eye’ as well. However, other senses such as smell, touch, taste, and hearing are referred as secondary to ocular-centric perception. While these lower level senses provide lower rated sense experience, the higher order sense like the eye provides higher order intellectual attainment. As a result, aesthetic pleasure is also categorised as a lower level of sense experience because we believe that the arts ignite subjective mental states. This subjective experience is placed against rational thinking. Even in Asian aesthetic theory, ‘rasa’ is also defined as something related to ‘extract of essence’ or taste of food. In line with this, the consumption of food and extricating ‘rasa’ is a secondary sense experience achieved through the tongue.

Aesthetic pleasure

Our daily life is filled with activities: lecturing, teaching, seeing patients, having meetings, driving cars, cooking, washing, and cleaning. All these activities are understood as rational activities. Therefore, we think that we need aesthetic pleasure, which is placed against reason and again less rational, less intellectual, but aesthetic entertainment, a much-needed component of life, is considered ‘subjective’ because it addresses human sentiments, feelings, and emotions. In the rational-emotional binary opposition, reason is favoured and hierarchically higher than emotion. For instance, sexual pleasure is seen as obscene and less intellectual similar to mere bodily activity.

Arts, especially the aesthetic, come into play as a means of escape from anxieties in our daily lives. The idea of Terror Management Theory (TMT) explains how we are conscious about our bodies and health, and take care of our wellbeing through various activities. The idea behind this consumption of arts is connected with the desire for human immortality. The fear of death is alleviated by seeking help from art and aesthetic pleasure. Thus, aesthetic experience is used as a way of escaping daily reality and also used as a tool of wellbeing. However, my question is whether these arts and aesthetics are there only for us to gain pleasure. Are there any other utilitarian needs for which we humans can use the arts? What are the other benefits that the arts can bring to human life? In what capacity could art enrich our human experience? These are some of the vital questions that I would like to discuss here.

Body, Mind and Cognition

Western modern philosophy theorises the division between the rational mind and the body, and the human body is understood as a separate function like a mere mechanical object similar to a clock or a machine. We see the human beings and their bodily functions in this dualistic way. Accordingly, a human being has two separate entities: mind and body. Bodies decay and are vulnerable to all sorts of diseases and ailments. We unconsciously conceptualise our bodies as a collection of functionalities such as blood circulation, respiratory functions, secretions such as urine and saliva, functions of organs such as lungs, liver, heart, and intestines. These conceptualisations of human body and its functionalities lead us to think of our bodies as inanimate objects which are enlivened through blood and breath. We distinctively differ between the thinking substance (mind) and the physical body (Soma) because we believe that thinking is a higher order function, which has nothing to do with the physical body. These daily conceptualisations of our thinking and bodily functions lead us to separate our rational thoughts from bodily functions. Therefore, the body is marginalised in the history of philosophy.

Yet, cognitive science has recently found that our thinking activities, conceptualisation, and ideas are not generated in a separate mind but these ‘mind activities’ are inherently embodied (George L., & Mark J., 1999, p. 3). The embodied mind is developed through organism-environment interaction or coupling. Traditionally, psychologists and philosophers have believed that thinking and thought processes are rational and intentional activities. However, recent studies have proved that our thoughts do not function rationally but occur largely within our unconscious region.

Further, abstract ideas and concepts are also largely metaphorical. For instance, in our daily lives, many abstract concepts such as time, space, distance, speed, etc., are understood in linguistic metaphorical structures (George L., & Mark J., 1999). These key findings of cognitive science have already questioned the way we understand human nature and our engagement with the world. We are now at a juncture where we may need to reconsider our previous assumptions on the human mind, reason and aesthetic experience and our engagement with the world. One cannot marginalise aesthetic sentiment as merely ‘subjective’ because the subjective-objective dichotomy cannot be applied anymore to explain how people perceive aesthetic experience. In other words, aesthetic sentiment is both rational and emotional at the same time. Hence, artistic activities, aesthetic experience, and perception are not mere cognitive or sentimental functions but about how human beings seriously engage with the world.

