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Prof. Suwanda H J Sugunasiri is the pioneering researcher on South Asian Canadian Literature. Down Commissioned by the Multiculturalism Directorate of the Government of Canada, he traveled across Canada to dig out the vast literary Shakespeare, treasure, unknown not only to the Canadian literary establishment but to South Asians themselves. His Report, The Search for Meaning The Stone Angel Is Here (1983), opened the doors for a many a contemporary writer, critic and academic. Essays on Literature: Canadian and Sri Lankan
Poet, fiction writer and soon to be novelist, Sugunasiri was, before leaving Sri Lanka on a Fulbright Scholarship, active in the Sinhalese cultural and literary scene as a writer, dancer, actor, radio artiste, critic and newspaper coumnist. Founder of {Discussed or referred to} Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies (Canada), and Adjunct Professor, Trinity Gunadasa Amarasekara College, University of Toronto, he has been a spokesperson for Buddhism for over Margaret Atwood quarter of a century. Himani Bannerji Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta Neil Bissoondath Rienzi Cruz Cyil Dabydeen Reshard Gool Siri Gunasighe Surjeet Kalsey Margaret Laurence Michael Ondaatji Uma Parameswaran Mordecai Richler Ajmer Rode The seven critical pieces that make up Step Down Ediriweera Saracchandra Shakespeare, the Stone Angel is Here, provides a G B Senanayake historical window to two little known literary and M G Vassanji geographic landscapes - the emerging Asoka Weerasinghe multicultural literature in Canada beginning with
Step Down Shakespeare,Step Down H J Sugunasiri, Suwanda Angel Is Here The Stone PhD Martin Wickremasinghe the eighties and the Sinhalese literature of Sri Lanka with a history of over a thousand years. Suwanda H J Sugunasiri, PhD Pioneering researcher on South Asian Canadian Literature StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page I
STEP DOWN SHAKESPEARE, THE STONE ANGEL IS HERE
Essays on Literature: Canadian and Sri Lankan StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page II
By the same author LITERATURE Critical Studies Sinhala ketikataway sambhavaya ha vyaptiya - 1960 ganan dakva vu mul siyavasa (in Sinhala); ‘The Origin and Development of the Sinhalese Short Story - the first hundred years up to the 1960’s’, Godage, 2001 “Smarten Up, Indians, and Go Western: A Content Analysis of Ontario’s Secondary School Social Studies Texts in Relation to India”. In McLeod, Keith (ed.), Intercultural Education and Community Development, University of Toronto, 1980 Edited Works The Search for Meaning: the Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins, Secy. of State, Multiculturalism Directorate, 1983 (Rev. Batts, 1988) The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview and Preliminary Bibliography. Toronto: U of Toronto, The Centre for South Asian Studies and the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1987 Poetry Celestial Conversations, Toronto: Nalanda , 2006 The Faces of Galle Face Green, Toronto: TSAR, 1995; 2nd ed., Nugegoda: Sarasavi, 2001 Short Fiction “Fellow Travellers”, Toronto South Asian Review 1 (1): 1982: 63–70. “The Ingrate” in Mahfil, 1965 Meeharak (in Sinhala) ‘Idiots’, Colombo: Gunasena, 1963 Yamayudde (in Sinhala) ‘Life Struggle’; Gampaha: Sarasavi, 1961 Translations Samskruta kavya sahityaya (Sinhala trans. of A B Keith, Classical Sanskrit Literature); Colombo: Official Languages Department, 1964 Vyavahara nanaya ha nyastika samgrama (Sinhala trans. of Bertrand Russell, Commonsense and Nuclear Warfare); Colombo: Gunasena, 1960 Anthologies Whistling Thorn: an Anthology of South Asian Canadian Short Fiction, Mosaic, 1994 Contemporary Sri Lankan Literature, (with A V Suraweera) Special Issue, Toronto South Asian Review, Toronto, Canada: TSAR Publishing, 1984: 3 (2) BUDDHISM Embryo as Person: Buddhism, Bioethics and Society, Toronto: Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies, 2005, You’re What You Sense: A Buddhian-Scientific Dialogue on Mindbody , Dehiwala, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Cultural Centre, 2001 MULTICULTURALISM Multiculturalism, Peace and Development (Ed.), an Informal Publication of Nalanda Publishing Canada, 2007 Towards Multicultural Growth: Classical Racism to Neomulticulturalism, Toronto: Village Publishing House, 2001 StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page III
STEP DOWN SHAKESPEARE, THE STONE ANGEL IS HERE
Essays on Literature: Canadian and Sri Lankan
Suwanda H J Sugunasiri, PhD (Pioneering researcher on South Asian Canadian Literature)
Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies (Canada); Trinity College, University of Toronto StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page IV
CIP Data
© Suwanda H J Sugunasiri, 2007
Any part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in whatever form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording information storage and retrieval systems, with due acknowledgement.
Published by Nalanda Publishing Canada, a Division of Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies (Canada), 47 Queen’s Park Crescent E. Toronto, ON M5S 2C3
ISBN 978-0-9738089-2-6
Acknowledgements
1. “Step Down, Shakespeare, The Stone Angel is Here”. Multicultural Education Journal, 5 (2): 24–39 (1987).
2. “The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview.” Canadian Ethnic Studies, 17 (1): 1–21 (1985).
3. ““Sri Lankan” Canadian Poets: The Bourgeoisie That Fled the Revolution.” Canadian Literature, no. 132: 60–79 (1992).
4. “Reality and Symbolism in the South Asian Canadian Short Story.” A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature, ed. M G Vassanji (1985); republished in World Literature Written in English, 26 (1): 98–107 (1986).
5. “Suwanda Sugunasiri and Siri Gunasinghe: A Conversation.” The Toronto South Asian Review, 7 (2): 38–43 (1989).
6. “Forces that Shaped Sri Lankan Literature.” The Toronto South Asian Review, Special issue on Sri Lankan Literature (ed: Sugunasiri, Suwanda & A V Suraweera), 3 (2): 2–10 (1984).
7. “Sexism in Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Sinhalese Operatic-play, Maname.” Journal of South Asian Literature, 29 (2): 123–146 (1994).
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Contents
Preface v
Essays 1. Step Down, Shakespeare, the Stone Angel is here! 3
2. The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview 25
3. “Sri Lankan” Canadian Poets: the Bourgeoisie that fled the Revolution 53
4. Reality and Symbolism in the South Asian Canadian Short Story 77
5. Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist and filmmaker, and Canadian Professor 91
6. Forces that Shaped Sri Lankan Literature 101
7. Sexism in Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Sinhalese Operatic Play, Maname 113
Bibliography 137
Index 147
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Bows
It is with pleasure and humility that we take this opportunity to make here the writer’s bows to those pioneers who worked with me to make my contribution to the field of Canadian litreature – Moyez and Nurjehan Vassanji, Frank Birbalsingh, Arun Prabha Mukherjee and Uma Parameswaran (U of Winnipeg) in particular, and Judy Young, of the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, for inviting me to do the initial survey. Alok Mukherjee I pay salute to for his quiet contributions, but in particular for bringing me to the politics of multiculturalism by hiring me to do a survey of the Texts recommended to be used in schools under Circular 14 of the Ontario Government, "relating to India and Indians"
Thanks are due to Carol Piccini, student at Nalanda, who cheerily undertook the laborious task of transferring the articles from text to computer, using up some of her summer vacation. It was a sheer labour of love, and I appreciate her contribution. It is to Jim Vuylsteke, Research Assistant, and later volunteer, that my appreciation goes for getting the manuscript r eady for print, carefully text-editing the articles, hunting down each and every reference, and developing an index. And thanks to Glen Choi for his meticulous care in updating the Index. To Johnny Osorio I thank for the innovative cover and the many hours at the computer.
To my wife, Swarna, I thank for all her comments, as well as helping with a happy home that allowed me to engage in all the research and writing.
Suwanda H. J. Sugunasiri
Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies; Trintiy College, University of Toronto
March 2007
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PREFACE
The binding theme of these seven articles is literature, within the context of multiculturalism, and with a sub-text of politics. Written on Canadian soil over a decade (1984-1994), in the hey days of my literary involvement – my current academic interest is Buddhism, the first four relate to Canada directly, and the other three indirectly, within a Sri Lankan, primarily Sinhalese, literary and cultural context.
In Step Down Shakespeare, the Stone Angel is Here, 1987, the first piece, we invite you to take a look at the mainstream Canadian classroom, as it was at least at the time, and make the case for ‘multiculturalizing the English curriculum’. Following upon an examination of the theoretical bases that demand it, we offer a model, a ‘literary matrix’, for developing such a curriculum, based on the premise that “in the school context, the take-off phase in multiculturalism and eventual multicultural maturity will not materialize until the English curriculum becomes multicultural” (25). If ‘Canadian Literature’ had been traditionally understood as “the creative works written about Anglo-Canadian experiences, in the medium of English, for an English (Canadian) audience, and reflect an Anglo-Saxon (or a wider Judeo-Christian) sensibility” (27), it is now defined in a more inclusive manner as,
The literature written by writers of any ethno-cultural origin, who were born in Canada or elsewhere but are presently living in Canada or have lived in Canada as a citizen, landed immigrant, or resident, and whose writing is in English, French, a Native language, or another heritage language, about the content, theme or setting in Canada or elsewhere, and is primarily, but not exclusively, intended for a Canadian audience, reflecting a sensibility that can be best described as a “Canadianizing world culture (31).
While Shakespeare in the title stands for the traditional, narrower definition, the Stone Angel, a reference to Margaret Laurence’s novel, stands for the broader, including the feminist. The article also introduces the concept of ‘Learning/Teaching Language Across Literature and Literature Across Language’.
The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: an Overview, introduces the vast South Asian Canadian Literature, to non-South Asian Canadians certainly, but to South Asian Canadians as well, given that it was the first time ever in Canada such a study had been undertaken. The survey covers the literature written in three languages: English, Punjabi and Gujerati, a total of 387 works by 207 writers, 25 of whom are women. In the English medium alone, the exploration discovers 11 novels written by 8 novelists, 79 collections by 28 poets, 11 works of short fiction by 6 writers and 2 dramas. While a fair number of these works reflects heritage themes and sensibilities, there is an increasing trend toward Canadian ones.
It is not the sheer output, however, that is impressive. The more important point is that “the best of the latter are of a quality equal to mainstream Canadian literature”. Nemesis Casket, by Reshard Gool, e.g., based not on his South African experience but around the lives of two upper class Canadian families, perhaps runs away with the trophy.
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To place the piece in its historical context, it draws upon the writer’s survey, done for the Multicultutalism Directorate in Ottawa, traveling to major cities – Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria and Montreal, in addition to Toronto. Although the results of this pioneering research, The Search for Meaning, came to be published, as a Government of Canada publication (ISBN 0-662-16032-0), as late as 1988, the call for the research, in the name of Judy Young on behalf of the Multiculturalism Directorate, was in 1979 (The Canadian India Times, May 17, 1979). The research itself began in early 1980 (letter dated Feb. 15, 1980 to community leaders and scholars for leads (references in copy of Report in the writer’s possession)). Submitted to the Secretary of State in September 1983, the Report was formally released at a Conference organized by the Toronto South Asian Review on October 1-3, 1983, the Journal itself a response1 to a concern raised by many a writer about the absence of such a forum. It is the Proceedings that eventually came to be published under the title, A Meeting of Streams (Vassanji (ed.), 1985)2.
The third article, ‘Sri Lankan Canadian Poets’: the Bourgeois that fled the Revolution, 1992, provides a case study of a specific group of writers within the wider South Asian Canadian rubric. It studies four Canadian poets, of Sri Lankan origin (Michael Ondaatje, Rienzie Crusz, Asoka Weerasinghe and Krishanta Sri Bhaggiyadatta), in the sociopolitical context of Sri Lanka. The Revolution referred to in the title took place in 1956 under the late Mr. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, bringing together the forces of the ordained Sangha, native physicians, vernacular teachers, farmers and workers, the last four both Sinhalese and Tamil, ushering in an era of cultural renaissance towards national development.
It was understandably a movement strongly opposed by the English-speaking establishment, to which all four poets belong (the present writer himself in good company3, though not party to the opposition)4. Despite the claims of the poets to be ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘brown’, ‘anti-colonial’, etc., flagging all the buzz-words of Canadian multiculturalism, the paper places them in the context of what may be characterized as ‘the personal is the political’.
The fourth piece, Reality of symbolism in the South Asian Canadian Short Story, 1986, introduces the reader to the very first South Asian Canadian English-medium writer of fiction, Iqbal Ahmed (1965), and others, all little or totally unknown then - Cowasjee, Dabydeen, Gill, Hossein, the late Ladoo, Leitao and Vassanji (Mistry not yet being on the scene), reflecting the East African, Goan, Punjabi, South African, Caribbean and Sri Lankan sensibilities, incorporating the Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist. As the title suggests, the analysis is at two levels: realism and symbolism.
The last three pieces relate to Canadian Multiculturalism by the fact that they introduce a people resident in Canada, the Sinhalese, little known, and little respected, through the eyes of a participant observer. They allow the reader to gain an insight to a 2,500 year old culture, Sinhalese poetry (in blank verse) dating back to at least the 7-9th c. ACE and the first novel appearing in 1944 (Martin Wickremasinghe’s Gamperaliya ‘The Changing Village’).
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The first of these, Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist, filmmaker and Canadian Professor, 1988, introduces a Canadian professor (teaching in the field of History of Art at the University of Victoria, BC), both loved and hated, prior to his departure from Sri Lanka, in Sinhalese literary circles. Credited with introducing blank verse (in mas le naeti aeta ‘Dry bones’ 1956)5 to contemporary Sinhalese poetry6, using the stream of consciousness technique in his first novel, Abinikmana ‘Renunciation’ (1958), another first, and producing a film that sought to make “the visuals the main medium”, he was always a controversial figure. The present writer engages him in a dialogue, allowing him to tell his own story.
Forces that Shaped Sri Lankan Literature, 1985, originally served as the introduction to the special issue of the Toronto South Asian Review (Sugunasiri and Suraweera, 1985), featuring, for the first time in an anthology, works in all three languages of Sri Lanka, Sinhala, Tamil and English. It outlines three literary phases of Sri Lanka, carving its own identity distinct from neighbouring India, thanks primarily due to the first force, Buddhism, which has shaped Sinhala literature over two and a half millennia. The key feature of this first phase is simplicity, influenced as it was by Pali, the language closest to the Buddha.
But the major South Indian invasion, of the eleventh century, introduces, along with Hinduism, a more ornate style, and a formulaic literature. The final phase, comes to be ushered in by European invasions – the Portuguese (1505), the Dutch (1656) and the British (1815).
