|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Wednesday, 17 March 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Artscope | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
The other side of 'Monolingualism' : Do we know our Sinhala? by Liyanage Amarakeerthi I want to begin this essay with a tribute to Fariel Ashroff. For me, she is the best speaker of Sinhala language among the Sri Lankan women politicians.She has the right vocabulary, the right tone, the right tempo, more importantly, the correct idiom. She has it all. By listening to her occasionally on BBC Sandesaya, I gain tremendous pleasure. That pleasure comes from several facts. Here are two of them: There are not many articulate and elegant speakers of Sinhala language among Sri Lankan politicians. Secondly, she is a Muslim: the Muslim political community has a quite a few men and women who speak Sinhala language much better than their Sinhala politicians do. We should cast one of our preferential votes for Ms. Ashroff for speaking some beautiful Sinhala that is "just like honey to our ears" as the Sinhala idiom has it! Quite sadly, none of our Sinhala politicians, to my knowledge, has such commands in Tamil. Tamil political community too does not have speakers of Sinhala nearly as eloquent as Mrs. Ashroff. Most of the Muslim leaders have considerable command of Sri Lanka's all three languages. I think, casting off our well-known pride, we Sinhalas, have something to learn from our Muslim brothers and sisters. This essay is, though, not about everyday use of Sinhala but on much-talked-about monolingual intellectual culture. Almost all of the recent debates on the deterioration of higher education in Sri Lankan universities, one way or another, refer to monolingualism.
Unspoken definition of being monolingual is not having the fluency of English. But by its very definition bilingualism involves two languages. In relation to Sinhala medium intellectual culture, bilingual means knowing both Sinhala and English. More often than not, the debates are on bilingualism privilege English. Those who are familiar with deconstructive criticism would say: "The relationship between Sinhala and English in the Sri Lankan discourse on bilingualism is hierarchical." English is the main thing or 'The Thing' and Sinhala is rather supplementary! Know your English better, then add a little bit of Sinhala to it; you are bilingual. No. A Big NO! The problem The problem of bilingualism is everywhere from police station to cricket ground. But my concern here is the university and the intellectual community. In Sinhala intellectual scene a true bilingual intellectual is who has considerable mastery over both English and Sinhala. Nevertheless, most of the arguments for bilingualism seem to forget Sinhala: the other half of bilingualism. That forgetfulness is so great that it even overlooks the fact that, even among monolinguals, there are not many young scholars who are elegant, accurate and articulate in Sinhala speech and writing. For this deficiency they cannot be blamed. Their seniors who often boast of their bilingualism have not provided the youngsters with the right kind of idiom of Sinhala that is fitting to discuss contemporary intellectual matters. For example, Sinhala literary criticism does not have terms and idiom for a rich discussion on structuralism and post-structuralism. We all know too well that the first generation scholars like Martin Wickramasinghe and Ediriweera Sarachchandra not only introduced new theories into Sinhala literary scene but also created words and idioms for new theoretical discussions. Then, in the 1960s and 70s, scholars like Sucharita Gamlat, A. V. Suraweera, Hemapala Wijewardhana, Sunanda Mahendra - to name a few provided us with new terms and new ways of talking about things. After that came darker days: Sri Lankan universities began producing private tuition masters from among their lecturers. Almost all Sinhala departments had at least one famous private tuition master. In some cases, the head of the department had a couple of private schools named after Oxford, Cambridge and Sorbonne! So how could we find an idiom for rich, new debates on contemporary intellectual matters among monolingual tuition masters who teach students how to pass exams? The burden of their sin is on our generation of university teachers, those who were born, approximately, in the late 1960s and later! Intellectual debates At the same time, another group of young scholars evolved with the mastery of English but with little or no Sinhala. Many of them had their higher education in Western universities and well-versed and familiar with new intellectual debates that were 'hot' in world-class universities. But with their minimal knowledge of Sinhala they could not know, feel and understand the Sinhala language world. Without developing one's sensitivity to Sinhala, its idiom, nuances and suggestions of Sinhala expression, one can hardly be a true scholar in Sri Lanka regardless of one's command in Western languages. Compared to Westernized bilingual scholars from India, our Western educated young men and women are often ignorant of Sinhala language cultural world. In my several encounters with highly bilingual Bengali scholars have taught me that regardless of their Western education and upbringing they have a deep sense of Bengali language literary and cultural world. I have met a famous Bengali professor who teaches at a prestigious American university, who