Music

Let me begin with music. Music plays a key role in shaping our lives and forming our experience as human beings. Music has the power to bring back memories and histories of our lives and it allows us to escape from the current social reality and encourage us to live through the past. Many of us are fond of listening to old music. The reason is that these musical sounds evoke nostalgic sentiments in us and help us escape from the current reality. Let’s contemplate for a moment and see what happens when you hear a familiar song from the 70s or 80s. How do we understand the experience it provides us? How do we understand its meanings despite its language and meanings derived from linguistic connotations? One of the basic arguments here is that we understand music not just because we know the language or we know the particular genre of music, but our understanding is rooted in bodily means. Mark Johnson argues: ‘The meaning in and of the music is not verbal or linguistic, but rather bodily and felt. We understand the meaning of longing, desire, expectation, for better things to come, and so on. We cannot convey it verbally, but it is nonetheless meaningful, and it is enacted via our active engagement with the music’ (Johnson 2007, p. 242). It is not a particular aesthetic mind that germinates and informs us about the meaning of music but it is the corporeal knowledge that is inherent in human beings which suggests to us different connotations of what we listen. The argument here is that music is an abstract form of art and its meanings go beyond our linguistic structures and connote indescribable meanings derived through our senses.

In terms of understanding arts and extricating aesthetic pleasure, we tend to transform all kinds of aesthetic experience into a ‘representation’ form. Transforming innate meanings into a representational mode allows humans to understand the arts as a ‘particular language’. There is a very popular saying that “music is a universal language”. But the irony is we do not listen or familiarize ourselves even with our neighbours’ musical traditions such as Carnatic music. Because language dominates the domain of understanding and eventually what we do is transform other forms of experiences into a language like metaphors through which we assume that we could understand the meaning of arts. Therefore music can be understood not only as an aesthetic object but something innately social and ideological text.

Figure 3: Cassandra directed by Seth Baumrin at Gershom Theatre, Lviv Ukraine, 2019. Actor, Lyudmyla Honcharova is performing with co-actors. Photo credit Vadym Rybin.

Dance

Let me now discuss, in brief, the values pertaining to dance. Dance as an art form can present diverse forms of expressions and meanings. Traditionally, Sri Lankan dance for instance have various codifications where dance audiences extricate meanings through narratives and stories embedded in dance. Hanuma Wannama or Gajaga Wannama depicts animal behaviours and meanings related to how these animals behave and move along with stories related to religion and rituals. Without these narratives embedded in traditional dance, we cannot see what meanings or feelings that these moving bodies bring as aesthetic meanings to the viewers. Similar to other art forms, we tend to define dance again as a universal language, or ‘mother of all tongues, or ‘the mirror of the soul’ (Warren cited in Leavy 2015, p. 149). These views are commonplace in the society related to dance, because we try to understand dance as a particular ‘language’ similar to music.

However, dance is one of the most abstract forms of art where meanings cannot directly be accessed.

Despite the literal and narrative meanings embedded in it, dance is used to cultivate other forms of values and meanings for human beings. Dance is narrative and tells stories. In traditional forms of dance, people derive meaning from narratives and stories embedded in dance rituals. These stories and narratives encapsulate human nature and gods’ and goddesses’ influence in human lives and wellbeing. Dance is emancipatory and used as a way of expressing social and personal discomforts and disagreements. There are some instances in which dance is used to critique social norms and raise disagreements through humour and satire. These forms also can be seen in some traditional dance dramas such as Kolam or Sokari in Sri Lankan dance-drama traditions. In these dance-drama forms, people use this art form to critique and show their discontent about established hierarchies and social status. Dance can be used to raise social cohesion by engaging with various communities and bringing them to a common platform. Dance is used as a healing process and it can heighten human wellbeing and communal sense. So, there are many ways in which we can understand how dance could be utilised in our daily life. In recent studies, dance has been identified as a tool to transcend historical time. As Cleark-Replley argues ‘dance is a form of transformative human action that expresses an individual’s being with purposive ends and can thus support communal relations’ (Cleark-Replley cited in Leavy 2015, p. 149).