Sexism in Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Operatic Play, Maname: 1996, introduces the reader to the groundbreaking Sinhalese drama, Maname, that sent audiences into a frenzy of Manamania, still alive and well, nearly a full 50 years later. Of the same dramatic tradition as Japanese Kabuki, playwright Sarachchandra successfully trims down a Sinhalese folk play that would run for seven or more nights, into a three hour gem of pure entertainment, through mime and dance, operatic singing, and symbolic movement, with the chorus and the musicians (on drum, harmonium and flute) on stage heightening the dramatic effect. A narrator, in the tradition of Greek drama, keeps the story line going.
But the paper is not another review, but a critique, the present writer, acting in three minor roles, having the benefit of distance in time and place. The critique is from a feminist perspective, drawing upon theories of morality as well, concluding that the play panders to patriarchy; but, raising again the perspective of the personal is the political, it exonerates the author of personal bias. The paper playfully suggests alternative endings to save the life of the Princess, one of them drawing upon the emotion of ‘calm’ (santa), the contribution made by Buddhism to the ‘nine tastes’ (nava nalu rasa) in Indic esthetic theory (see Warder, 1972, 40).
If that, then, is the content of this anthology, bringing them together constitutes, for the writer, a moment of celebration. In his pioneering survey of the literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins done for the Secretary of State, Ottawa, and upon which the second article here is drawn, he writes:
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I sincerely hope that this basic research will generate discussion and further research among scholars, both South Asian and other. Perhaps more importantly, the Report would, I hope, serve to bring together the South Asian writers of varying ethnic, linguistic, geographic, national and religious backgrounds in communication with each other. It would be encouraging as well, if this effort serves the cause of bringing the South Asian Canadian literature, and the writers themselves, to the attention of the Canadian consciousness, in order that they may gain their rightful place in Canadian society. Such a consciousness-raising exercise would, one hopes, serve the larger goal of developing an increasing respect for the wider South Asian Canadian community in general. It is, of course, up to the community itself, and the writers, to continue to earn the respect through their continuing contributions (Sugunasiri, 1983, Preface).
Leaving it up to the academy to determine whether or not, and to what extent, my hopes have come to bear fruit, it is humbling to note, on a cursory glance, falling back purely on personal knowledge, that at least some strides have been made in that direction.
The Toronto South Asian Review (later Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad (Toronto Review, for short), and now defunct), surely has to be the flagship evidence of how the community has responded to the writer’s invitation. Brainchild of Dr Moyez Vassanji, and founded jointly with M H K Qureshi, and Suwanda Sugunasiri, “part of the reason” for its birth was “the concern expressed by many of you regarding the absence of a serious forum for your literary works.” (Sugunasiri, letter of May 12, 1983, to those who had helped in the research project, appraising them of the upcoming conference, and inviting them to it). While the quality of work put into it by “its energetic editor” Vassanji (ibid.) undoubtedly went a long way in earning the respect of the Canadian establishment, it was the contributions made by South Asian writers themselves that filled its pages, “featuring over 40 writers of South Asian Canadian origins in our first three issues”. Well known figures Vassanji, Mistry and Selvadurai, e.g., all make their early appearance in its pages.
Then there were the scholars, and critics, among them Frank Birbalsingh of York University (who did the article on the novel for the Research Project), Arun Prabha Mukherjee (who, already with a PhD, makes her first critical breakthrough, through her review of the poetry of South Asian Canadian for the Project), and Chelva Kanakanayagam (a student at the time of the survey but now Professor, Trinity College, University of Toronto). A survey of the past issues of the TSAR would uncover a whole slew of others.
The birth of TSAR Publishing, a natural extension of the Journal, was another, the success of which, no doubt, was again due to the hard work of the Vassanji team, Moyez and wife Nurjehan. As its catalogue would show, many are the creative writers who have been enabled to reach their readership through it: Rienzie Crusz, Cyril Dabydeen, Arnold Itwaru and Uma Parameswaran, to name a few. This is, of course, not to mention the many critical works (e.g., Itwaru, Kanaganayakam, Mukherjee, and Parameswaran) that bear the TSAR logo.
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It would appear, then, that indeed during the period following the Report, “the South Asian writers [and scholars] of varying ethnic, linguistic, geographic, national and religious backgrounds [have come together] in communication with each other,” as we had hoped.
But, what about “the cause of bringing the South Asian Canadian literature, and the writers themselves, to the attention of the Canadian consciousness?” We need look no further than Vassanji winning the Giller Prize, not once, but twice (1993, 2003). Mistry’s A Fine Balance comes to be featured on the US Oprah show.
Today, any number of anthologies feature works by South Asian Canadian writers, following the first such by Mosaic Press, Whistling Thorn: an Anthology of South Asian Canadian Short Fiction (Sugunasiri, 1994).
But we may contrast all this to the eighties when, the Canadian literary establishment still in the grips of a traditional Canadian literature (see article 1), it was to a British publisher, Heinemann International, e.g., that Vassanji had to go to (personal knowledge), to get his first work, Uhuru Street, published (re-issued since by McLelland & Stewart, 1992), this under its ‘African Series’. Neil Bissoondath’s Digging up the Mountains (Macmillan, 1985) was, of course, the first to break through the literary barrier.
The picture of the success of South Asian Canadian literature is, no doubt, much larger than the little evidence this overview presents, based on personal knowledge. This, then, is why the present anthology serves as a personal celebration, for only in Canada, as they say, could one man see his minor efforts - a Report, a Model (article one), other articles and an anthology of fiction, coming to fruition.7 Now if this sounds like a despicable self-tooting, I want to say that the writer considers himself only a single jewel in the Indra’s Net of Jewels, to draw upon the Buddhist concept of interdependence and relationality. But while these other stories wait to be told, the details of this success story is being told here both as a salute to multiculturalism, but also as a responsibility, since the writer may be the only one, if he could humbly put it, who knows the story from its origins. But we hope that those who were around during the pioneering era will tell their own stories, for posterity and as a record of oral history.
I would like to end with a few bows to those pioneers:
Judy Young for inviting me to do the survey; Alok Mukherjee for his quiet contributions, but in particular for bringing me to the politics of multiculturalism by hiring me to do a survey of the Texts recommended to be used in schools under Circular 14 of the Ontario Government., “relating to India and Indians” (see Mukherji, 1978; McLeod, 1980); Frank Birbalsingh (novel), Arun Prabha Mukherjee (poetry), Surjeet Kalsy (Punjabi Literature) and Prajna Enros (Gujerati literature) for helping me to do the colossal task of reviewing the vast material collected; Uma Parameswaran (U of Winnipeg) for her early participation and support; and last but not least to
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Moyez Vassanji for inviting me to join him on the TSAR founding editorial Board and taking the initiative to organize the conference at which my report was released, opening up the subsequent floodgate, and for publishing my first collection of poetry, Faces of Galle Face Green, even suggesting the title.
Thank you, Canada, for the opportunity provided to make my humble contribution.
May you all be well!
REFERENCES
McLeod, Keith (ed.), 1980, Intercultural Education and Community Development, Guidance Centre, Faculty of Education, University of Toronto
Mukherjee, Alok (ed), 1978, East Indians: Myth & Reality, Indian Immigrant Aid Society, 1978: 1-67
Paranavitana, S., Sigiri Graffiti, UNESCO, 1956.
Sugunasiri, Suwanda H J, 1978, Smarten Up, Indians, and Go Western, in Mukherjee (ed).
Sugunasiri, Suwanda, 1995, Faces of Galle Face Green, Toronto: TSAR Publishing,
Sugunasiri, Suwanda H J (ed), 1983, The Search for Meaning: the literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins, Report submitted to the Secretary of State, Ottawa
Sugunasiri, Suwanda H J (ed), 1994, Whistling Thorn: an Anthology of South Asian Canadians Short Fiction, Oakville: Mosaic Press
Sugunasiri, Suwanda & A V Suraweera (ed.), 1984, Contemporary Sri Lankan Literature, TSAR
Vassanji, M. G. (ed.), 1985, A Meeting of Streams, Toronto: TSAR Publishing
Warder, A. K., 1972, Indian Kavya Literature, vol. 1: Literary Criticism, Delhi: Banarsidass
Wickremasinghe, Martin, Gamperaliya ‘The Changing Village’, 1944, Colombo: Mount Press
Young, Judy, 1979, “Research Proposals Invited”, in The Canadian India Times, May 17, 1979
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Step Down, Shakespeare, the Stone Angel Is here
One Step Down, Shakespeare, the Stone Angel Is here
It has been 16 years* since Prime Minister Trudeau proclaimed the Canadian policy of multiculturalism. However, while there are signs that the policy is beginning to affect instruction, the English curriculum seems as yet untouched by it. In this paper, I will argue the case for multiculturalizing the English curriculum, examine the theoretical bases that demand it, and outline a framework for developing such a curriculum.
The Extrinsic Factors
Good pedagogical, political, legal, and educational reasons exist for multiculturalizing the English curriculum. Among pedagogical ones, the following may be considered:
1. To enable students to understand the nature of Canadian English, which is made up of different dialects, “ethnolects” (defined later in this article), and “sociolects.”
2. To enable students to understand the nature of Canadian literature, which is made up of works by Canadians of Anglo- Saxon, Francophone, East Asian, South Asian, Latin American, and other origins, and written in Canadian English (as defined later in this article) and/or translated from French, Native, or other languages, thereby making literary material relevant to our contemporary Canadian society.
* It may be noted that the essay was written in 1987.
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3. To help students widen their aesthetic experience through exposure to: (a) a literature wider than Canadian Anglo-Saxon, classical British, and/or contemporary American currently in use in Canadian classrooms; and (b) variations of theme, technique, style, ideology, and world view within each genre of this wider literature.
4. To help prepare students to live in a multicultural society by developing an appreciation of literary contributions of their own culture and other cultures, ancient and modern, thereby helping them to develop a pride in their own culture and an appreciation of, and respect for, other cultures and for Canadians who are part of those cultures.
5. To help develop a generation of Canadian writers whose aesthetic experience is rooted in a Canadian-based world culture and whose works would reflect this Canadianized world culture.
6. To prepare students for the work world, in a global context, through exposure to world culture.
7. To help students grow to their potential as exhorted in educational philosophy and the provincial education acts.
8. To assist teachers of English to help students achieve these goals by encouraging them to widen their own literacy and aesthetic horizons.
The political argument can be made on the basis of a parallel in society. In the early days of our multicultural policy, and in certain quarters even today, multiculturalism was taken to be for “ethnics” only (ethnic having, according to Webster’s Seventh Collegiate Dictionary, the very early meaning “neither Christian nor Jewish” or “heathen”), or the later association of the term with minorities. Only today are we becoming convinced of the argument that we are all ethnics, Anglo-Saxons included, on the very visible basis that every one of us belongs to one ethnic community or another. Ethnicity is defined as “an involuntary group of people who share the same culture” or “descendants if such people who identify themselves as
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Step Down, Shakespeare, the Stone Angel Is here
belonging to the same involuntary group” (Isajiw 1974).
It was this acceptance that helped to usher in what I consider to the contemporary takeoff phase of multiculturalism in Canada. That federal, provincial, and municipal governments, Boards of Education, and labour unions have developed, or are developing, policy papers and implementation strategies for multiculturalism, affirmative action, equal pay for work of equal value, and religious holidays is evidence that we are in such a phase.
The parallel in the classroom is that, just as multiculturalism was thought to be for ethnics only, multicultural material also came to be used in programs intended for ethnics only. Use of such material became common in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom, as teachers came to realize that Quang Chou from China and Neela Patel from India could not readily identify with Dick and Jane in the textbooks. ESL, however, was still non-mainstream.
Perhaps the first mainstream subject to incorporate a multicultural component was history, although this was not, by a long shot, because historians were more progressive. Indeed, on the contrary, as researchers McDiarmid and Pratt (1971) and Sugunasiri (1978a) came to discover, they were quite archaic and offensive in the way that non- Anglo-Saxon peoples had come to be portrayed in history texts. It is such criticism, perhaps, that pushed historians to include more multicultural material. Since then, multicultural material has been incorporated into other social science subjects such as Geography. An unexpected response has come from the hard sciences as well, for example, mathematics (Ridge 1980; Ripley 1986). The latest argument for multiculturalizing the curriculum has come in the area of religion (Sugunasiri n.d.-a).
However, while the curricula in many subject areas seem to be awakening to our multicultural reality, there is yet to be discerned a serious concern for multiculturalism in English—the most mainstream subject of all—and in English literature. To continue the parallel, then, it may be argued that, in the school context, the take-off phase in multiculturalism and eventual multicultural maturity will not materialize until the English curriculum becomes multicultural.
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As for the legal/educational reasons, it need only be pointed out that several Ministries and Boards of Education around the country have come up with multicultural policies.1 In the future, teachers may simply not have a choice in the matter of keeping the English curriculum non-multicultural.
The Intrinsic Factors
English as Language
I think that an understanding of what is meant by the label “English” is critical to the argument being made here, for there is a real sense in which Canadian English is a multicultural English. As a first approximation, the term “English,” in the context of the classroom, means the language in which the textbooks are written and in which classroom interaction takes place. But this is only one variety of what may loosely be called “Canadian Standard English,” ignoring here the distinction between written and spoken standards, meaningful as it may be.
Canadian Standard English is the variety used by government and business to conduct their affairs, and it serves as the “link language” across Canada. The are also other, non-standard (not substandard, as purists might argue) varieties of Canadian English. These are the “Regional Standard” varieties, examples of which would be the English used in Newfoundland, in Alberta, or in Toronto’s Cabbagetown. Since these varieties are not likely to be used for formal written purposes such as cross-Canada communication or Parliamentary business, they may be considered spoken varieties. In this sense, they may be variations of the “Spoken Standard” and may possibly overlap with the “Written Standard.” Other varieties, in the form of sociolects, are analyzable along such dimensions as Lower vs. Middle vs. Upper class, Urban vs. Rural, Young vs. Old, or Everyday vs. Trade jargon. These are all varieties well known in the literature.
I would like to suggest that, in the Canadian context, there is a further variant of spoken English that may be called ethnolects. This variant is different from others in that it has many faces. It is English that results when Canadian English comes into contact with either: (1) international varieties of English, such as British English, Black
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English vernacular (Labov 1972), or South Asian English, that have been brought to Canada by English-speaking immigrants (the English, the West Indians, and the South Asians, respectively), or (2) other languages, as non-English speaking immigrants attempt to acquire English, for example, Italian/English, Spanish/English, or even West Indian/ or South Asian/(Canadian) English. The English spoken in the Malbay district of the French-speaking Gaspé Peninsula may be a variety of this (Mougeon 1973). The variety of ethnolects can be can be heard on CHIN Radio or Multicultural TV (in Toronto), as sponsors of various ethnocultural backgrounds promote their wares or as announcers read the news. What differentiates the ethnolects from Canadian Standard may be more phonology and morphology than syntax and semantics.
We now see that Canadian English is, indeed, multicultural and that much more variety and richness exist in Canadian English than meets the eye in the textbooks used in Canadian English classrooms. The pedagogical responsibility of exposing our students to the linguistic richness of the country is not being fulfilled. The problem is not merely that an Albertan cannot communicate effectively with a Newfoundlander. What is at stake is much greater. It is the student’s very cognition and the understanding of the world that are in question.