could sing beautiful Rabindra songs. Another Pakistani professor, who teaches English at a university in New York, brought tears to our eyes by singing some fabulous Urdu folksongs and Gazals. I have had similar experience with bilingual Africans too. Most of them are schooled in English medium colleges and universities and yet they have a deep understanding and appreciation of their native language and cultural worlds. I often wonder if we can find any Sri Lankan, with English and Western education, who has the sensitivity to understand a verse from Yasodaravata, let alone singing it? Can we say that our university English departments produce graduates with a considerable grasp of the language of Saracchandra's plays- to take an example from Sinhala 'high' culture? Sinhala medium graduates are often laughed at, marginalized and punished for not knowing English. But English-only people are rewarded for not knowing Sinhala! This is the other side of monolingualism. If we do not see this as a problem, we will soon find ourselves lamenting the vacuum created by retirements of our truly bilingual academics and writers like Prof. Lakshmi de Silva, Dr. Ranjini Obeyesekere, Prof. Ashley Halpe, Tilak Balasuriya, Kusum Disanayaka and some others of their generation. Critics Nowadays Colombo has enough 'English-only' critics of Sinhala nationalism, Sinahala Buddhist extremism and all other 'vices' of Sinhala culture. Hegemonic ideologies have to be questioned regardless which culture harbours them. But without an appreciation of good things in Sinhala language world, monolingual critics can only produce further polarization, marginalization and angry reactions. Those NGOs that routinely publish English language critiques of Sinhala culture, at least once in a while, should give some thoughts to put together a publication on Sinhala art, literature and culture. If they do not have people capable of such things, that is a different story. They should ask themselves why? Is that the other side of monolingualism? Take the English language press: is there anybody to write a meaningful review of Sinhala literature in the post-Ajith Samaranayake generation? Almost all art columnists in English newspapers are from the older generation. Tamil community, in contrast, seems to have a quite a few young men and women with good understanding of Tamil language world. Among them, heartening to know, there are some who can appreciate even Sinhala literature! Monolingualism In recent times, there are some noteworthy young scholars appearing among English language intellectuals, Dr. Nira Wickramasinghe being perhaps the most promising. But what they can do for our country seems to have restricted by their English centered monolingualism. The short history of our university has revealed, time and time again, that only those who took Sinhala language (or Tamil for that matter) have left a lasting impact on Sri Lankan society. On reading Dr.Wickramasinghe's book, History Writing: New Trends and Methodologies I felt it was a Sinhala book accidentally written in English because it was too good not to be written in Sinhala! In fact the author cannot do justice to the book by writing it in English since that language has too many better books on post-structuralist rethinking of history and historiography. The ideal reader of Dr. Wickramasinghe's book is in Sri Lanka. Ideal reader By writing it in English, the book is divorced from that particular reader who could better be reached through Sinhala. What I mean by "Sinhala" here is not just the language but the cultural milieu represented by the language. The ideal reader is - a concept I borrow from narrative theory - the reader who is imagined by the book and the reader who ideally should read the book. This reader of Dr. Wickramasinghe's book is in Sinhala language world. Without reaching that reader the book's theoretical cutting-edge is left alone to rust! That is why I argue for truly bilingual culture. Bright English language academics should look up to Bengali scholars like Patha Chatterjee, Ahish Nandy, Amitav Ghosh (Scholar- novelist) who very well know their Foucault and their Bengali. My brief personal encounters with them have given the impression that their success and wide following as scholars, theorists, activists, and writers largely rest on their bilingualism. My invitation to 'English-centered monolinguals' is to develop a sense of Sinhala language is not one of nationalism or of linguistic parochialism. That invitation is deeply rooted in a reasonably educated belief in a truly bilingual and cosmopolitan culture for our country. Until we are ready to learn all three languages well, bilingualism is the foundation for, among other things, for rich intellectual culture. This is a mantra that has been chanted many times over. But it is still worth chanting since our society continues to fragment itself further into smaller pieces rather than bridging already existing gaps. Buddhist monks and Christian clergy running for offices, (what a beautiful English idiom to describe it: "monks running for") even the LTTE's ruthless and legendary homogeneity and oneness too facing the test of difference and diversity, we have only languages, both local and trans-local, to bridge all kinds of gaps that crack open all around us. The writer is a Ph.D candidae in Language, Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. **** Back **** |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
