Midweek Review

What does it mean to be ill? Philosophy of Disease and Corona Crisis

Published

4 years ago

2021/02/24

Illness is never entirely ‘mental’ or entirely ‘somatic’; illness is unhomelike being-in-the-world of Dasein including both aspects as inter-nested.

(Fredrik Svenaeus, Med Healthcare, and Philosophy, 2011)

By Saumya Liyanage

The COVID-19 outbreak has already brought about a myriad of medical, political and military procedures. Efforts are being made by national health institutions to curb the virus under the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO). In this country, a Presidential Task Force has been set up to adopt measures to control the transmission of the virus.

The corona outbreak has led to racial and anthropocentric sentiments among communities and some social groups. The racial sentiment has been developing as humans are the carriers of the disease, and people who are infected, or are suspected to be infected, are required to undergo self-quarantine for the protection of society. Anthropocentric sentiment has developed among people because this viral infection has germinated through bats or other animals that humans have come into contact with.

This negative feeling towards nature and anthropocentrism further reflects how we think of the natural world and our sharing of it with other animals. This viral outbreak has gradually given rise to the idea that human existence is detached from the environment; the coronavirus infection has heightened this anthropocentric mentality that we are superior to all other species in the world. Humans have not only alienated themselves from the environments, mainly others species but separated the sick from the healthy. Social distancing has come to stay.

The distancing of humans from the environment due to the corona outbreak further reflects other suppressive apparatuses at work. As the form of anthropocentrism operates through the government regulations, this patriarchal domination suppresses women, children and old people in the community. My observation is that this dominant ideology is operated through medical and military structures through which the government is trying to battle against the viral infection. For the patriarchy, the coronavirus appears as the other, and their battle is to fight it. Countries like Sri Lanka, India, and many African nations have failed to practise social distancing due to diverse social stratifications. It is evident how the elite and bourgeoisie gather around supermarkets one-metre apart in keeping with medical and military procedures. As expressed in social media, social distancing and waiting hours at supermarkets reflect the apolitical sentiment of the bourgeoisie and their subordination, whereas the poo rush to other markets and try to grab anything they can find. However, this anthropocentric sentiment is othering not only the nature in which we live in but other marginalised communities who are weak and vulnerable to the pandemic. Under these circumstances, measures such as ‘social distancing’ are what only the bourgeoisie can practise.

Descartes’s Body and illness

In the traditional Cartesian philosophy, the human body is defined as something similar to a machine, and the spirit or the soul is defined as something separated from this mechanical body. This philosophical assumption is reflected through western medicine and the problem with the current medicinal practices is that the human body and its functionalities are defined and understood as a mechanical body that consists of certain parts and organs. According to this conception, the body organs and other body parts such as limbs are mere mechanical parts of the body that can be dissected, replaced or repaired (Kibbe 2014, Goldenberg 2010). This long historical problem of conceptualising the human body as a biomechanical entity has serious medical circumstances when it comes to how we understand the meaning of patient–health care worker relationship in the current medical care settings. James A. Marcum argues: ‘Working from the biomechanical model of the body, today’s physician operates primarily as a mechanic or technician, whose clinical gaze is focused neither on the patient as a whole nor on the patient’s lived context but exclusively on the diseased body or body part’ (Marcum. J. A., 2004, p. 311).

The dominant medical discourse in the world is thus focused on the human corpus as a place for performing dissections and replacements. This corpus can be opened, removed, replaced or have organs transplanted due to certain illnesses. The problem with these biomechanical approaches to the human body is that the medical world has forgotten the fact that the human body is not merely flesh or a collection of organs or limbs. The phenomenological understanding of the body in contrast to the biomechanical understanding of the body is somewhat different as phenomenology understands the human body as a sentient being or a ‘lived body’ that is already and always attuned to the world. The body thus has its own ways of being-in-the-world and the body also understands the world better than we rationally think of it. Hence, the phenomenal body challenges the biomechanical body in contemporary medical discourse. Writing about current medical practices and patient care, Goldenberg argues that, modern medical technology such as stethoscope, ophthalmoscope, and X-ray have conceptualized the human body as a mechanical object and this conceptualization has permitted us to dissect the lived body (Goldenberg M. J., 2010 p. 51).