The seriousness of failing to recognize the richness of Canadian English can be better appreciated when we consider that English is the one subject that every student in an Anglophone school system is required to take throughout their school years. As the language-across- the-curriculum approach (Bullock 1975; NATE 1976) correctly points out, English is the medium through which every subject is taught. In other words, it is the language of epistemology for our students. Since perception is “conditioned” by language, such subjects as science, history, spirituality, and others are being looked at by our multicultural children through exclusive English, and thus, mainly Judeo-Christian eyes. This surely is a denial of the very concept of multiculturalism. “Conditioned” is used here to suggest that what is implied is not a simplistic Whorfian determinism, but a highly complex, reciprocal, circular, and multi-conditional relationship (Sugunasiri 1978b, 199–214). Multiculturalism clearly calls for perceiving the world through “multilingual eyes,” that is, through the several linguistic varieties that we have argued to be the components of Canadian
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English, as well as other languages such as French and the Native languages.
The route presently being advocated in educational circles to ensure the continued functioning of the many Canadian “linguistic eyes” is heritage language instruction, wherein students of a given linguistic background would attend a class in that language outside school hours (as in Ontario) or during school hours (as in Alberta). Laudable as this approach may be, it is not without its possible results of “perceptual Balkanization,” if nothing else, with members of each linguistic and cultural group looking at the world through their own eyes, but being unable to see through anybody else’s. If the current trend of students of different cultural backgrounds enrolling in other heritage-language programs were to continue with wide participation, the Balkanizing process might be minimized. However, this would depend too much on happenstance. Education should surely be better planned!
A possible alternative strategy, then, for providing multilingual eyes through the English curriculum for all our Canadian students may be to continue to give students a solid foundation in Canadian English, as defined in this article to include the Standard Canadian, sociolects, regional dialects, and ethnolects, in addition to instruction in their own heritage languages. As will be argued in the pages that follow, this can best be achieved by teaching literature. Once again, the term “Canadian literature” will be redefined to encompass a wider canvas.
English as Literature
Literature, if I may try my own definition, is the outcome of an attempt by an individual, moved emotionally by a given situation, to communicate linguistically with his or her “co-hearts” (sahrd, to draw upon classical Sanskrit theory2) one’s creative aesthetic response to that situation, to evoke an aesthetic experience (rasa) in the co-hearts and move them emotionally (bhava). A writer, then, seeks to express a certain content to a particular audience. The content, in turn, determines the language in which the communication is to be made, and the writer and the audience together determine the sensibility. The four dimensions discussed so far, namely, content, language, sensibility, and audience, can thus be considered as making up a “literary matrix”. Adding two others, ethnocultural origin and
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domicile, will help us understand the proposed expanded concept of Canadian literature.
On the basis of the pre-multicultural notion of Canada as an English land, Canadian literature can be defined, using the above dimensions, as creative works that have been written about Anglo-Canadian experiences, in the medium of English, for an English-speaking (Canadian) audience, and reflect an Anglo-Saxon (or wider Judeo- Christian) sensibility. The writers are of Anglo-Saxon origin and make Canada their home; the notion of being Canadian-born being implicit here. The literature on ethnicity (Anderson and Frideres 1981, 41 ff.) agrees that national origin is one of four aspects of ethnicity. I have expanded this category to add domicile to account for the immigration and mobility of Canadian writers. The inner hexagon of Figure I, shown later in this article, captures this category.
It would be immediately evident that national origin is a “pure” category that would, with obvious modifications, more appropriately describe Japanese, Russian or Sinhalese literature, but of which there would be no Canadian examples. The intended audience of these writers would not be exclusively Canadian, given Canada’s colonial relationship with England and its proximity to the U.S. With this exception, however, most works of such writers as Frances Brooke, Ralph Connor, Margaret Laurence, Al Purdy, Margaret Atwood, and Janette Hospital-Turner qualify as Canadian literature. Woodcock refers to Brooke’s (1769) The History of Emily Montagu as “the first of all novels of Canada” (Woodcock 1980, 21) and to Connor’s (1898) Black Rock: A Tale of Selkirk as “one of three or four fictional voices that still speak out of the Canadian 19th century with a degree of conviction” (Woodcock 1980, 23).
When we come to contemporary multicultural Canada, the pure category makes even less sense. For example, some English-medium writers have been recognized (by inclusion in anthologies, for example) by the literary establishment as being Canadian writers. Included in this category are writers such as Mordecai Richler, who was born and raised in Canada but is of Jewish background; Irving Layton, who is also of Jewish background but was born in Romania and raised in Canada; Michael Ondaatje, who was born in Sri Lanka and is of Sinhalese-Tamil-European background but has lived in the
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U.K. and Canada since his adolescence; and Austin Clarke, who is of West Indian background but emigrated to Canada as an adult.
What, then, of the works of other English-medium writers living and writing in Canada: French-Canadian writers Clarke Blaise and Anne Hebert; the prize-winning, Canadian-born Joy Kogawa of Japanese (Buddhist-Christian) background; Kristjana Gunnars of Icelandic background; Harold Sonny Ladoo (deceased) of West Indian background; Bharati Mukherjee of Indian (and Hindu) origin; Reshard Gool of South African background but of South Asian heritage, whose novel The Nemesis Casket has been acclaimed as “the most brilliant example of twentieth-century Canadian baroque” (Sutherland 1983); and the West Indian born Sam Selvon who wrote several novels while in England and has since made Canada his home?
What, indeed, of the eleven major works (novels or collections of fiction and poetry) written and published in Canada by writers of South Asian Canadian origins3, not to mention the highly acclaimed younger writers such as Neil Bissoondath (1985), whose first work is a collection of short fiction entitled Digging Up the Mountains? Finally, what of the many writers of Black origin writing in Canada?4
Given the variety of ethnocultural backgrounds of English-medium writers living in Canada, it would be extremely unrealistic to define a Canadian writer in relation to any particular ethnocultural background, Anglo-Saxon included. We are beginning to see the walls of the inner hexagon of Figure 1 crumbling, giving way in places to the centre hexagon.
Content, which includes setting and theme, is not what characterizes a Canadian writer either. If, for example, Margaret Laurence’s (1963) The Tomorrow-Tamer made up of stories written on African themes in an African setting, and Michael Ondaatje’s (1982) Running in the Family, based on Sri Lanka, qualify as Canadian literature, it would, of course, be difficult to exclude Austin Clarke’s (1964) Survivors of the Crossing, Bharati Mukherjee’s (1975) Wife, set in a North American and East Indian context, Reshard Gool’s (1976) Price, based on South African life, or Cyril Dabydeen’s (1980a) short-story collection Still Close to the Island, most of which are based on West Indian life. All these works were written while the writers were living in Canada.
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However, as we shall see, domicile alone would hardly be a sufficient condition for including a work in the category of Canadian writing. Thus far, we have extended the traditional view of Canadian English literature beyond the works of Anglo-Saxon writers to the works of Canadian writers of any ethnocultural origin, writing (in English) on any theme and setting, reflecting any sensibilities.
French is the other official language of Canada, and therefore, as Sutherland (1971) argues in advancing his concept of comparative Canadian literature, one can hardly ignore Canada’s linguistic duality. Works written in French by such Canadians of French extraction (Quebecois or other) as Hubert Aquin, Rejean Ducharme, Garielle Roy, and Roch Carriere can hardly be excluded from the category of Canadian literature simply because they are not written in English! To do so would be to court national disaster. Once we include French- Canadian literature, the literary works of Francophone Canadians of other origins, such as Acadian, Haitian, Jewish or Polish, would obviously have to be included as well.5
Canada may have a multicultural practice, but it has no official multilingual policy. So, what do we call the works of Native Canadian people, such as works in Inuit, Iroquois, Cree or Ojibway. By no stretch of the imagination can we exclude such works.6 What of the five Punjabi novels, only one of which—the novel by Kesar Singh Gyani7 of British Columbia, who has been in Canada longer than many of the English-medium writers listed above—has a Canadian setting? Or what, indeed, of the works of Doukhobor bards and poets (Kolesnikoff 1982), from Peter Diachkov to A.J. Potnikoff; Ukrainian novelists (Aponiuk 1982) such as Illia Kyrijak, Oleksander Luhovyj, and Ulas Samchuk, writing on the Ukranian Canadian experience; Josef Skovrecky and Pavel Javor writing in Czeck about Czeck themes (Bresky 1978); Sikimin Ary, Rachel Korn, and J.I. Segal writing in Yiddish about Jewish themes (Sinclair and Wolfe 1981); Shaheen, Irfana, and Ashfaq Hussain writing in Urdu about Muslim themes (Khan 1988); or even Ashok Aklujkar, of the University of Alberta, writing personal communication in the Indian classical language of Sanskrit? Even though these works are not written in either of the official languages, it would be ludicrous to exclude so many works of literature written by Canadians8 because they were not written in English or French.
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Although the intended audience for which Margaret Laurence and Michael Ondaatje write is Canadian, the potential audience is the entire English-speaking world, as would be the entire French-speaking world for Francophone Canadian works. Part of the audience for the works of Bharati Mukherjee, Uma Parameshwaran, Saros Cowasjee, and other Canadians of South Asian origins who write in English would be Indian. The works of the Punjabi-Canadian dramatist Ajmer
Figure 1 A Canadian Literary Matrix from a
Contemporary Multicultural Perspective
ly
ACE/DOMICILE BIRTHPL ETHNOCULTURALor Native ORIGIN
not Anglo-Saxon/Francophone
lived in Canada, but left permanent left but Canada, in lived
born elsewhere, now in Canada; in now elsewhere, born
Canada/elsewhere Anglo-Saxon/Native/ in born/living
French/Jewish/other in Canada in born and living and born Native/heritage elsewhere only elsewhere In English only English In Canada/elsewhere In English/French/ In Canada (and U.S.) (and Canada LANGUAGE In heritage languages only languages heritage In
INTENDED AUDIENCE INTENDED on life in Canada
Islam/Sikh etc.) Islam/Sikh on life in both
Other (Buddhist/Hindu/ Other Canada and elsewhere Judeo-Christian/Native/
on life elsewhere
other/non-Western Christian other/non-Western SENSIBILITY CONTENT
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Rode9 are intended for, and produced before, live audiences in Canada, but they have a potential audience in Punjab as well. Many heritage language plays are staged at multicultural theatre festivals, even though some of them may have been imported from the motherlands. These are all, then, examples of the “third category.”
When we consider the variety of media in which literary works are produced in Canada; their multicultural (and international) contents, settings, and themes; the plethora of sensibilities reflected in them; their intended beyond-Canada audience; and the ethnocultural background of the writers and their residence; it is obvious that Canadian literature must bee seen along a continuum of several dimensions. It is this Canadian literary reality that Figure 1 seeks to capture.
It is important to note that the figure represents only a contemporary Canadian perspective. It shows Canadian literature as a continuum, a range, or a melange. It reflects the presence of “contiguous, intermingled, and encapsulated groups” and takes a “broad and encompassing view of what constitutes a Canadian writer,” as advocated by Batts (1984). It also recognizes Canada’s linguistic duality and its ethnic diversity, as argued for by Sutherland (1983). Thus, while the inner hexagon represents the traditional definition of Canadian literature (although wider than the pure category), the next hexagon shows the ever-widening notion of Canadian literature, which may now be defined as:
The literature written by writers of any ethnocultural origin, who were born in Canada or elsewhere but are presently living in Canada or have lived in Canada as a citizen, landed immigrant, or resident, and whose writing is in English, French, a Native language, or another heritage language, about the content, theme or setting in Canada or elsewhere and is primarily, but not exclusively, intended for a Canadian audience, reflecting a sensibility that can be best described as a “Canadianizing world culture.”
“Canadianizing world culture” here is meant to be an emergent variety, somewhat along the lines of the notion of ethnolect, but in the field of culture (values, attitudes, behaviours, and folkways) of the given
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writer (of any origin or religion) with whatever cultural traits the writer identifies as being Canadian. While the ideal outcome of this process can be a “distinct Canadian consciousness” (Sutherland 1983), the outer hexagon represents a writer who is furthest from developing such a consciousness but who nevertheless serves as a continuing source of the world culture within the very borders of Canada.
When stated this way, the definition may sound nebulous and even elusive, but this is merely being reflective of the fluidity of contemporary Canadian society, currently in the throes of great societal change. Time alone will tell whether this definition will become more definitive.
The flexible nature of the definition, however, has its advantages. For example, we could now legitimately call Stephen Leacock and Robert Stead, along with a host of others such as Michael Ondaatje, Austin Clarke, Joy Kogawa, Reshard Gool, Sam Selvon, and Joseph Skvorecky Canadian writers, even though there were not born here. Canadian literature can include the works of such writers as Mavis Gallant, who, though born in Canada, lives in Europe; Margaret Laurence, who, having been born here, has returned to Canada after a stay in England; Bharati Mukherjee, whose three novels were written while in Canada but who now resides in the U.S.; and, in the extreme case (and in a few years), Sam Selvon, all of whose works were written before he arrived in Canada.
Learning/Teaching Language Across Literature and Literature Across Language
We have seen that both Canadian English and Canadian literature are wider than what is being taught in today’s classrooms or recognized by classroom teachers and, perhaps, English professors. To return to literature in the medium of Canadian English, Figure 2 (next page) indicates the literary pool that the English Curriculum would be able to draw from a mere recognition of the contemporary nature of Canadian language and English-medium literature, shown under the four aspects recognized in the literature on ethnicity (Anderson and Frideres 1981).
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As can be seen from Figure 2, widening the English curriculum to include the works (original or translated) of all Canadian writers, of varied ethnocultural backgrounds, that is, multiculturalizing it, opens up new vistas for students, teachers, and professors.
Figure 2 Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Variation reflected in English-Medium Literary Works (Original and Translated) of Canadian Writers (of different Ethnocultural Backgrounds)
Ethnic Language Variety Folkways Religious Background Background
Anglo-Canadian Standard Canadian (SC) Anglo-Saxon/ Western (Judeo- Colloquial English/ British Christian) Medieval English Urban
Franco-Canadian SC/Colloquial English French/European Western Judeo- Canadian Dialects Urban Christian (translated)
Native Canadian SC/Colloquial English Native Rural Native Christian
Jewish Canadian SC/Colloquial English Jewish/Euro- Western/ (original/translated) Middle Eastern Judeo-Christian Urban
Doukhobor, SC/Colloquial English West and East Western /Judeo- Ukranian, etc. Ethnolects European Christian (original/translated) Urban
Black Canadian SC/Colloquial English Black/Rural Judeo-Christian/ Dialects/Ethnolects Afro-American (original/translated)
East Asian SC/Colloquial English Far Eastern/Rural/ Buddhist/ Canadian Dialects/Ethnolects Urban Confucianist/ (original/translated) Taoist/Judeo- Christian Hindu/Muslim/ South Asian SC/Colloquial English South Asian Rural Buddhist/Sikh/ Canadian (original/translated) Judeo- Christian
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Judging by the second column, multiculturalizing the English curriculum enriches the language experience of students. The works of Anglo-Saxon (and Jewish) writers would be the obvious first strength of such a curriculum. It is these works that would help provide students with a solid foundation in English and prepare them for such tasks as writing applications, reports, and correspondence, so much a part of literacy. Such works would be the best textual source for exposure to the colloquial varieties as well (as, for example, in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Laurence’s The Stone Angel). However, that is as far as they can take us.
