Saatakakaranaya: Right and wrong way
No girl is like her father and I know girls whose lifestyles are
quite unlike like those of their fathers nor in tune with the kind of
lifestyles their fathers’ advocated or championed. I know a girl whose
father was a lyricist, a self-confessed godaya who took pride in the
fact. She, on the other hand, was educated in Colombo and is quite the
sophisticated young urbanite and in dress, manner and language very
different to her father. I have heard a few disparaging comments
consequently but she told me one day that they had got it all wrong and
had never understood her father.
‘He may have liked a particular kind of lifestyle but there was one
thing that was important to him: he wanted to be who he was and he was
proud of who he was. This is what I learnt from him and his life.’
If there is anything that has acquired iconic status in Sri Lanka
over the past five years it is the kurahan saatakaya.
Today this simple matter of a piece of cloth around the neck is
symbol of loyalty to the President and the Government as well as a
wardrobe accessory that has become quite popular. Last morning (February
4, 2010), watching briefly the Independence Day celebrations on
television, I wondered whether we as a nation have missed the point of
the kurahan saatakaya and the point made by its most visible
icon-bearer, Mahinda Rajapaksa by the very fact of wearing it.
Kurahan-coloured
This is what I saw. I saw two presenters, on Rupavahini, one speaking
in Sinhala and one in Tamil, in full national costume but draped in
saatakas. It smacked more of loyalty to party and Mahinda Rajapaksa than
to country or President for party is not State and person is not
President.
It made me recall a far more incongruous usage of the saataka. This
was just after S.B. Dissanayake was thrown in jail for contempt of court
by Sarath N Silva. His supporters organised a demonstration and
satyagraha in protest at Town Hall.
The organisers had made the participants, especially those on the
‘Satyagrahing’ stage, wear saatakas. They were not kurahan-coloured of
course; yellow and black if I remember right. The logic escaped me then
and I still cannot put a finger on it. It seemed incongruous then and
seems so now as well.
Medamulana
Mahinda Rajapaksa is not Mr. Perfect. He is in many ways Mr. Ordinary
and that’s not an insult but a compliment. There is one ‘extraordinary’
aspect to the man, though. He is not only aware of where he came from he
is proud of the fact and draws strength from it. And this, more than
anything else, is what his detractors just cannot suffer. Had he been
the nobody who became a somebody in the manner in which the nobody-Senanayakes
became somebody-Senanayakes or the nobody-Wijewardenas became somebody-Wijewardenas
few would find fault with him, but alas, he was Mahinda Rajapaksa from
Medamulana in 1970 and is more or less the same Medamulane Mahinda
Rajapaksa 40 years later. The challenge is two-fold for the nation and
those who admire the President. First, the need to resist being his
clones and instead being themselves, conscious of who they are, where
they come from, who their parents are, what their values are etc. etc.
and being proud and not ashamed of all that, preferably not because it
is impossible to become a Senanayake-somebody, for instance, but because
that is possible but not desired.
Wardrobe accessory
The second and more important challenge is to understand that the
kurahan saatakaya is not wardrobe accessory but metaphor. This means
that the important thing is not to wear it in the manner of mimicry, but
to internalize all the important things it symbolizes (yes, there are
unimportant and not very laudatory things it represents, we must
acknowledge).
In early December 2005, a couple of weeks after Mahinda Rajapaksa was
elected President for the first time, I wrote a piece to the a daily
titled ‘In search of the kurahan saatakaya’.
I argued then in the following manner: The kurahan saatakaya is and
was essentially defined by what it is not, namely the tie-coat world as
one would put it in ‘Sinhala’. It was the perfect ‘other’ to everything
represented by the (adopted) children of the colonial project, the
privileges they enjoyed and the elitism they fostered and fought for
tooth and nail perhaps never as ferociously as in this election.
The project, then, I argued, was to ‘establish the validity and
practicality of the kurahan saatakaya in all things subject to the
caveat that there is nothing to say that the tie-coat universe has
nothing to offer to us.’
What I said then is still valid and if we haven’t come too far part
of the reason is that we’ve been a nation under subjugation for over 500
years and part of the reason is we have been lazy and intellectually and
ideologically slow.
There are I think two kinds of saatakafication or saatakakaranaya.
The first, the kind of cloning exemplified by the two TV presenters (the
fault of sycophantic producers and other superiors, I am sure). It
doesn’t take us anywhere. The second is that of the lyricist’s daughter.
This is how I wrote the difference four years ago and I believe it is
still valid.
If there comes a day where every single institution insists that all
employees wear a kurahan saatakaya we would still not have won if they
continue to have tie-coat heads.
Western attire
On the other hand, if these institutions continue to insist that
employees wear Western attire, replete with tie and coat, but the people
inside these clothes have a kurahan saatakaya frame of mind, then the
November 17 decision would most certainly have produced something we can
be proud of as a nation. I humbly submit that this is not impossible.
Here’s the question for the nation and the citizens in the coming
months and years (and their entire lifetimes, why not!): ‘Do you want to
wear a saatakaya and if so how would you like to wear it?’
[email protected] |