First, I would like to briefly discuss why phenomenology is vital for us to understand the nature of illness in contrast to wellbeing. The coronavirus infection has brought up certain assumptions of the human body and its existence as something decayed through illness and death. The daily death tolls in the US, Italy and elsewhere have gradually created the sentiment that the human body is merely a physical entity that can be infected by a viral pandemic or it is a body that can be saved through mechanical manipulation of medical and political discourses. It is true that amidst this pandemic crisis, human beings have to abide by government regulations and medical procedures in such a way that they can deal with the viral pandemic.

However, in this catalytic situation, the human body becomes a mere object of medical and political manipulation. As seen in many of the international news channels, the human body is becoming a canvas for medical procedures as well as torture and violence. Web channels and Facebook circulate how the human body is being diseased and also being tortured by the military because of noncompliance with the rules and regulations amidst this coronavirus pandemic. One cannot contemplate these paradoxical reactions of law enforcement and medical institutions. The body is treated as a surface of violence, torture, diseased to establish its beauty, wellbeing, and immortality. In this respect, bodies’ presence in the current social milieu is somewhat controversial and fragmented. The ruling government and medical institutions need people to be healthy and adopt preventive measures. On the other hand, bodies are being threatened, beaten, isolated and further imprisoned or left behind amid corona warfare.

Phenomenology and the lived body

A new discussion about the human body has come to the fore because our bodies have been continually threatened by both the viral infection and law enforcement. As seen so far, whether it is medical or military discourses, the human body is being manipulated and treated in many forceful ways. The coronavirus infects the internality of the body while the government is policing the flesh of the body. But what it means to have a body and what the role of the body is in human existence are vital questions to be discussed in this difficult time. Hence, I turn to Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) known as the founder of phenomenology; he provides two sets of words to denote the existential natures of the body. The German word körper uses for the physical body or body as an object. The term Leib is used for the lived or living body. That is the body we perceive as a subject. Here, Husserl distinguishes two aspects of the human body. This means that in some situations, we tend to experience our bodies as objects; solid, physical like nature of the body; whereas, in some situations, we experience our body as a transcendental or a living entity which is known as the lived body. Generally, the word ‘lived body’ presents the body as a non-dualistic, sentient being in contrast to the Cartesian split of the body as a machine and the mind as an extended rational soul. The main difference between the lived body and the physical body is that this lived or animate body is always given as my own body (Crisis §2) and I experience myself as ‘holding sway’ over this body. The lived body is not just a centre of the experience, but a centre for action and self-directed movement (Luft and Overgaard 2014, ).

In this discussion of illness and disease, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s key concepts of phenomenology will also help to shed light to understand what it means to be diseased or what it means to be healthy. In this regard, concepts such as ‘being-in-the-world’ can be elaborated as to how a person is attuned to her/his environment and how this attunement is disrupted when the illness is invaded into a healthy body (Svenaeus 2011). Further, the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed the idea of ‘body-subject’ where he explains the power and expression of the human body not just as a corpus but as a consciousness establishing its ‘intentional arc’ as the power of attuning with the world. In this sense, I am motivated to write about the current illness caused by the coronavirus and understand the conundrum of being ill and not being ill in the light of phenomenology.

Alienation

When a person is ill and feeling unwell, one’s conscious experience is directly focused on her/his body, and the functionality and the smooth flow or the attunement of the body with its environment is primarily fractured or ceased. When one’s intentionality is directed towards her/his body, the autonomous nature of the body is paralyzed and ill-treated. This uncanny mood creates a disjuncture of our being-in-the-world which means our natural flow of being-with- other.

When someone is diseased, our natural flow of coping with the world and our emotional engagement with the world is disrupted. In a phenomenological sense, this can be understood as something similar to ‘unhomelike’ being-in-the-world (Svenaeus 2011). As Heidegger speculates in his Being and Time (1927), our natural attitude is that our body is thrown into the world where the body and the world are intertwined and bound together through its practicalities. The practicalities here refer to our bodily engagements with certain projects through tools and equipment. When we feel sick, that means our natural engagement with certain projects through the equipment is disrupted and disturbed. Our homelike being-in-the-world is fragmented or disrupted. Heidegger calls this ‘authentic anxiety’.