It is to works such as Austin Clarke’s (1971) “A Wedding in Toronto” and Cyril Dabydeen’s (1980a) “Memphis,” subtitled “A Story in West Indian Pidgin,” that we have to turn for exposure to Canadian dialects of Canadian English (or ethnolects, as they emerge in contact with Canadian Standard English). As a bonus, these dialects and ethnolects might even introduce the reader to Old English through encounters with usages like “What o’clock?” (meaning “What time is it?”), fossilized from an earlier time when English was introduced to the West Indies or to Newfoundland.
Similarly, one can reasonably expect to encounter British English in the work of a South Asian Canadian writer. Reading the works of a Francophone writer, we may be exposed to the variety of English spoken in the Gaspé Peninsula, which includes fossilized English usages. While such exposure would be cost effective as well, since one doesn’t have to go to Jamaica or the Gaspé Peninsula, it may trigger the more inquisitive student to undertake a trip or, at least, to make personal acquaintances with peers who might be using the variety of language in question.
Column three and four of Figure 2 show how multiculturalizing the English curriculum would help students to cope better with the world through coming to understand the world culture as reflected in the sensibilities. Anglo-Canadian literature would, again, be an important source. For students of Anglo-Saxon background, it would provide everything that any literature provides a given people. For others, it would provide a window for understanding the culture of one of our founding fathers.
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Just as Mordecai Richler’s works expanded the Canadian literary horizons taking us to the workings of the Jewish mind, so indeed would we be taken through the mind caves of other Euro-Canadian cultures by reading the (English-medium) works of writers of French, Icelandic, Romanian, Italian, and so on. Works by Native people, of course, take us not only to the northern realms but to a completely different culture and ethos—a rural one, also shared by writers of Black, South Asian, and East Asian backgrounds.
The works of these latter writers take us into the furthermost realms of the human psyche. The writers are influenced by the world’s multiplicity of religions: from Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Sikhism that continue to shape the lives of South Asians to Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in East Asia. An important dimension of these sensibilities is the particular variations of Christianity that have developed in non-western parts of the world. A final dimension of the world culture that has been brought to our doorstep is the African and the Afro-American cultures.
Implicit in all such varieties of sensibilities, as well, are the influences of varied political systems, from capitalism to socialism, and from individualism, which are very much a part of western society, to co- operativism inherent in the Native, African, and Asian cultures.
If a widening of the English-medium literature alone does all this, we can imagine how much more the breaking down of linguistic barriers would do for us. For example, a shift from an exclusively urban focus to one of both urban and rural indicates the kind of literary richness that an expanded curriculum is likely to bring. Myths and folktales assume a new importance, and works by native writers come to be read and evaluated not from the perspective of structures contained in the contemporary short story, novel, or poem, but on the basis of their internal structures, just as Japanese haiku has come to be accepted as a unique type of poetry.
An openness to a variety of structures and genres would invite a look at literary works and genres of other cultural traditions. The Ghazal type of poetry in Urdu, essentially “love poems” in which “an idea is fully expressed in a single line divided into two hemistichs of equal syllabic lengths” and using “rhyming words at the end of each second
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hemistich” (Qureshi 1982) would be an example. The Gi (pronounced as in go, long i) of the Sinhalese tradition, which is “unrhymed,” and in which each stanza is divided into four sections (lines or feet) and the meters depend upon the total number of matras—“a matra or syllabic instant being equivalent to the length of a short syllable, in each foot” (Reynolds 1970)—would be another. Earlier Canadian animal stories by such writers as Ernest Seton or Charles Roberts may also be beneficial as curriculum writers search for non-traditional material.
A continuation of the search beyond Canadian shores might lead to a different style of storytelling, as contained in the Pañcatantra, “the five looms,” written in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, using the structure of a parenthetical mathematical problem. In this structure, the main tale leads into a sub-tale, then into another, then into another, each of which is developed to completion before moving to the next level. A variation of this technique would be found in a contemporary novel.
Interest in historical literary material from far-away lands might take us to the world’s first novel, and the first by a woman, Genji Monogatari, “the story of Genji,” written in Japanese in the tenth century by Shikibu Murasaki. In Buddhist Jataka (birth) stories (circa sixth century BCE), one would be fascinated to find the earliest model of the modern short story. Jataka stories are short and focus on a single event or character, but delve deeply into the character’s psyche. An example is found in the story of the jealous king who, afraid that his Queen’s affection for their child would take away her affection for him, had the baby mutilated and killed, in front of the queen’s eyes, deriving a sadistic pleasure as well.10 Even though the great North Indian epic Mahabharata (100,000 couplets) and the Dravidian (South Indian) Silappadikaran may not add to the diversity of technique, they would at least show that epic writing is not the sole preserve of western culture. Students would be led to the same conclusion as they go on to the works of the ancient Indian dramatist Kalidasa, in which the kings and nobles speak in a different language (prakrit) and/or dialect. Of even more interest might be the traditional Noh plays and the kabuki theatre of Japan, as well as the Nadagama of the Sinhalese.11
In poetry, the technique of using the last word of a line as the first
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word in the next line is also used in ancient India and Sri Lanka, the rules relating to the choice of sounds (and letters) between good letters/sounds and bad ones to bring about the desired mood for the purpose. One surprised by this would be forced to take an even closer look at the relationship between language and literature.
As we enter the realms of literary criticism and appreciation, we can widen our horizons by going beyond Northrop Frye and I.A. Richards to incorporate the Chinese; for example, the Confucian scholar Liu Hsiang (77–6 BCE)12 and the Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) theorists such as Dandin and Bharthrhari (Keith 1966) as well.
Galloway’s (1980) criticism of traditional male bias in literature, though made in the context of English literature, has general validity, and as we discover the psalms of the Buddhist nuns (Therigatha) of the sixth century BCE13 and other works such as those from Murasaki and Atwood, we might even be able to overcome this bias.
The widening horizons indicated here, could be characterized as learning literature across language and language across literature. The pedagogical outcomes of the approach are, as outlined in the goals at the beginning of this article, that our students would be exposed to the varieties of Canadian English and Canadian literature, as they are also attracted by its contemporaneity and, thus, higher relevance. As they deepen and widen their aesthetic experience, they are also exposed to a wider world view. The practical advantages resulting from all of this would be the facilitation of living in a multi-cultural society, the potential emergence of newer writers whose works would reflect the multicultural reality, and the better preparation of students for living and working in the wider world, made up as it is of the very same cultures to which they have been exposed within their own borders. Teachers would also benefit as they prepare to teach in a way that better meets the needs of their students.
Among the “nationist”14 outcomes of the approach is a recognition of our ability to meet, in keeping with our rising multicultural and nationist expectations, a Canadian content requirement, and to achieve more contemporaneity, a better representation of women as authors, subjects, and critics in the curriculum, and a population more world-minded, yet strongly with a Canadian consciousness—all of
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this, however, without affecting quality. Success in overcoming the underutilization of our cultural (literary) resources would result in undermining what have been described as cultural imperialism and colonialism. It is better described as “literary imperialism/colo- nialism,” or the underdevelopment—to use the term in the sense of one’s weakening in the same process of the growth of the other (Frank 1966)—of our own Canadian culture, or the siphoning of its growth potential, under the heavy hand of such factors as a disproportionate number of American authors and titles on our class lists, and the overemphasis of Shakespeare, with all the ramifications of, as Galloway (1980) points out, sexist and stereotypical biases. A final outcome, for students and teachers alike, might be the psychological flexibility that stems from the exposure to variety—linguistic, cultural, political, thematic, and so on—the very process that has, through the ages (Jespersen 1905), made our English a flexible tool.
A Multicultural English Curriculum
Both the intrinsic and extrinsic factors discussed in this article encourage us to expand our present definition and understanding of the English curriculum to incorporate Canadian English in its different faces (dialects, sociolects, and ethnolects) and Canadian literature (in its different multicultural manifestations) with the wider world literature. “Wider” is used here in both the contemporaneous and the historical senses. A model Canadian-English curriculum would then include the following features:
1. Literature written in Canadian English (as defined earlier);
2. Translations of works falling under the rubric, “Comparative Canadian literature,” but defined in a wider sense than Sutherland’s, to include works of not only Anglophone and Francophone Canadians but also of (to coin a term along the same lines) “autrephone Canadians”—works written in Native languages and other heritage languages;
3. Contemporary world literature written in English, giving access to British, American, African, West Indian, South Asian, and other sensibilities; 4. Contemporary world literature not in the English medium,
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including myths and folktales, giving access to French, Soviet, German, Spanish (both European, and Latin American), and other Indo-European languages; Scandinavian languages; Chinese, Japanese, and other Sino-Tibetan languages; Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi, Bengali and Sinhala; Dravidian languages such as Malayalam and Tamil; African languages such as Swahili; and Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic;
5. Classical world literature, beginning, no doubt, with Shakespeare, but going beyond to include Irish, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Persian, Sanskrit, ancient Sinhala,15 and so on; and
6. Literary theory to the extent that it is used in classroom discussion, drawn from beyond the European context.
An implementation model would have to address such issues as: how much Canadian vs. non-Canadian material; how much English-medium vs. non-English-medium, by grade and level (basic, general, advanced, and enriched); political issues such as how best to sell the model to a School Board whose student population might be homogeneous, ethnoculturally or religiously, or whose student population might lack such homogeneity; and educational planning issues such as gradual phasing-in with minimal disruption, provision of funds, professional development for classroom teachers and professors of literature, enlisting the cooperation of publishers, and so on.
These are all issues that need careful thought and creative leadership. The question is whether we are going to be dragged into a multicultural society kicking and screaming, or whether we are going to meet our responsibility as educators by taking on the reins.
Conclusion
In this paper I have argued the case for multiculturalizing the English curriculum in Canadian schools as a way of teaching Canadian English and, in step with the developing world trend, as a way of preparing students to live in a world culture. Our contemporary
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Canadian society is, within our own borders, a global village. The terms “Canadian English” and “Canadian literature” were given a wider interpretation, and a model was proposed to reflect this wider notion.
The name “Shakespeare” in the title stands for the contemporary narrow definition of Canadian literature and language. It is intended to symbolize the over-reliance on Canadian, British, and American writers of Anglo-Saxon origin, on literary works dealing with upper-class life, and on medieval (British), non-Canadian, or American English in preference to contemporary Canadian English. As Shakespeare is dethroned, his place is to be taken by “the Stone Angel.” I use the title of Margaret Laurence’s novel to represent the wider interpretation given in this paper: an emphasis on contemporary and Canadian English works with Canadian multicultural sensibilities. The Stone Angel is a work of multicultural literature in that the Curries are a first-generation immigrant family whose struggles to adapt to a new society are typical of those of other immigrant groups. And, to stretch one’s imagination to its limit, even Hagar, the main character, can be said to represent a further multicultural aspect in that she stands for traditional (Christian and other) religiosity (consider, for example, the Biblical character Agar), as well as for rebellion, suggestive of the emerging and increasing acceptance of religious plurality in Canada. Hagar ferociously fights to retain her pride and self-reliance, powerfully suggesting another multiculturally linked aspect of Canadian life, namely, the struggle for women’s rightful place in society.
Dealing in further abstraction and symbolism, the “Stone” of the Stone Angel can be said to represent the apparently unchanging outer core of Canadian society, with the “Angel” representing the more compassionate and understanding dimensions of our society, to give a very liberal interpretation of the changes taking place in Canada.
Finally, to the extent that a work of literature represents the psyche of its creator, the Stone Angel also stands for Margaret Laurence herself, which again means several things. Dubbed as Canada’s Tolstoy (Woodcock 1980, 40–62), she stands for all the Tolstoys around the world and in Canada, namely, all the non-English-medium writers, both classical and contemporary, to be chosen for their high-quality works, and to be studied in translation. Laurence’s first work, The
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Step Down, Shakespeare, the Stone Angel Is here
Tommorrow-Tamer, is set in Africa. Laurence symbolizes the Canadian writers writing about non-Canadian themes and makes it easier to include in Canadian literature the works of first-generation immigrant writers. Her changing domiciles—Canada to England and back to Canada—facilitate the inclusion of writers, particularly first-generation writers, whose loyalties are not firmly established and who, therefore, seem to be seeking to serve two nations, Canada and their native country.
In many ways, then, Shakespeare and the Stone Angel stand for opposite ends of the spectrum called Canadian literature and Canadian English. Should we banish the former to the backwoods, if only temporarily, until we begin to accept the reality of the breadth and depth of Canadian literature and Canadian English and are able to deal with it in a mature fashion, in keeping with the rising multicultural and nationist aspirations and expectations of all Canadians, unfettered by our colonial past? This is the challenge facing the English teacher and the English professor.
NOTES
1. See, for example, Ontario Ministry of Education (1983, 8, 22); Toronto Board of Education (1979, 12).
2. See Keith (1966) for a discussion on some of these classical Indian literary theories.
3. See Canadian Ethnic Studies (1982) for works by, or background on, Suknaski and Gunnars; see Sugunasiri (1983) and Sugunasiri (1985a) for works by South Asian Canadian writers.
4. See for example, Elliot (n.d.; 1985) and Ontario Ministry of Education (1983) for their works.
5. See Canadian Fiction Magazine (1983) and several issues of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature (1976 to 1986) for some representative works.
6. See, for example, Jenness (1956) for such a collection of “tales from Indian Canada.”
7. This work is Sahid Mewa Singh Lopoke (“Martyr Mewa Singh of
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Lopoke”), based on the Komagata Maru incident of 1912, when a shipload of Indians, mainly Sikh, were denied landing in Canada and arrested on returning to India. Following the incident, Mewa Singh, a Canadian, shot an Anglo Indian informer. See Kalsey (1983c) for a discussion of the works of Gyani.
8. See Yates, Lilliard and West (1971) for other works.
9. See Sugunasiri, ed. (1983) for a list of his works.
10. This is the gist of the Culladhammapala (name of child) Birth Story, items 358 (out of 550) in the collection compiled in Pali, the language of the Buddha, under the Jataka; see Cowell (1895–1907). A Jataka is a story told by the Buddha about one of his past lives to make a point about the present. The Jataka is made up of two parts, the historical story and the contemporary, each of which can be read and enjoyed independent of the other, even though the historical connection is made in the end.