Theatre

Finally, I would like to discuss briefly how theatre and performance practice could benefit our lives not only as a source of aesthetic pleasure but as a way to uplift other human values in our daily life and beyond. Theatre is a powerful medium through which one can communicate and share ideas and thoughts with other communities. The idea of ‘theatre’ has been used for a wide variety of meanings from antiquity to the present. The term theatrum mundi is used to denote the ‘world as theatre’ capturing every human activity taking place in the world. Further the term theatrum vita humane connotes the idea of ‘life as theatre’ (Fischer-Lichte, E. 2014). These usages therefore indicate how the term theatre is used to encapsulate both human and worldly activities.

Theatre invites actors and theatergoers to get together and engage in a communal space where they share certain meanings of their lives and surrounding environment. This is understood as an autopoiesis feedback loop or ‘co-presence’ of a group of performers and viewers. In this co-presence, theatre ‘investigates’ as well as ‘represents’ social phenomena where we live in (Leavy 2015, p. 174). Hence, theatre is not only for us to have pleasure and use as a leisure activity but also an investigation, exploration and representation of our daily realities. In general, theatrical performance raises our conscious awareness of where we live, what we do, and how we can change our environment. This awareness is vital for human beings to live and work in a society where unjust and exploitation is dominated. Theatre raises our awareness of our surroundings and further questions prejudices dominating in social structures. Theatre has the power to empower marginalized communities, groups of people who are suppressed by dominant power structures such as military, medical or governments. Theatre therefore stands along with those marginalized people and leads their struggles to emancipate them from those suppressive tools. In this sense theatre is political and educational. Theatre activism leads people to engage with policy and make changes in how they are being governed. Theatre is education in the sense that it blurs the boundaries and restrictions imposed in the traditional educational systems and allows people to learn without been subjugated to established pedagogies. Thus theatre creates a space for people whose voice is unheard and left alone. People who are involved in theatrical enactment and who are a part of the audience can cultivate knowledge through watching and engaging with the theatre. In this way, theatre and performance can serve to enhance human experience in diverse ways.

Conclusion

In these concluding remarks I would like to restate the idea that similar to scientific enquiry, the arts and arts practitioners also do research in their respective fields and create theories, challenge existing concepts and prejudices, develop new ideas, find new forms, and problematize existing knowledge with new creative research and insights. As I have argued above, the history of philosophy has created a gap between artistic endeavors and scientific explorations. However, with new understanding about how the human brain and cognition operate, it is clearly proved that human thinking, conceptualization, and ideas, traditionally understood as a function of the rational mind, are not rational activities but are embedded with emotional drives and occur largely in the human unconscious. In line with this aesthetic sentiment is an important human cognitive function that goes beyond our limits of language. Therefore, the arts override language and linguistic meanings. We make sense of the arts and our environment through our bodies and their encroachment with the outer world. The value of the practice of the arts and aesthetic sentiment is an integral component of human development. It is our duty for the next generation to convince that the arts and the aesthetic is another way of holistically understanding the world that science cannot perceive through rational means.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Dr Arosha Dissanayake, past president of the GMA and all the committee members of the association who made this event possible. Further a special gratitude goes to Himansi Dehigama and Sachini Senevirathne for helping prepare this paper.

References

Fischer-Lichte, E. (2014). The Routledge introduction to theatre and performance studies. London: Routledge.

Johnson, M. (2012). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Kashima, E.S. (2010). Culture and Terror Management: What is “Culture” in Cultural Psychology and Terror Management Theory? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(3), pp.164–173.

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (n.d.). Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York, Ny: Basic Books, [20]10.

Leavy, P. (2019). Handbook of arts-based research. New York: The Guilford Press.

Leavy, P. (2020). Method meets art : arts-based research practice. New York: The Guilford Press.

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Midweek Review

Ranil in Head-to-Head controversy

Published

4 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

4 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.