Intellectual Poverty & Its Historical Context: Victor Ivan’s Reasoning & Its Merits
Dr. Siri Gamage
Victor Ivan’s article titled Historical Context of the Culture of Intellectual Poverty (translation by K.A.N Perera) published in the Sunday Island(23.09.2017) raises several controversial issues in terms of scholarly enquiry, analysis, knowledge production and dissemination, interpretation as well as intellectual contributions by Sri Lankans to the repertoire of world knowledge. Ivan believes that ‘The interest in learning from other advanced cultures and civilizations has a greater role to play in the progress of a nation and its intellectual advancement’. While the concept of intellectual poverty is undefined and assumed to be a fact by the author, it is not very often that articles of this nature appear in the Sri Lankan media on the subject. He makes several points – some debatable and even controversial – that should receive serious attention of educationists, social scientists, philosophers, religious and literary scholars, popular writers and potential intellectuals.
Ivan’s key argument for intellectual poverty in the country is manifold: 1) Sri Lankan people, for ages, have been ‘restricting their knowledge exclusively to the religion that they believe in’. 2) In the case of Buddhists, very many understood it narrowly while for others it was the ‘culmination and crowning glory of all knowledge’. For a long period, Buddhism ‘remained only, or the main source of knowledge and inspiration’. 3) Sri Lankans were not aware of the great religious leaders and intellectuals or their great works in the pre-Christian era, e.g. Plato, Socrates, Confucius, Mahawira, Euclid, Archimedes. Not even their work was translated. Thus their thinking did not make an impact on Sri Lankans. 4) Sri Lankans were not even aware of the great changes that took place in Europe following renaissance or the great sages or intellectuals that emerged there until the British introduced the formal school system to the country. ‘As far as the search for knowledge is concerned, Sri Lanka remained in the dark until the doors to the world were open’ by the British this way. Though there was a proselytising element’ in the school system, it also included many mundane subjects thereby exposing the population to the world of new knowledge. However, ‘the country failed to reap the benefit of this new system’. 5) In this exclusively religious milieu spanning the whole history of the country until the British arrived, ‘mundane aspects did not find a significant place in their ideology’. Moreover, ‘ not a single treatise on non-religious character was written’. ‘There was no room for the emergence of any advance art, science or philosophy in this social milieu’. 6) ‘Local academics of the day were not mature people conversant with the new knowledge that was fast gaining ground spreading across the world’. Their lack of comparative knowledge in world civilisations, the reliance on Buddhism and ancient civilisation of Sri Lanka etc. led them to adopt a chauvinistic attitude to great revelations made by the Europeans. 7) It was the European civil servants rather than local intelligentsia who kindled an interest in us to study our own history, civilisation, religion and literature. Even the religious revival movement in the 19th century reflects the intellectual poverty. 8) Post 1956 language policy contributed to the intellectual poverty. Instead of bilingual academics the system of education produced monolingual scholars. 9) Though social science is a popular subject in universities, not a single book by Max Weber, celebrated authority on the subject, has been translated. Thus the students of social science are restricted to the pedagogic instructions of teachers. Undue prominence is given in the country to translate novels. 10) Present system of education from Grade 1 to the University is based on rote learning (memorising) the outcome of which is ‘the production of men, who can’t even think independently, let alone producing men of letters and thought’.
What is expressed here is a highly biased and pessimistic view of our intellectual history, international relations, higher education and knowledge construction. It is one that does not do due justice to various scholarly contributions that have been made to the field of knowledge by Sri Lankans over the centuries. There have been knowledge exchanges between Sri Lankan literati –though mainly religious- and those in India for centuries since the time of Buddha. Historians and others who studied the ancient period in Sri Lanka have uncovered cross border linkages between Sri Lanka, Asia and even Europe particularly during the Anuradhapura period when the country enjoyed a celebrated place in terms of art, culture, architecture, religion, agriculture, trade and commerce. Historians specialising the ancient period that roughly parallels the pre-Christian era that Ivan talks about have uncovered through research the frequent communications that existed between Anuradhapura civilisation and European civilisations, e.g. Sirima Kiribamune, Leslie Gunawardana, W.I. Siriweera. Had the Anuradhapura civilisation continued unabated, not only the history of the country but also its intellectual history would have been quite different with the potential to reach European capitals. It would have been the same if the island was not colonised by the European powers that thrived on their exploits from the colonised world in Asia, Africa and Latin America and establishing a centre-periphery relationship and dominance by way of imperialist ambitions. Though it is true that our historians and others did not focus enough on the ‘knowledge histories’ in their work, it is incorrect to assume that Sri Lankans were living in a dark age before the British introduced a formal school system (and for that matter a University to the country).