11. See Sarachchandra (1953) for a discussion of the Nadagama.
12. See Liu (1975) for a discussion.
13. See Norman (1971) for a discussion and the Compendium of this collection of 522 verses of great literary value by Buddhist nuns (Theris). The work is part of the Tripitaka, the Buddhist Canon, dating back to the fifth century BCE in its written form, easily making it the first major literary achievement by women writers.
14. The term “nationism” was introduced by Fishman (1968) to overcome the conceptual confusion associated with the term nationalism. I have coined the term “nationist” on this basis (Sugunasiri 1978b).
15. As pointed out elsewhere (Sugunasiri 1985b), Sinhala, in Sri Lanka, is perhaps one of the few living languages, if not the only, with an unbroken written tradition, the earliest rock inscriptions dating back to late BCE times. One of its best manifestations of its literature is seen in the works of the Sigiri poets (Paranavitana 1956), being the responses to 500 “heavenly nymphs” (apsara) painted, in the Ajanta style, on the rock of Sigiri, recorded by average citizens on the “mirror wall” (ketapat pauwra) that can be seen even today in its original lustre. This ancient literary tradition has continued up to today in poetry, fiction, drama, film, etc.; see Sugunasiri and Suraweera (1984) for a collection.
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The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview
Two
The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview
1. Introduction
This paper1 presents the findings of a Canada-wide survey of the creative writing—poetry, short story, novel and drama—of Canadians of South Asian Origins. Their critical works, whether on literature or any other academic discipline, though voluminous,2 are beyond the scope of this study. South Asia is made up of seven countries, namely, Afghanistan, Bangla Desh, India, Maldive Islands, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. But people originating in South Asia have emigrated to many countries of the world and settled down in large numbers, particularly in East Africa (Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya), South Africa, the West Indies, South America (e.g., Guyana), Fiji Islands, Mauritius and Malay Peninsula, and later in European countries (e.g., England, Germany, Australia, Canada and the United States). It is, then, not only the seven countries of South Asia that have contributed to the 326,000 people (1981 Census) referred to in the Census as “Indo-Pakistanis” and referred to in this paper as South Asians, but all of these other countries of the world listed above as well. The term “Canadians of South Asian Origins,” then, cumbersome as it may sound, better reflects the Canadian reality. For the sake of simplicity, however, we shall use the label “South Asian Canadians” in the rest of the paper.
The original invitation by the Secretary of State (1979) that led to this research called for proposals “to undertake a study of the writers and writings of any one of the groups (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, Pakistani, etc.)” In submitting a proposal, however, the present researcher argued that the whole of South Asia be treated as a single
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unit, for two reasons. First
... much of the relevant writing is likely to come from India, which means that it may not be productive to deal with other countries separately. For example, there is likely no literature in Sinhala from Sri Lanka related to Canada (Sugunasiri 1979).
The second is that “there is language overlap across these countries.” For example, Hindi, though one of the official languages of India, is spoken extensively in Bangla Desh as well, not to mention the large Indian communities spread out in the countries listed above. Likewise, Bengali, the official language of Bangla Desh, is an official regional language in India as well as being spoken in northern India. Punjabi, another official regional language in India, is spoken in Pakistan as well. While Tamil is a regional language in India, it is also an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore. Urdu, the official language in Pakistan, is spoken by a large number of Indian Moslems. Like Hindi, each of these other languages, and languages such as Gujerati, Marathi, Kannada, Sinhala, Konkani etc. are spoken in the many countries listed above, including Canada, where peoples of South Asian origins have settled. English, of course, is spoken in most if not all of the countries of South Asia and by South Asians overseas.
The proposal for a wider treatment was accepted, and the current research, therefore, sought to examine the literature written in the Canadian context in the following languages (in alphabetical order): Arabic, Bengali, Gujerati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sinhala, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, not to mention, of course, English and French. The attempt was to take into account the geographic, linguistic, ethnic, national and religious variations of South Asian Canadians.3
Notwithstanding the original intention to cover all of these languages listed, the present research could uncover reasonable literary activity in only three languages (see next section for methodology), not including Urdu, which had been contracted out separately. (See Khan 1982, for this Report.) The three languages were English, Punjabi and Gujerati.
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2. Methodology
The preliminary enquiries for this research began in Toronto with informal face-to-face and telephone conversations with knowledgeable members of several South Asian communities known to the present researcher personally, or who came to be known in the process of the enquiries.4 Only a single question was posed: “Do you know of any South Asian writers or anyone who may know of them?”
On the basis of this preliminary enquiry, work was begun on developing a cross-Canada list of writers, professors of literature, community leaders, organizations and media people of South Asian origins, and librarians, researchers and any others working in or likely to be knowledgeable about the South Asian Canadian scene. A letter explaining the project was then sent to all available addresses. An additional personal letter was sent to writers. Where possible, the letter was followed up with a telephone call. The letter was also sent to radio and television stations, primarily in Toronto, that had multicultural programs, for use in their public service announcements. The response to the letter, however, was both slow and sparse. It was also apparent that whatever information was to be gathered through this process was going to be primarily Ontario-based.
Soon it was evident that personal contact was of utmost importance. Travelling to Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal, at different times, was therefore the next step. Vancouver not only has perhaps the largest South Asian Canadian population but has had a major Punjabi community for over eighty years, with as many as five thousand at one point in 1908 (Andracki 1958, cited in Buchignani 1977, 87). Calgary and Edmonton have large South Asian populations as well.5 Montreal, the other major city with a South Asian population, was picked in the hope of discovering some French language material, in addition to material in the other languages.
At each of these locations, personal or telephone interviews were conducted, again with writers and knowledgeable persons. A copy of the letter outlining the project was given and a response requested. The same letter was sent to other names and addresses provided by the contacts at these locations.
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Travelling and meeting people personally turned out to be the most fruitful source of information. These meetings brought out the names of not only established writers of the communities, but little known ones as well. In addition, they provided an insight into the state of the art, and the joys and sorrows, the aspirations and frustrations of South Asian Canadian writers and potential writers.6
The findings of this second step helped the researcher to decide which languages might most fruitfully be pursued in relation to the availability of Canadian material, and helped narrow the scope and the focus of the research. Basically, it was evident that there were only two languages in which there was any substantial literary activity: Punjabi and English. The British Columbia scene proved a hive of literary activity in Punjabi, reflecting the well-established and “nativized” community, and a unity of purpose if not a unity of ideology.7 Ontario provided a second base of Punjabi activity, but to a lesser degree. Literary activity in English was spread across the country, although with a preponderance of writers in Ontario. Though nowhere close to the degree in Punjabi and English, a surprising discovery was an emerging literary consciousness and activity in Gujerati, primarily in Montreal, and to a lesser extent in Toronto.
The next step was to hire researchers, one for Punjabi in Vancouver, a second for Gujerati and a third to assist the Project Director (the present researcher), the last two in Toronto. Despite the evidence that literary activity was limited to these three languages, it was felt necessary to further explore the field in Hindi given that it is spoken by practically every Canadian of Indian, and perhaps even of Bangla Deshi and Pakistani, origin. Hindi, along with Punjabi and Gujerati belong to the Indo-Aryan language family (see footnote 3), and it was and it was therefore necessary to thoroughly explore the field of Dravi dian languages (footnote 3) as well. To accommodate this felt need, three other researchers were hired, one for Hindi in Toronto and two for the Dravidian languages (one in Toronto and another in Vancouver), making a total of six.8 Three criteria were used in selecting the researchers: (a) proficiency in the language, (b) background in literature and (c) community involvement.
The findings of the Hindi and the Dravidian language researchers
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The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview
were not different from the present researcher’s initial findings: that there existed no literary activity in these languages.9 It is thus that the project ended up researching only writing in Punjabi, English and Gujerati.
Once the choice of languages was finalized, the first task of each of the researchers was to compile or finalize the compilation of a Bibliography of writers and their works in each language under each genre, whether in original or translated form, using index cards. It would have been ideal if a library of all the works of South Asian Canadian writers could have been developed, but the project budget allowed for no such extravaganza! Thus the research had to be, of necessity, restricted to whatever material was available for inspection from libraries, personal collections and the writers themselves. This procedure actually worked rather well. Much of the Gujerati material had appeared in three annual publications which were readily available. The English works had appeared in periodicals or books which were available through one source or another. In the case of Punjabi, the researcher herself was the best resource. She had just been involved in several research and publication activities, as editor, translator and writer (see Kalsey 1977, 1979, 1980), and was an active member of Watno Dur, a Punjabi cultural organization in Vancouver with a regular publication of the same name.
Once the data were gathered, the next step was to analyze the material, under each of the four genres. The detailed findings of the study are contained in the reports by the respective researchers: Birbalsingh 1983; Enros 1983; Kalsey 1983a, 1983b, 1983c, 1983d; Mukherjee 1983a; Sugunasiri 1983.
3. Non-literary Findings
3.1 Statistical Data
The major finding of the study is the existence of a vibrant level of literary activity among South Asian Canadians. Chart 1 below gives a breakdown of these writers and their works, by language, genre and sex, the cut-off year for data collection being 1980 for Punjabi, 1981 for Gujerati and 1982 for English (although the last includes some works published, or in progress, in 1983): 29 StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page 30
Suwanda H. J. Sugunasiri 1 38 85 88 64 211 176 111* 3 2 8 8 4 0 15 10 Total 1 17 36 29 50 49 66 116 Writers/Works - - 1 5 5 7 2 4 - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 Drama Writers - - 1 3 5 3 2 2 - - - - 9 0 19 28 - - - - 1 1 0 0 Novel Writers - - - - 3 7 0 10 because it does not fit particular genre. under any 5 4 0 11 16 27 36 67 Chart 1 1 1 1 5 2 2 0 0 Writers Short Story 3 6 9 4 0 11 21 36 1 33 58 45 79 48 125 139 Running in the Family s ’ 1 1 3 7 8 6 0 10 Poetry Writers 1 21 12 77 39 26 42 20 m f wks m f wks m f wks m f wks m f wks minor minor minor minor A breakdown of major and minor South Asian Canadian writers and their work by language, by and their work Asian Canadian writers of major and minor South and sex. genre A breakdown English major Punjabi major Gujerati major Subtotal major TotalColumn 119 18 a 264 b 45 c 6 d 83 e 10 1 f 28 g 8 h 0 i 12 j 182 25 k 387 l m n o *Total does not include Ondaatje *Total
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The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview
This Chart shows that there are a total of 207 writers (total of columns m and n added), writing in English, Punjabi and Gujerati. This figure, however, does not include 36 Punjabi poets listed in Kalsey (1983a), but whose works have not been identified or analyzed. So the total number is, in fact, higher. But if we were to stay with the Chart, the actual number of individuals engaged in writing is less than the 207, since some writers engage in more than one genre; thus the number of actual writers stands at 159. This is made up of 75 writers in English, 65 in Punjabi and 19 in Gujerati. (See Sugunasiri, ed. 1983, Indices 3.11 to 3.13) If percentages make any sense here, this figure represents .049 of the South Asian population (of 326,000). Twenty-one of the 159 writers (over 13 percent) are women. By language, women constitute roughly 20 percent of the total writers in English and Gujerati, and only 6 percent in Punjabi.
The total number of works (bottom of column o) produced by these 159 writers is shown as 387 (published, forthcoming or in progress) in the chart. But this is merely a count of the works listed in the Bibliography (see Sugunasiri, ed. 1988, 186–215) and is clearly a gross understatement of reality. This figure does not include the thousands of individual poems or short stories included in the collections (listed under the “major” category [see later]) in the Chart. Kalsey (1983a), for example, reports that in the seventies alone more than three thousand poems were published in Punjabi. On the other hand, the figure in the Chart is somewhat inflated in that some of the works (a few) are listed twice where they have been published in two languages. Of the 387 works, more than half (196) are in English. Gujerati comes last with only 39 works (34 of them being poems), thus indicating a low level of creative activity. Again, the Punjabi figure of 152 is not reflective of the real situation, because it does not include (a) not only the works of the 36 writers referred to above, but (b) the works appearing in journals and newspapers (7 in Canada, 24 elsewhere. [See Sugunasiri, ed. 1983, Index 3.42.1 and 3.42.2]) other than the Watno Dur, the major Canadian Punjabi literary journal, and (c) the works predating the contemporary era, dating back to the turn of the century.
Perhaps a better indicator of the extent of literary activity in each of the languages is the major/minor breakdown, used in relation to poetry and short stories. The term “major” refers to collections of poems and
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short stories, and authors with such collections. “Minor” refers to individual works of poetry or short stories, and authors with no “major” publications. Novels, requiring as they do sustained creative activity and serious literary interest, qualify under “major,” and thus no distinction is made between the two types. While such a distinction may be made in drama, at least in terms of full length plays and one-act plays, for example, the number of works identified did not allow for such refinement. In fact, there is almost no English drama to speak of, the two listed being translations from Punjabi, the only others being stage adaptations of two of Michael Ondaatje’s works (see section 3.4 of this paper). The only Gujerati play is a short one, and thus listed as “minor.”
While a general survey would show Punjabi literary activity to be higher than even that in English, the major/minor breakdown helps refine the picture as we note that there are only 64 major Punjabi works (column o) compared with almost twice as many (111) in English. Gujerati has but one major work. When we match the total number of major works with the total number of major authors in English and Punjabi respectively, we note that the extent of productivity in the two languages is roughly the same: 111 works by 44 authors in English and 64 works by 31 authors in Punjabi—about two works per author. The same ratio holds when it comes to Punjabi poetry (45 works by 21 poets), but in English it jumps to about 1:3 (28 poets, 79 works). There is only one major work in Gujerati by one major author.
The ratio drops in the short story category—1:2 in English, but 1:1 in Punjabi. No major short story works exist in Gujerati. The novel is perhaps the genre that really distinguishes the extent of activity in the different languages, as we observe that in English there are nineteen novels by eight novelists, compared with nine in Punjabi by three novelists, and none in Gujerati.
The figures in Punjabi are misleading, however, since there is only a single active novelist (Gyani Kesar Singh) who has produced five of the eight novels (with a sixth in progress), the other two works being novels in progress. By contrast, the ten published novels in English are by five authors, showing a wider distribution of interest and skill. In the field of drama, in which creative activity is at its lowest, Punjabi is
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dominant, with five works by three dramatists, but as in the Punjabi novel, one dramatist (Ajmer Rode) leads the way with three full length plays and three short plays.
Clearly, as in the case with any literature, the genre that is best represented, and thus most popular, both among men and women, is poetry, with 264 works by 137 poets. The actual number of works, however, is considerably higher, when we consider again the fact that the individual poems appearing in collections have not been listed separately, in either of the languages. Nor have the individual poems of authors listed under the “major” category been included in the Bibliography, in the thought that they are likely to be included in their collections. The short story is the next most popular (83 works by 51 authors) with drama being the least. Only in English can the novel be seen as having caught on.
