Archives

by Padma Edirisinghe

The mini screen on the CNN channel focused recently on a tutory in North Korea packed with youth earnestly, learning the English language. A girl on being questioned what motivated her to English answered without batting her charming eyelids.

"It is useful to learn the language of the enemy"

I would not go so far to state that the English were considered our enemies except in frenzied periods whipped up by rebellions. The many welfare policies of the conquerors that followed Sri Wickrama's tyrannical rule mitigated such an attitude. It was not manifest even in the third quarter of the 19th century when a Buddhist oriented English medium education began its formative stages. It was indeed a peculiar experiment. Further the mastermind behind this experiment himself was a white man, an American hailing from New Jersey off New York. It was a lucky day for Buddhism when King Asoka seated in his balcony and visualizing the thousands of corpses dumped in Kalinga Desha subsequent to his Kalinga wars, saw a yellow robed mendicant ambling along the street before the palace.

There was something so sublime in him and so peaceful. Despite having conquered nearly the whole of India stretching from present Afghanistan to present Chennai (Madras) peace of mind was the one thing that the great emperor Asoka lacked. He sent for the monk and asked him what caused his peaceful demenor and was made audience to Buddha's teachings.

Asoka not only embraced Buddhism giving up his aggressions and accumulation of worldly power but also made Buddhism a world religion via his missionary work. In a leaser way it was a lucky day for Buddhism when Colonel Olcott so far away in New Jersey read the Panadura controversy in the newspapers. John Capper of the Times had been responsible for the dissemination of the Pancha Maha Vada (Five Great debates) staged in the island to decide which religion was greater, Christianity or Buddhism.

Colonel Olcott by this time had already founded the Theosophical Society with the noble objective of counteracting the activities or European imperialists who like bulls in the China shop were going on destroying all that was Eastern under the misguided notion that only the European culture should pervade the whole world. Olcott reading the Panadura controversy and the points put forward by the Buddhists felt that here was a great religion about to be vanquished by white fanatics and their local stooges if immediate action was not taken.

With friends as Blavatsky he sailed to Galle and was warmly received by prelates of Galle's temples fighting a valiant battle to save Buddhism. At a temple in Galle embraced Buddhism and began his campaign to resuscitate the endangered faith.

At this time one of the strongest props in the culture transformation was the school system. Strangely it was not the state schools that were instrumental here but the fee-levying missionary schools that catered to education of children of the socially prestigious families inclusive of the upper middle class families. Almost all the daughters and sons of these families were drifting away from their own religion and culture.

With acute foresight and with a tincture of the attitude of the Korean lass Olcott felt that the best strategy here would be to imitate the opposing party. So he began the Buddhist Theosophical Education Movement whose first task was to set up English medium Buddhist oriented English schools. They followed the exact pattern of the missionary schools themselves structured on the British public school system. Medium of instruction was to be English and even the school heads were imported after advts. placed in foreign newspapers.

An Australian lady who answered to an advt. thus placed came to head the first Buddhist English school but fell into the school-well and drowned and was succeeded by Marie Musaeus Higgins who needs no description. Some novel news would be that she soon fell out with the neighbourhood of this school sited at Punchi Borella and decided to shift to Rosemead Place where she set up the famous Musaeus College. But we have put the cart before the horse for the girls' English school of this category trailed behind by boys.

Actually the first new-style school put by the BTS was Pettah Buddhist English school for boys which culminated in Ananda College. It had only 20 students at the beginning. Soon similar schools sprang up in Kandy, Galle, Matale, Gampola and Nawalapitiya. But they were poorly attended for no parent wished to make their kids guinea pigs of a new experiment. The children were getting a very good (though Anglo-inclined) education in the missionary schools. Much effort was expended to reverse the trend and get affluent families to send their offsprings to the new English schools. In fact after Visakha Vidyalaya began Sir Baron Jayathilake is said to have gone from house to house of the socially advanced families coaxing them to send their daughters to Visakha. The final objective was to breed a very patriotic young generation immersed in their own culture but the language used was English!

The strange experiment crawled at first then began to forge ahead. Ananda of Colombo, Mahinda of Galle, Dharmaraja of Kandy, Vijaya of Matale, Jinaraja of Gampola, Musaeus and Visakha of Colombo became leading English medium schools. But there was a case of the ridge eating the paddy. Many Kandyan families, custodians of the indigenous culture preferred to send their off-spring to Trinity of Kandy, St. Bridget's of Colombo and Ferguson's Ratnapura. They shunned the upcoming new schools. Even C.W.W. Kannangara first experimental schools of free education used English as the medium for many years. Little Englands were created in these premises bewildering students from very rural villages.

But good many come out ready to handle the administration and lead the country in myriad other ways.

This national resurgence via English language a brainchild of a public-spirited American proved highly successful and also transpired the strange and anomalous dramas enacted in the field of English Language usage in colonial and post-colonial Lanka.

www.crescat.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager