Definition Of The Mother Tongue, Bilingualism And Education For Nation Building
July 5, 2012
By Tissa Jayatilaka -
Tissa Jayatilaka
. . . facilis descensusAverno;
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradum superasque evader ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est.
( The Aeneid, VI, 126-129).
The above lines constitute one of the most famous excerpts from Virgil which in translation reads: Easy is the descent to Avernus; for the door to the gloomy underworld lies open both day and night. But to retrace your steps and return to the upper air- -that’s the task, that’s the toil.
Then there is that nursery rhyme that we learnt as children years ago:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wallHumpty Dumpty had a great fallAll the King’s horses and all the King’s menCouldn’t put Humpty together again.
The few profound lines of the Roman epic and the simple ones of the nursery rhyme help illustrate the status of today’s Sri Lanka. As a country we have hit rock bottom if not the gloomy underworld itself. To reach the surface, to pull ourselves up and recover our lost decencies, will surely require toil of Herculean proportions. What a gigantic task! What labour is required to overcome the awful fall that we have had to endure?
I recalled Virgil’s lines, and those of Mother Goose, when I was invited to contribute my thoughts on the kind of education the younger generation ought to receive to begin the daunting task of our national resuscitation and regeneration. I have greater faith in the latter day Sri Lankan counterparts of Aeneas than in either the King’s horses or the King’s men to resurrectSri Lankafrom its parlous state. In the reflections that follow, I have striven to speak and write my truth with sensitivity to other opinions within the human limitations I share with my fellow citizens. I have, however, not hesitated to express my views candidly.
I am in complete agreement with Susil Sirivardana’s assertion that ‘NationBuilding, asNationBuilding, has been singularly absent from [significant] writings and discussions on politics in Sri Lanka’. Sri Lankais yet a country and not a nation. A country is a physical entity with defined geographical boundaries and a certain number of human beings living in that space. For a country to become a nation, its populace must form a cohesive and integral whole; must be able to bind together in such a manner as to be indivisible.Sri Lanka’s people should bear allegiance to an ethos that is all-embracing and indissolubly Sri Lankan. Such a populace will be made up of individuals who can and will rally round that geographic entity which is home to all. If these characteristics are present, the country then becomes a nation in which socio-cultural heterogeneity is recognized, respected, valued and cherished while national homogeneity is celebrated.
By the foregoing definition,Sri Lankais a country of several ethnic groups yet to morph into Sri Lankans. Even these groups are divided among themselves on caste and class lines to such an extent that we could even label their behaviour as tribal. We are Moors, Malays, Parsis, Sindhis, Bharathas, Chettis, Tamils and Sinhalese living in separate worlds. A country divided against itself cannot hope to become a nation.
The idea that a united, integrated citizenry living in harmony is a pre-requisite to the emergence of a strong nation is a precept of Buddhist philosophy. The Buddha was a consistent advocate of human brotherhood based on harmony and integration. As we know, the Buddha opposed any discrimination based on caste, creed, colour, religion, power, position or wealth. The philosophy he gave to the world extols the nobility of theEightfold Path, which, if followed, leads individuals and societies to fulfillment. The primary focus of Buddha’s endeavours was to demolish the pernicious caste system which dominated life inIndia of his time, but the arguments he advanced to show up the illogicality of the caste system apply with equal force to other forms of discrimination based on colour, ethnicity, religion or economic standing.
My view is that Ceylon, as we were called then, missed the opportunity to grow into a nation at the end of the British colonial period in 1948. The competition and rivalry among the ruling clique of our country led to ruinous national division, and so we were well on the path to self-destruction even before we could say ’freedom!’ Given the uneasy relationship then between the Indian plantation workers and other Indians resident in Ceylon(Sri Lanka) and the Ceylon National Congress from 1927 to 1931, the consideration of the grant of citizenship to these Sri Lanka-based plantation workers of Indian origin was not a priority for the Government of D.S. Senanayake. In fact, the Government of the day was actually hostile to the blanket grant of citizenship rights to this group. This state of affairs led to the significant and controversial change caused by the Ceylon (Parliamentary Elections) Amendment Act, No.48 of 1948, which, together with the Ceylon (Citizenship Act) No. 18 of 1948 and the Indian and Pakistani residents ( Citizenship) Act no.34 of 1949, gave rise to distortions in the electoral system of the fledgling independent country .The Citizenship Act of 1948 created two classes of citizens – those by descent and those by registration. The immediate effect of this distinction was the disenfranchisement of a large number of Indian Tamils, mostly in the central highlands but also in other urban areas, together with some Indian and Pakistani Moors. Not a very happy beginning for a country freed from the yoke of colonialism. By the time political amends were made years later, the disillusionment of the non-Sinhalese segment of the Ceylonese population with the political establishment of the state had become entrenched, to the detriment of national unity and harmony. The largely Sinhalese segment of the Ceylon National Congress, founded in 1919, coalesced in 1946 to form the United National Party (UNP) under the leadership of D.S. Senanayake . Those opposed to the UNP were the left-wing Trotskyites who formed the Lanka Sama Samaja Party ( The Ceylon Equal Society Party/LSSP) and the Bolshevik Leninist Party- – which, having splintered from the LSSP, later changed its name into the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party(BSP)- – and the Moscow-oriented Communist Party(CP). In 1948, the Tamil political leadership split into two segments: Those who joined D.S. Senanayake and the UNP of the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress (TC) and those opposed to the TC that formed the Tamil Federal Party(FP). Their Sinhala counterparts splintered into the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party less than 48 months after ‘independence’ .To those of us who believe in our common humanity, subsequent events have proved that those early divisions and segmentations were shadows cast by events to come. To the great detriment of our common future, competing Sinhala and Tamil ethno-nationalisms thus strangled the birth of an overarching Ceylonese nationalism.
Clearly the previous generations have failedSri Lanka. How then should we seek to empower and enable our younger generation to undertake the responsibility of resuscitating and revitalizing our society to make us a nation? Assuming that education is absolutely crucial to such a re-generation ofSri Lanka, how should we set about to reform our system of education? An essential step is to de-politicise it.
Need for depolitisation of Educational Reform Read More