3.2 Discussion
Our findings indicate a buzzing level of literary activity in both Punjabi and English, and an emerging literary consciousness in Gujerati. We shall discuss the literary merits of these efforts later (section 4), but here we would like to examine some of the reasons for the existence or the absence of such activity in the context of the South Asian Canadian scene.
To begin with the Punjabi Canadian scene, the high level of literary consciousness can be adduced to several factors. One is historical.
In Canada, Punjabi poetry began with the arrival of some Punjabi freedom fighters of the Indian Independence movement around the end of the nineteenth century. They10 started writing revolutionary poems [mainly in the Hindustan Gadar, published in San Francisco] to awaken the East Indian community for the independence of their motherland ... (Kalsey 1983a)
The novels of the major Punjabi writer, Gyani Kesar Singh, are written in this revolutionary spirit. Gyani’s two novels, written before his arrival in Canada, deal with the Indian Independence movement, and four others, written in Canada, “immortalize the forgotten martyrs” of
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the independence movement. The seventh deals with the Canadian Punjabi martyr Mewa Singh (Kalsey 1983c), who was associated with the well-known Komagata Maru incident in 1914.11
A second factor in the flourishing of Punjabi literature is the arrival in Canada over the last fifteen or so years of a considerable number of educated Punjabis with a literary consciousness, some of whom were well known writers in Punjab, with eleven of them having published one or more collections of poems before arriving in Canada (see Kalsey 1983a for a list). Once in Canada, they have continued to write, and in the process have inspired a large number of others to pursue creative writing. In addition, they have established organizations such as the Watno Dur (“away from home”) Foundation in Vancouver and the Sikh Educational & Cultural Society in Toronto, their own journals and newspapers (see Sugunasiri, ed. 1983, Index 3:4), and printing and publishing outfits.12
The third factor is sociopsychological. Punjabi immigration to Canada began at the turn of the century. Although there were intervening “quiet years” (1921–47) when immigration dropped to zero in some years, the Punjabi community has maintained a continuity for over eighty years. It is now a well-established, third generation Canadian community, particularly in Vancouver.
The continuity of the community meant the maintenance of their ethnic identity as they went through a long process of struggle, from unequal pay for equal work (e.g., in lumber mills) to ineligibility to vote or stand for public office. The more they were socially excluded, and the more problems in adaptation they encountered, the more ethnocentric the community was forced to become. This largely contributed to the continuation of their traditions, among which was a literary one, fostered through an increasing number of Gurdwaras (temples), publications (newspapers and journals) and cultural organizations. Singing and music being part and parcel of the Punjabi religious practice, poets not uncommonly had their works included in these musical presentations. The tradition of bhajan singing, and the continuing practice of poetry reading, helped the process. If the Punjabi writers, the poets in particular, thus had an interested audience locally, it extended beyond the shores of Canada, to India itself, as well as to the US, UK, South Africa and other countries of East Africa, etc.
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A final factor is technological as has already been hinted at, namely, the presence of facilities for publishing in Punjabi locally. All of these factors—the need for ethnic identity, the arrival of a literary elite, a revolutionary history and technological facilities—have contributed to the relatively high level of Punjabi literary activity.
Now we come to the literature in English. It is, of course, true that among the English writers are a few of Punjabi origin (about seven), but that hardly accounts for the endemic activity in this medium. In fact, these South Asian Canadians writing in English come from varied ethnic, linguistic, religious and national backgrounds (see Sugunasiri n.d.-b).
Perhaps the most plausible explanation for the high level of activity is the quality of immigration in general, based as it was on the point system,13 the educational background of the writers in particular, and thus their background in literature. Each of them is a product either of the sociopolitical history of the countries from which they originate, namely British colonial rule, or the classical traditions of learning in their own cultures which included a rich (even written) literature,14 or both. These writers, generally speaking, come from middle or upper class families. Where not inherited, entry to these classes came through education (missionary and/or traditional classical), which included studies in literature, both western and that of their own heritage. As they entered the work world, some of these writers came to be part of the linguistic if not literary elite, as teachers, university professors, newspaper editors, broadcasters, translators and critics. Writing per se, including in English, was no unfamiliar activity, with English, in fact, being the mother tongue of several writers, particularly from the West Indies or South America (e.g., Ladoo and Dabydeen). Clearly then, these are individuals who would have taken to creative writing had they never left their own country, as in fact some had (e.g., Gool, Kalsey, Gyani Kesar Singh, Sugunasiri and Weerasinghe).15 Once in Canada, several of them pursued graduate education in literature (Ahmad, Bannerji [Himani], Kalsey, Ladoo). Some, like so many other South Asian scholars (see footnote 2), currently teach or have taught courses in literature in Canada (Ahmad, Bannerji, Dabydeen, Gill [Lakshmi], Gool, Namjoshi. Parameswaran, Sugunasiri), and are involved in the contemporary Canadian literature scene, as critics (Bannerji. Dabydeen, Gool, Gill [Lakshmi],
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Parameswaran), publishers (Gill [Stephen], Gool), journal editors (Gool, Kalsey, Sugunasiri, Vassanji), and so on. It is, no doubt, such a background that is reflected in the high level of activity (and the potential, if not emerging, high calibre of work [see later, section 4] ) in English. It is also not accidental that a majority of English-language writers come from Eastern Canada, the home of the second, and the more educated, wave of South Asian immigration.
There are, of course, other factors. The fact that the second wave of émigrés of South Asian origin had a command of English meant a relatively easy adjustment to Canadian society. While they experienced their share of name-calling, job discrimination and other types of racism and humiliation, whatever they went through is, of course, nothing compared to what the early Sikhs endured (Buchignani, 1977). What the knowledge of English, and thus of western culture, did was allow South Asians to gain entry into the system, though perhaps at lower levels than their qualifications warranted, but entry nevertheless. In other words, the settling down period was relatively less painful for them than for less educated and/or non-English speaking immigrants. Once they were settled, their creative energies, dormant for a while, can be said to have begun to sprout with the confidence that comes also from being rooted in one’s own culture.
As the creative energies looked for an outlet, the lack of an audience in one’s own mother tongue would have led the writers to write in English, given that each of the ethnic communities that make up the South Asian mosaic wasn’t large enough, except of course, the Punjabi community, to sustain a healthy literature. Once writing in English began, or continued as in the case of some, the process accelerated when these writers gradually but surely began to gain recognition,16 and an increasing audience.
Finally, ethnic pride, promoted by the Canadian policy of multiculturalism, may have also played a role. As one way of gaining respect in a new society, the writers may have sought to impress the host society by putting to creative use both their rootedness and their immigrant experience. The birth of the Toronto South Asian Review, devoted primarily to the South Asian literary scene, and the ready acceptance of it by South Asian writers (as evidenced from the fact
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The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins: An Overview
that over forty writers have been featured within the first year) is some evidence of such ethnic pride.17
Now we come to the literature in English. It is, of course, true that among the English writers are a few of Punjabi origin (about seven), but that hardly accounts for the endemic activity in this language. In fact these South Asian Canadians writing in English come from varied ethnic, linguistic, religious and national backgrounds (see Sugunasiri n.d.-b).
If we can talk of a high level of literary activity in English and Punjabi, we can only talk of a paucity of material in Gujerati, as Chart 1 indicates. This paucity can be explained by the fact that immigrants who speak Gujerati, whether from India or Africa, are mostly professionals and business people (Enros 1983, 249), examples of the middle class phenomenon discussed earlier. But lack of publishing facilities is also a factor (ibid.), their only outlets being three newspapers and journals (annuals) in Toronto and Montreal (ibid.). While the existence of a play would suggest across-the-board literary activity, the “play” is merely a one-act dialogue (250).
If, as we see from Chart 1, there is a buzzing level of literary activity among South Asian Canadians, let us now see what these writers are writing about and how well they do it.
4. Literary Findings
In examining the material of the South Asian writers, the researchers attempted, in general, to discover the content and the quality of their works. While detailed analyses of the material are contained in the respective papers by Birbalsingh, Enros, Kalsey, Mukherjee and Sugunasiri in Sugunasiri, ed. 1983, we shall provide here an overview of their findings, under each of the genres, poetry (4.1), short story (4.2), novel (4.3) and drama (4.4).
4.1 Poetry
If one were to pick one dominant theme that cuts across the poetry of South Asian Canadians written in English and Punjabi, though not in Gujerati, it is the immigrant experience. This is entirely
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understandable when we consider the fact that almost all the writers are first generation immigrants.
In her analysis of the selected works of twelve poets writing in English,18 for example, Mukherjee (1983a) sees four dominant characteristics of this theme: the poets (1) writing about their loss of heritage, (2) lamenting that the severance of roots might lead to a loss of creativity. Thus, they (3) seek to create new metaphors, often distorting western myths, and (4) rekindle their creativity by going back to their roots. She sees all these features encompassed in a simple poem by Dabydeen (in Elephants Make Good Stepladders, 1983):
For the Sun-Man
In the Sun-Man’s silence I walk along I am myself jambu and other exotic fruits
even though I do not pluck parables from the Buddha’s core
or wonder at ploughing through the snow with Hannibal’s beasts—
Ah, maybe being so much like the west the metaphors have dried like rind
new ones have to be created while I too continue to nourish the sun in my midst and thinking
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of rain-forests from time to time in the poem’s winter.
In the “Sun-Man’s silence,” the jambu (rose-apple fruit) and the Buddha reflect the poet’s loss of heritage, and the severance of the roots are reflected in the metaphors that have “dried like a rind.” So “new ones have to be created,” and “Hannibal’s beasts” serve as an example of a western myth for this purpose. Mukherjee (68) concludes this initial discussion with the words,
The South Asian poet ... seems to believe in speaking for the community rather than for his personal joys and griefs. And ... he believes in making committed statements about the nature of the world.
Clearly, this statement is based on a selective sample of the selected poets, for not all of the works of even the poets discussed by her fall under this category. As an example, not much of what Weerasinghe writes would qualify, although the title of one of his more recent collections, Home Again Lanka (1981), suggests a movement in that direction. In fact, Mukherjee excludes Ondaatje, certainly the best known South Asian Canadian poet, from her discussion, as she does Namjoshi, another relatively well-known poet, precisely because their works do not fall into that category. She sees Ondaatje’s only work which seeks to identify his Sri Lankan roots, Running in the Family (1982), as a “tourist guide’s vision,” which “remains on the level of family history without somehow connecting the familial with the social as, for example, Richard Wright’s Black Boy does.” To Mukherjee, Ondaatje’s and Namjoshi’s poetry is “not distinctly South Asian in its themes and techniques.”19
The conclusion one draws, then, is that the English-medium poetry of South Asian Canadians covers both extremes of a cultural (and political) spectrum, and a host of other topics in between. As Mukherjee (1983a, 68) concludes:
... The South Asian Canadian poets are creating works that are highly individual and technically sophisticated. Moreover,
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they have a breadth and range not usually found in Canadian poetry which is preoccupied with mythopoeas of various kinds, be they Fryesque archetypes or the Black Mountain poets’ nature worship.
Kalsey (1983a), in her discussion of Punjabi poetry, examines only “some significant and frequently published poets” under three categories: (a) those with Canadian content, (b) those with (exclusively or primarily) heritage cultural content, and (c) those with a mixed Canadian and heritage cultural content.
Much like in the English-medium poetry, the immigrant experience is a central theme in Punjabi poetry as well, highly politicized at times, however. Thus in the poems with Canadian content, the poets talk about farm workers, the life of immigrants, and racial incidents. But we see the range and breadth of this poetry when we read poems dealing with life in pubs and clubs where the Canadian intelligentsia talk about planets, the space age, rockets, wine, women, crime, the fall of man, and finally, western materialistic society seen variantly as a machine, as one that turns everyone that touches it into a robot, and as one that brings boredom, monotony and weariness (ibid.).
In terms of heritage cultural content, again Punjabi poetry reflects a revolutionary fervour. The poets deal with the struggle in their homeland, against social inequality, injustice and poverty, and attack the existing social and political values, giving a touch of Marxism. Homage is paid to the martyrs of the Indian Independence movement. The thrust of this revolutionary fervour is contained in Dhanjal’s poem, “Search for Meanings” (1979):
Till today I’ve plowed grief and sowed toil in my fields only hunger has grown out of them. Now like “Bhagan Wala” (Fateful Person) I’ll sow guns in my fields. Then the lava will burst out of my soil and the age-old hunger will be burnt out.
I’ll put some burning red sparks on the palms of
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the frozen nights of December then out of death I’ll search for life’s meanings.
The cultural mix in Punjabi poetry comes primarily from the Punjabi poets reminiscing about their past and their land of origin, from a Canadian base. “My mind is in my country, my body is in my foreign country,” laments one. Even here, however, the revolutionary fervour is not lacking. In the poem, “Imprisoned in Heaven,” for example, the poet feels that Canada provides access to the luxuries (“a cage of gold, bird feed of silver”), but doesn’t really let him reach them (“to have wings, but not to fly”). The several poems on the social theme of women’s place in a man’s world, (e.g., Kalsey’s “A Rib of Adam” and “She: Without Face” 1982b) can he seen as other examples of political themes.
If politics dominate Canadian Punjabi poetry, there are among Punjabi poets the philosophers, the social critics and the romantics as well, dealing with universal themes, such as the triangle of “life, existence [and] half-existence,” as one poet puts it, and “the chaos of machine, war and compassion” in the words of another. Romanticism, which was the prevalent form of Punjabi poetry fifty years ago (Kalsey 1983a), still finds a place in contemporary Punjabi poetry with about twenty poets writing poems of this type. Among the themes dealt with are the love of a beloved, waiting, pain or separation, wishful thinking of reunion, past memories of love, the search for love and affection. Dejection, sorrow and pessimism also find their way into this type of poetry.
In sum, we could in general say of Punjabi poetry that although it is dominated by political concerns, it has a freshness and a breadth and range not usually found in mainstream Canadian poetry. In terms of quality, again, there is a range: from the very good to the very poor. If, on the basis of our discussion, one could say that the English- medium and the Punjabi-medium poetry could be seen as a vibrant and down-to-earth living literature, dealing with the immigrant experience and thus welt rooted in the here and now, but not quite uprooted from the then and there, there is very little evidence of it in the Gujerati poems (90 of them) analyzed by Enros (1983). Even in poems that deal with personal experiences, we find a superficiality,
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falling into romanticism. One poet, for example, visualizes Montreal at night as a heaven he has been taken to in his dream. Another “cannot understand the attitude” of modern society in trying to conquer the universe through science. Kennedy’s death upsets a third poet, but the poet is able to overcome such feelings “in the sweet company of his wife.” Another sentiment expressed is the desire to visit places in Canada and the United States.
Evidence of this general trend of romanticism is that forty-four out of ninety poems are love poems: the mature love of a husband and wife, both fulfilled and unfulfilled; love for the beloved in the next life, equating love with God; the happiness of love, and even love for the poet’s older brother. A couple of poems deal with separation.