In this illness situation, our bodies experience the ‘otherness’ within oneself or alienation from oneself from her/his self. The idea of alienation is very familiar in theatre theory and especially Bertolt Brecht’s conceptualization of the actor’s disengagement with the character. In German, it is known as the verfremdung, which means the alienation or defamiliarizing of the familiar (Liyanage 2016). But the otherness that one may experience during illness is something that is to do with the duality of self and the experience of being self while possessing the dual existence. (the otherness of one’s own body comes to the fore). When the illness occurs the patient feels disengaged with her daily projects and she may feel pain, anxiety, dizzy and many other ailments. In such a situation, in a phenomenological sense what we experience is unhomelike being-in-the-world. This ‘unhomelikeness’ is the ‘otherness’ that one may experience during illness. In a healthy situation, a person’s projects are operated through bodily actions that are intertwined with the outer world. These activities always function with ease because the body is always absent in the delivery of human action. Yet the diseased body is not operated in this manner. When the body is diseased, it is not operated behind the curtain or in other words, the body is not absent. The body always comes to the fore. In contrast to this unhomelikeness, when the person is fully operative and engaged in projects in the world, these healthy engagements are characterized by the mood that one possesses in engaging ‘life-world’ activities (Nagatomo 1992). For instance, if I am not yet infected by the virus, my daily routine activities are not disturbed by the illness and my full operation as a healthy person is manifested by the emotional engagement and the expression that I have during my activities. This is vital for us to understand the ‘mood’ of the person who is fully being-in-the-world.

Gaze and Illness

In the recent discussion on the corona outbreak and the battle against the disease, one of the major social psychological factors that have developed in recent weeks is that people are afraid of being identified as COVID-19 infectious individuals. The problem of this phenomenon is that whether you are infected or not, people have a great fear of being identified as a diseased person. How can we understand this mental condition? As I discussed earlier, it is a fear of being alienated from our selfhood. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book Being and Nothingness (1943) articulates this concept through the gaze of the other. The fear of being ill encapsulates the individual’s experience of her/his objectification of the body as an ‘unhomelike being-in-the-world in the wake of a disease. In Sartre’s lexicon, there are other ways that one’s body can be gazed at by others and alienated from her/his self. For instance, seeing a doctor check whether I have been infected by a disease demonstrates that in the confrontation of the doctor’s gaze, my body is becoming an object to me. However, this alienation of my own body from my own conscious experiences is the moment that I experience the discomfort and further the shame of being ill. In Sartre’s philosophy, ‘the gaze of another person has the power of objectification of my own body. Therefore, I experience the ‘otherness’ or the alienation of my own body as if someone who is a conscious person looking at me and makes my conscious attention towards my body’ (Svenaeus 2009).

Conclusion

The human body is an unprecedented creation of nature that is always being in the world as a living and sentient being. It is a sentient being because it always demonstrates to the world of its ‘becoming’ rather than being a final product. ‘The human body is a unique aesthetic material; it is a living organism, always in a state of becoming; that is, in a continual process of transformation’ (Fischer-Lichte 2014, p. 25). We need to understand the living nature of our bodies in this difficult time because, as argued in the foregoing, the human body is not merely a collection of organs or an assemblage of outer and inner materials combined to develop a physical body. As Merleau-Ponty speculates, the human body is a living entity and it is already anchored in the world before we rationally think of our outer world and environment. This is why medical doctors and health workers need to rethink how they should interact with or treat patients. Especially at this difficult time of the coronavirus outbreak, we further need to change our perspectives towards those who are affected with COVID-19, and how we understand their illness and how we take care of the diseased.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Himansi Dehigama and Sachini Senevirathne, PGIE, Open University Colombo who have proof read this paper.

Saumya Liyanage

(PhD) is an actor and a Professor of theatre and drama, at the Faculty of Dance and Drama, University of Visual and Performing Arts Colombo.

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Reference list

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Marcum, J.A. (2005). Biomechanical and phenomenological models of the body, the meaning of illness and quality of care. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 7(3), 311–320.

Merleau-Ponty, M. and Smith, C. (2015). Phenomenology of perception. London: Forgotten Books.

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Svenaeus, F. (2011a). Illness as unhomelike being-in-the-world: Heidegger and the phenomenology of medicine. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, [online] 14(3), pp.333–343. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21107913 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2020].

Svenaeus, F. (2011b). Illness as unhomelike being-in-the-world: Heidegger and the phenomenology of medicine. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, [online] 14(3), pp.333–343. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21107913 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2020].

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Midweek Review

Ranil in Head-to-Head controversy

Published

6 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

6 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.