The Politics Of Kishani Jayasinghe – Part II
By Izeth Hussain –March 19, 2016
Izeth Hussain
When the storm rages, and the ship of state is treatened with wreckage, we can do no better than to sink the anchor of our peaceful studies in the ground of eternity. – Johannes Kepler
Ah, what an age it is/ When to speak of trees is almost a crime/ For it is a kind of silence about injustice. – Bertold Brecht
As I have been arguing in earlier articles – citing the theories of Emmanuel Todd – the transition to modernity is hardly ever smooth, and it is frequently accompanied by violence. The undrlying reason is that in the procss of transition the old is displaced by the new, and that is something that is frequently resisted. Sri Lanka is in the throes of the modernization process. It is not surprising therefore that Kishani Jayasinghe‘s (KJ) operatic rendition of Dunno Budunge on the occasion of the National Day was seen as an intrusion of the alien and threatening Western into the realm of the national sacred. Modernity requires accelerated economic development which usually results in increased inequality, setting off envy and hatred among a substantial segment of the people. Perhaps it was not altogether surprising that that envy and hatred were deployed against KJ on an epic scale. What was really surprising was that the most vicious of the email attacks, according to what she wrote, came from females while the most suportive were from males.
But Nan in her Sunday Island column of March 13 wrote, “Two things I am convinced about. The three most hate-laden letters were NOT written by women but by frustrated, mentally abberated young men”. However the same issue of the Sunday Island carried a coruscating excoriation of the negative aspects of Sri Lanka womanhood by Devika Brendon. She wrote, “This incident highlights what many people know about contemporary Sri Lanka: that, despite its many positive aspects, it is a repressed, vindictive, and punitive culture. There are practical reasons for the existence of exorcism ceremonies and protection rituals, and invocation of charms against the Evil Eye”. What is the explanation for such starkly contrasting views of the same phenomenon: Sri Lankan womanhood? Devika Brendon’s article has the merit of calling attention to the need for in-depth studies of that subject, going beyond the worn stereotype that our womanhood is well emancipated because we produced the world’s first woman Prime Minister.