As in Punjabi poetry, philosophical themes are explored in Gujerati as well. Among the topics dealt with are: life’s importance, its worthlessness, its dissatisfactions, the importance of hope in life; the different attributes of life, such as friendship, helpfulness, selfishness; the meaning of life, its struggles, its complexity; the strange ways of the human race, the duties of a human being, and so on. Finally, a couple of poems deal with religious devotion.
In conclusion, then, as the paucity itself may indicate, Gujerati poetry in Canada must be seen as an extension of traditional poetry (ibid.) rather than a literature taking root in a new soil, and as such, as being at a very early formative stage as a Canadian literature, thematically as well as qualitatively.
4.2 Short Story
Like poetry, South Asian Canadian short stories deal with a wide variety of themes. While some stories, both in Punjabi and English, deal with the immigrant experience, many do not, even when set in Canada. Several stories deal with life in the homeland, either per se or in relation to Canada.
It may perhaps not come as a surprise that the immigrant experience is most pronounced in the Punjabi stories, clearly a spillover from poetry, and history. Among the themes dealt with in the stories are prejudice and discrimination, the exploitation by relatives and
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community leaders, the condition of the illegal immigrant, the change of name and of values, corruption in the mills, culture shock, impressions of Canada and the situation of Punjabi women (wife- beating, loneliness, treatment by husband’s relatives), “an incurable social disease common in many homes in the Punjabi community” (Kalsey 1983b).
That, however, is the extent of the treatment of the immigrant experience. The rest of the stories based in a Canadian context deal with life in North America—violence, handling a problem child and inter-ethnic love relationships. In stories that are based in a home country, or a cross-cultural context, we encounter a plethora of themes: nostalgia, Gandhi, celebrations, separation, intergenerational conflict, infidelity, craving for motherhood, man’s place in space, the atomic age, drugs and so on—clearly diverse.
But it is a diversity that signals an early stage of development, as observed by Kalsey (1983b): “The art of the Punjabi short story in Canada is in its infancy.” This is perhaps explained by the fact that most of these writers have begun to write in this genre during the seventies and after coming to Canada. Noteworthy, however, is the use of regional dialects, including the use of anglicized forms, and the change of register (formal language, casual speech, slang, etc.) with characters, in the style of Sanskrit dramas where the royalty spoke Sanskrit and the rest spoke a Prakrit (see, e.g., Keith 1966).
Only six out of seventy-nine English-medium stories deal with the immigrant experience: racism, culture conflict, immigrant working class life, getting around the law to stay ahead in Canada, first impressions and yearning for material benefits. A second theme is love—mature, dissatisfied and unfulfilled, in stories in both the Canadian and the heritage contexts. Then there is a range of themes that do not easily fall into a neat category: values—the respected position of women in society, gratitude, helping the weak, upward mobility—and social issues—prostitution and poverty, family relationships, heroes, myths and religion, feminism and a colonial yearning to leave the homeland in search of greener pastures.
If, as reflected in the stories, many authors feel “Still close to the Island,” to use the title of Dabydeen’s (1980a) collection of stories, a
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significant development in the English-medium short story is the entry of second-generation Canadians (cf. Annand 1975; Pandya 1979) whose works bear no trace of South Asianness. Thus we see Canadian rural life and very ordinary Canadian mainstream situations depicted.
Unlike the short stories in Punjabi, the breadth seen in the English- medium stories is a reflection of maturity, even though its history does not pre-date 1969. This is not to say that all these stories are of high quality. In fact, one critic describes an early collection as “not really short stories” (Barclay 1974, 28), and stories in another collection could be called “tales” rather than stories, as, in fact, used in the title of a particular work (Sugunasiri 1983). But even as these early (and some later) works render a poor quality, some of the earliest individual stories (cf. Ahmad’s “Kumbh Fair” and Ladoo’s “The Quiet Peasant”) were already exhibiting a maturity that characterizes later individual works (for example, Vassanji’s “Waiting for the Goddess”) as well as collections (such as Dabydeen’s Still Close to the Island20). The appearance of stories in mainstream Canadian journals (see Sugunasiri, ed. 1983, Index 3:41) bear some evidence of this quality.
Needless to say, the language of these better stories “is well handled, not only in terms of grammatical structure and vocabulary, but in terms of literary devices such as similes, metaphors, imagery, symbolism etc” (Sugunasiri, ed. 1983). The same reasons that explain the generally high level of South Asian Canadian literature (see section 2.2) also, of course, explain the quality of the English-medium short stories.
As we come to Gujerati, we find that none of the five stories is even set in a Canadian context: “Problems and themes of the society the authors are living in have yet to appear in their work” (Enros 1983). The stories bear heritage content, and deal with the conflict of values, fate, the dowry system and caste and class from the same romantic stance that characterizes Gujerati poetry. As could be guessed, the quality of these stories is poor where “the theme overrides the style of writing and the story becomes more like a monologue or a series of questions in the author’s mind” (ibid.). The language usage also ranges from poor to mediocre, with an occasional example of a poetic style using similes and metaphors. Clearly, then, the Gujerati stories, like
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the poems, reflect an early stage of development. The fact that the stories have appeared in religious publications may have contributed to their quality in the sense that the expected audience is religious rather than literary. But the significant fact is that whatever the quality, their appearance in religious publications reflects an acceptance of secular literature as part of the reader’s cultural life.
4.3 The Novel
When it comes to the novel, it is difficult to make a general statement about its content. As for the Punjabi novel, there is but a single published author; all his works are historical, and are intended, as observed, to “immortalize the forgotten martyrs of the Indian Independence movement” (Kalsey 1983c). Only one of them has anything to do with Canada, this too perhaps because Mewa Singh, the hero of his novel and a central figure in the Komagatu Maru incident, happened to be a martyr and fitted well with the author’s series. If, then, this particular novel is the only one that can be said to deal with the Canadian immigrant experience, every single one can be said to reflect the general revolutionary fervour of Punjabi literature. As creative works, however, they are wanting in literary quality. The stories are constructed “by arranging the incidents and happenings in chronological order” (ibid.) and the writer acts as historian and fiction writer at the same time. There is little characterization, and all of this makes Kalsey (ibid.) conclude that his works “fall short of being great novels.” It is, of course, too soon to judge the quality of the novel the author is known to be working on, and also that of two other novels by two other authors who are well-versed in other genres.
Unlike the Punjabi novel, at least four of the ten English-medium novels deal with life in Canada (Cowasjee 1974; S. Gill 1978b, 1979; Gool, 1979), though only two deal with the immigrant experience. The other two deal with mainstream Canadian life. While the themes of five other novels are as varied as the backgrounds of their authors, there is a single thread that unites them, namely, the life of the Two- thirds World.21 While two of them deal with the life of upper class South Asian women (B. Mukherjee 1972; 1975), two others deal with Indo-Caribbean life (Ladoo 1972; 1974), and a fifth with life in apartheid South Africa (Gool 1976). The last one (S. Gill 1978a) is more like a travelogue than a novel (Birbalsingh 1983, 146). 45 StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page 46
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In terms of quality, the ten novels analyzed in this study range from very poor to excellent. While Birbalsingh (ibid.) complains that Gill’s Immigrant “does little more than report facts which the reader already knows or asserts principles which are truthful only in the sense that they are platitudinous,” he sees Ladoo’s two novels. Yesterdays and No Pain Like this Body “as part of a developing oeuvre,” and as satisfactory first novels, although lacking in strong narrative or good plots. The Caribbean life depicted in these novels is authentic if at times unduly harsh. The imagery is rich, the characters are well developed and the characterization heightened by the use of the local idiom.
Cowasjee is technically a more accomplished writer than Ladoo. His novel, Goodbye to Elsa revolves around an Anglo-Indian professor in Western Canada who withdraws to the seclusion of an isolated house in B.C. in order to write down his last words before shooting himself. The story is in three parts, the first in India, the second in Britain and the third in Canada. “The situation described is comical, self-mocking and the tone of the novel is the same.” And
Simply, as a technical achievement—a narrative that provokes laughter—the novel is distinguished, matched in Canada only by the best of Mordecai Richler’s early writing, and sometimes even recalling Leacock, except for Cowasjee’s acerbity which is alien to Leacock’s subtle, poised humour (ibid.)
However, the author suffers from a common problem that seems to afflict many South Asian novelists, from Gill to Gool—trying to put everything one knows into the novel! Thus, the range of subjects covered in the novel is so wide that the effect of the satire is inevitably scattered. The result is that the “reader is left without any clear impression beyond a general feeling of general dissatisfaction with the state of the world” (ibid.). As a professor of English, and a former journalist, Cowasjee uses language effectively.
If Ladoo and Cowasjee rely on wit and humour, Bharati Mukherjee’s two novels—Tiger’s Daughter and Wife, the only novels written by a woman about women—can be described as attempts to explore the inner workings of the mind of her heroines, both Indian upper class
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characters exposed to American culture. “Nothing confirms Ms. Mukherjee’s skill as novelist as much as her insight into the heroine’s mind and tolerant understanding of her inner feelings” (ibid.). This comment made about Tiger’s Daughter is equally valid in relation to Wife. Both works deal with conflict, the former between the affluent class and the rest of Indian society, following India’s Independence, and the latter between Indian and American values, particularly pertaining to women. Essentially then, Mukherjee deals with cultural conflict, and she handles it well. Her social observations are accurate, objective and insightful, and display a good understanding of Indian and American societies. She is at home with the American idiom as well.
Finally we come to Gool, perhaps the most intriguing, if not the most brilliant, of them all. His first work, Price, is set in South Africa and deals with apartheid. The story is developed from the point of view of an Afrikaner but in relation to an Indo-African. The Nemesis Casket is set in Canada and revolves around the unending attempt by the narrator and his wife to make sense of a wealth of material (“the casket”) that has come into their possession in the form of diaries, notebooks, tapes, letters etc. relating to three Canadian upper class and professional families.
Both Price and Nemesis Casket contain within their pages a welter of information: the former about South African history and society, and the politics of apartheid, and the latter about history, philosophy, politics, music, literature and almost everything else, showing the wide background of the author. But in both cases, the technique is “altogether dazzling, complicated certainly, if not obstructive” (ibid.), perhaps because the author attempts to pack too much into each of his works, a feature we have observed in Cowasjee, Gill and Ladoo as well. Not that the material is irrelevant as is sometimes the case with others, but rather that it appears unconnected. The novels are “episodic.” Indeed in The Nemesis Casket, the chapters are written around individual characters, and the reader is expected to make the linkages among the disconnected episodes that Gool develops in great detail and with great enthusiasm. There is even a tendency to mislead the reader consciously by incorporating material in a paragraph here, a line there, that is unexpected.22
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While the technique Gool uses is complicated, more so in the Nemesis Casket, it has been hailed, precisely for the technique “as the most brilliant example so far” of what Sutherland (1983) calls “Twentieth century Canadian Baroque,” in the style of the works of Hubert Aquin and Rejean Ducharme in French and Leonard Cohen in English.
If Gool is technically difficult, he is “extremely economical [in language usage], using a minimum of words for maximum information, [and] displays a rare flexibility and an ease in switching registers, from standard English to colloquial to teenage language to Southern American to erudite and scholarly” (ibid.).
In sum, Gool is probably the Dean of the South Asian novelists if indeed also a respectable member of the Canadian literary establishment.
4.4 Drama
When it comes to drama, there is only very little activity in Gujerati and English. There is but a single three-page drama in Gujerati and no original works exist at all in English. Two of the dramas listed in the Bibliography are adaptations from Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid and Coming through Slaughter. The other two are translations from Punjabi—Ashok (name of a Buddhist king in India) by Tarlochan Singh Gill and One Girl One Dream by Ajmer Rode.
By contrast, the Punjabi drama scene is an active one. There are at least three full-length plays, two by Ajmer Rode (Komagata Maru and The Strange Drama) and one by Raj Chohan (The Spark). Rode has written at least four other one-act plays, and others are in progress. Perhaps the best evidence of a buzzing level of activity in Punjabi drama is that several plays have been staged to full houses in Van- couver.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, I have merely given a glimpse of the vast subject of South Asian Canadian literature, in terms of both quantity and quality. Those who are interested in the details are referred to the papers contained in Sugunasiri, ed. 1983. But, of course, no amount of
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reviews, essays and critiques give the genuine aesthetic pleasure that is derived by reading the works themselves. It is, therefore, to be urged in conclusion, that more and more South Asian Canadian works, including translations, be made available. This, in turn, will allow for further critical evaluation without which no serious literature can flourish.
NOTES
1. This research was funded by the Multiculturalism Directorate of the Secretary of State, Ottawa.
2. There are a relatively large number of South Asian academics in English literature. Among them are: Balachandran Rajan (University of Western Ontario), Michael Ondaatje (York), Inder Nath Kher (University of Calgary), Uma Parameshwaran (University of Winnipeg), Frank Birbalsingh (York), Saros Cowasjee (University of Regina), Suniti Namjoshi (University of Toronto), Reshard Gool (University of P.E.I,), Bharati Mukherjee (formerly of McGill) and Prabha Mukherjee (University of Regina). Some of these are creative writers as well (See Sugunasiri, ed. 1983, 3.1 Author Index).
3. Languages in the Indian sub-continent belong to three language families: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Semitic. Bengali, Gujerati, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Punjabi and Sinhala belong to the Indo-Aryan Branch; Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu to the Dravidian; and Arabic to the Semitic. Urdu draws from both the Indo-Aryan and Semitic branches. In terms of religion, Arabic and Urdu are associated with Islam; Bengali, Gujerati, Hindi, Marathi and the four Dravidian languages with Hinduism; Punjabi with Sikhism; Sinhala with Buddhism; and Konkani with Christianity (in Goa). English is used by people of all national, ethnic and religious backgrounds.
4. Thanks are due to Alok Mukherjee of the Toronto Board of Education, who was of invaluable assistance at this stage, as well as throughout the project.
5. Calgary was particularly important, for there is a large number of South Asian professors at the University of Calgary, disproportionate to the population—4 percent on staff compared with 2 percent in the Alberta population (Dr. I.N. Kher, University of Calgary, personal communication).
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6. One of the consistent complaints of South Asian writers was the difficulty of getting their works published. The newly founded Toronto South Asian Review is in part a response to this need.
7. Dhanjal, Rampuri and Ramuwalia, e.g., are “Marxist” or “revolutionary” writers (Kalsey 1983a), while the elderly Gyani Kesar Singh may be labelled a conservative writer. And, of course, there are a lot of writers that fall in between. But they all have one goal in common: to present the Punjabi mind through literature.
8. The researchers in Vancouver were: Surjeet Kalsey (Punjabi) and Shanmuga Sunderam (Dravidian languages). In Toronto, Pragna Enros researched the Gujerati material, Varinder Gohal, Hindi and George John, the Dravidian languages. Arun Prabha Mukherjee was recruited to update the bibliography of works in English.
9. In fact, the Dravidian language researcher in Vancouver thanked the present researcher for raising the community’s consciousness to what was seen as a hiatus (Shanmuga Sunderam, personal communication). However, there is one writer in Kannada, Dr. I.M. Muthanna, whose works are published in India and seems to be directed at a home community audience. (His published works are: Muthanna Kavangulu [Works of Muthanna], 1, 2 and 3). It has been brought to the attention of this researcher that of late, Washington, D.C. in the U.S., has begun to be a centre of Hindu literary activity.
10. Among them were: Gyani Bhagawan Singh, Sardar Munsha Singh Dhukki, Baba Narin-jan Singh Pandori, Baba Gurder Singh Dhillon, Hassan Raheni and Dr. Sunder Singh (Kalsey 1983a).
11. This event has been the subject of two plays, one in English (by Sharon Pollock) and one in Punjabi (by Ajmer Rode), and at least one Punjabi poem by Sadhu Binning (“The Heartbreaking Incident”).
12. Among them are the Indo-Canada Times in Vancouver and Asia Publications (Havelock Press) in Toronto.
13. Under the point system, potential immigrants were chosen under several criteria, the ability to speak English or French, educational attainment, and job skills being among them.
14. The history of Indian literature goes back to 1600 BCE, and Sinhalese (Sri Lankan) written literature to the first century BCE.
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l5. This is, of course, not to mention such stalwarts as Sam Selvon of the West Indies who had published eleven works while resident in the U.K. (see Birbalsingh 1983, 120) and Siri Gunasinghe of Sri Lanka (at the University of Victoria)—poet, novelist and film director—who is credited with introducing blank verse in poetry and the stream of consciousness technique in fiction into Sinhala. (See “Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist and filmmaker, and Canadian Professor” in this volume.)
16. This was through awards (Governor General’s by Ondaatje, Government of Newfoundland Arts and Letters Gold Medal by Weerasinghe, University of Toronto’s Norman Epstein Award and Bronfman Foundation Award by Gool, and High School Short Story Award by Pandya are examples), grants (Canada Council, Secretary of State), publication in mainstream journals (see e.g., Mukherjee 1983b), inclusion in anthologies, poetry readings at conferences and over the media, and so on.
17. Another piece of evidence here is Ondaatje’s latest work, Running in the Family, based on his search for roots, after being away from Sri Lanka for over twenty-five years, and never even hinting earlier of his Sri Lankan background.
18. They are: Himani Bannerji, Tinni Bannerji, Krishanta Sri Bhaggiyadatta, Rienzie Crusz, Cyril Dabydeen, Lakshmi Gill, Arnold Ilwaru, Surjeel Kalsey, S. Padmanab, Uma Parameswaran. Manjula Parakat and Asoka Weerasinghe.
19. Mukherjee observes: Their poetry, written in a highly obscure and allusive language, deals in subjects that are universal as opposed to regional or local: the problems of perception, the nature of language, the transitory nature of experience, the pains of love. One needs to be well-versed in the poetry of Stevens, Eliot, Pound and several others to grasp their meaning. However, there are no references to the literature and myth of their own cultural background. See also Mukherjee (1983b) for a further discussion of Ondaatje in comparison to Dabydeen.
20. Bannerji (1982b, 27), in reviewing this work, writes: With suggestive and economic strokes of his pen (the strokes are often very short), and often with the help of symbolism (his major work is poetry), Dabydeen makes transparent little windows out
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of seemingly trivial experiences and offers us glimpses of the seething, complex life underneath.
21. Given that two-thirds of the world’s population lives in the poorer countries, this nomenclature, currently in vogue in private circles, is more objective, than the “Post-Colonial Nations” I have used (Sugunasiri 1978), and indeed less value-laden than “Third World.”
22. E.g., Dustin, one of the characters, goes to Christopher’s apartment on Spadina. The next paragraph then refers to “my” dissertation being in its final stages. Presumably the narrator is sharing the apartment with Christopher. Now the narrator’s presence there is not something the reader would have come to expect, for the point being made is that Dustin was invited to stay for the night because he merely wanted to sleep and not to talk. If the narrator plays no functional role in the scene, the reader would not catch the word “my” without a careful reading. There is no question of scanning or skimming with Gool. Every word, line and paragraph has to be read. Even then, the “story kept slipping away.” (Birlbasingh 1983, 149)
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“Sri Lankan” Canadian Poets: the Bourgeoisie that fled the Revolution
Three
“Sri Lankan” Canadian Poets: the Bourgeoisie that fled the Revolution
Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family has been characterized by an American reviewer as “a kind of travel book,” (Balliett 1982, 76) and by a Sri Lankan critic as “telling nothing of the colonial experience.” (Ismail 1983, 44–5) But Canadian critic Arun Mukherjee’s criticism of it for “exoticizing,” (see 1988, 32–51, 69–83) however, is part of her criticism of Ondaatje’s poetry in general. In an article comparing him with the Caribbean-South Asian Canadian writer, Cyril Dabydeen, she lambastes Ondaatje for a series of what she sees as socioliterary offences: for the absence of “any cultural baggage he might have brought with him,” for “siding with the colonizer” and “glamorizing” them, for “history, legend, culture, ideology [being] beyond [his] ken,” for remaining “silent about his experience of displacement or otherness in Canada,” for being led away “ from an exploration of his own realities,” for being “trapped by a style and a way of thinking that perforce have to deny life in society,” and finally for not having “a God, a cause, or a country” as Yeats would have it of a poet.
In this paper I will examine the validity of her criticisms, extending it also to three other Sri Lankan poets she deals with, namely, Rienzi Crusz, Asoka Weerasinghe, and Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta.1 Since Mukherjee’s critique is based on Ondaatje’s Sri Lankan origins, it is appropriate to begin with a sociohistorical understanding of Sri Lankan society.
From the time of Independence in 1948 up to the socialist revolution of 1956 led by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, (then) Ceylonese society could be divided into two very broad classes, what I have elsewhere
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called the composite elite and the masses (Sugunasiri 1978), roughly fitting the typical Marxian distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, but with significant variations. Both classes, though the latter is not so called, were composite rather than monolithic. The make-up of the elite may then be described in two sub-strata: political and socioeconomic:
Political
1. The Sinhalese Buddhist political elite, of which the better known members were Bandaranaike himself (note how his name, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias, reflects his earlier Christian upbringing), Don Stephen Senanayake, the first Prime Minister of Independent Ceylon and Junius Richard Jayawardhena, later the first President of Sri Lanka, and nicknamed “Yankee Dickie” for his well-known American leanings. Perhaps surprisingly, but understandably, even the “father of Marxism,” Philip Gunawardhena, and leaders of the Fourth International Trotskyite movement, Dr. N. M. Perera (mill owner) and Colvin R. de Silva (advocate), were of this social class (note their names), as was Dr. S. A. Wickremasingha (medical doctor), a co-leader of the Communist Party.
2. The Tamil Christian/Hindu political elite2 among them S. J. V. Chelvanayagam (Anglican) and E. M. V. Naganathan (Catholic), president and secretary respectively of the Tamil Federal Party, the precursor to the later Tamil United Left Front, and C. Suntheralingam (Hindu), senior civil servant turned politician.
3. The handful of Muslim political elites, the best known perhaps being M. H. Mohammed who held several Cabinet portfolios.
Socioeconomic
1. Eurasians (known as Burghers), the miscegenous offspring of the colonizing Portuguese (1505–1656), the Dutch (1656–1815) and the British (1815–1948). While politically this community could count only one or two leaders—Pieter Keunaman, co-leader of the Communist Party, and Singleton Salmon, appointed M.P. to represent minority interests, perhaps being the best known—it had disproportionate economic clout through ownership of the tea,
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coconut and rubber estates and significant control of the urban commercial (service) sector. It became part of the elite simply by reason of European blood. Interestingly, the fact that the skin colour of the Eurasian community ranged from pink white to pitch black did not seem to matter, either in their own perception or that of the others.
2. Professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, trained in the country and/or abroad, under a British curriculum, with European religio- philosophical world views.
3. Bureaucrats, namely the “government servants,” from the “Permanent Secretaries” (Deputy Ministers) to peons.
4. Catholic church hierarchy, both Tamil and Sinhalese.
5. The media, with the Lake House Group (Sinhalese Buddhist but secular and westermized) and the Times Group (Tamil) controlling the print media, and the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation being under government control.
6. The English-medium educators heading the Catholic, Buddhist and Hindu “separate” schools of Colombo, Jaffna and other cities.
7. English-speaking artistes (writers, stage artistes, painters).
8. The Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim trade union leadership.
While each of these classes encompass a range from upper to lower levels of the composite aristocracy, not excluding some overlap with the masses, they can be characterized by one or more of the following: a regular and relatively high income; the (near) exclusive use of English; and a colonized mind set (e.g., a preference for things European over local). English was not only the “high language,” in a diglossic situation (e.g., in government, in parliament, and as medium of instruction), but also of personal interaction. Where not everybody in this motley group spoke English, there was at least one member of the family who did. Sinhala, and Tamil, for those who had any mastery, were for informal interaction and use with domestics, the exception here, by definition, being the Sinhala- and Tamil-medium
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journalists and writers.
Diametrically opposed in language and religion (Sinhalese Buddhist, Tamil Hindu, Tamil-and/or Sinhala-speaking Muslim), income level, life-style and world view were the masses, consisting of no less than 90 percent of the population. This class was made up of the following:
1. Farmers and fishermen; 2. Small-business people; 3. Rank and file of the labor force (e.g., harbor, railway, factories, and tea, rubber and coconut estates); 4. Buddhist monks and Hindu Swamis and average Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Muslims; 5. Native Ayurveda “Science of Long Life” physicians, the backbone of the native health-care system; 6. Vernacular teachers (paid less than half the salary of English- medium teachers); 7. Sinhala or Tamil-only speaking artistes (dancers, drummers, exorcists, etc.).
The sociocultural gap between these two broad classes was such that the composite elite and the masses literally lived their contiguous but non-contactual lives,3 except when it came to government services, the relationship always being a dominant-subservient one. It would also explain the “motley” nature of the poets that Mukherjee refers to. While this rough profile, based on personal experience, should not pass for a rigorous sociological analysis, it does provide us with a broad, and I believe, an authentic picture of pre-1956 society.
With this background in mind, then, let me return to Ondaatje. While my own view of Running in the Family is that it is a picture without a frame, I would like to argue that it is a picture nevertheless, and an accurate one at that. The drunken escapades of men and women, eating snakes, breaking the necks of chickens, throttling mongrel dogs, running naked in tunnels are not unrepresentative of the Eurasian sub- stratum elite. Such behaviour must then be deemed not a “denial of life” as Mukherjee sees it, but indeed a celebration of life, however decadent, colonial or counterdevelopmental it appears from the national point of view. The characters were celebrating their status— with the scantest of respect for anyone other than themselves. Indeed
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the Eurasian behaviour of Running ... must be seen as simply the first stage of a post-colonial Sri Lankan culture, the later stages of which can be seen in the increasingly consumer-oriented and westernizing contemporary Sri Lanka under capitalism. Seen from the perspective of this early stage, even the absence of a frame must be seen to reflect the contiguous but distant relationship between the elites and the masses.
But, in order to deal with Mukherjee’s general criticism, we need to look to Ondaatje’s personal history as well (isn’t the personal the political?), to the extent that it can be reconstructed on the basis of public knowledge. Given the lack of contact between the masses and the elites, and the Eurasians and the rest in particular, the young Michael Ondaatje, leaving the country at age ten, would have had exposure only to his own community, and perhaps not even to the wider social class he belonged to. So when he says “My mind a carefully empty diary,” (1973, 13) he is indeed doing what Mukherjee accuses him of not doing: recognizing his “cultural baggage.” We note this acknowledgment as well when he refers to the country as Ceylon.4 Belonging to the economic rather than the political elite, Ondaatje shared the Eurasian community psyche, remote from ideology and indeed from social reality! Ondaatje did not live long enough in the country of his birth to get the grasp of its society necessary to fill the pages of his diary differently.
Ondaatje’s first stop as an emigrant was the U.K. where he spent his years of intellectual maturing (from age eleven to nineteen), during which his creative imagination was probably first triggered. If the British literary tradition inspired him, British society couldn’t have failed to show him how immigrants and immigrant writers, particularly of colour, had come to be treated. Coming to Canada in 1962, at age nineteen, young Ondaatje was soon to discover a society not unlike that of Britain, which valued, and admitted to its literary halls, only those of British sensibility. So when he began writing, his attraction to western romantic poetry, to writing about poetry or the act of poetic creation itself (as Mukherjee points out) was not merely the safest but the most natural for him, given an apolitical personal and communal history.
This type of poetry allowed him to express his creativity without being
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committed to “history, legend, culture or ideology,” which as Mukherjee rightly observes are absent in his works. It was safe because it did not force him to make any disclosures about his immigrant status, his “otherness,” or his Two-thirds World5 associations. The British experience would certainly have told him how not to be a literary outcast! So when he says,
Here I was trying to live with a neutrality so great I’d have nothing to think of
he must at least be given credit for being honest. The only way Ondaatje could have dealt with his personal reality was “just to sense / and kill it in the mind.” Again, he unloads his personal cultural baggage, now coloured, and enhanced, with his British, and now Canadian, experience. And this very baggage, delivered with technical mastery, endeared him to the Canadian literary establishment. It is not to denigrate his poetic skill to observe that his Dutch-sounding name, the spelling of it, skin colour, appearance and connections developed through marriage also no doubt helped in the process.
So he cannot be accused of not writing poetry about his “displacement in Canada”; he experienced no displacement. Nor can he be said to be “siding with the colonizer.” He was (through his community and class) the colonizer! The most valid criticism one could make of him, then, is the limited nature of the range of his poetry, namely his romance with deconstruction. The fact that Mukherjee’s critique of Ondaatje fails to convince me is not to say that she has, because of an understandable unfamiliarity with Sri Lankan society,6 generalized and extended from her own Indian society,7 fallen into the trap of being ahistorical and acontextual, crimes she pins on Ondaatje. Where Mukherjee went wrong, then, is that she stereotyped Ondaatje, dressing him in a Sri Lankan garb simply on the basis of his birth, without reference to the sociopolitical context, and history.
But was she also perhaps blinded by an exclusive left-wing rhetoric? This seems a possibility when we read Mukherjee’s assessment of the other poets, particularly Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, who are, in Mukherjee’s opinion, everything what Ondaatje is not. But it will be my attempt to show that the criticisms leveled at Ondaatje could
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equally be directed, more or less, against all the other Sri Lankan Canadian poets as well.
I begin with Rienzi Crusz, a poet with four collections (1974, 1980, 1985, 1986). He has been hailed as “The only poet who sees East and West in one clear glance” (Books in Canada) and whose “poetry is rich with laughter and with irony” (The New Quarterly).8 In the words of the late Reshard Gool (1986, vii), “The rhythms [in his poetry] change faultlessly, tablas and sitars counterbalance with the poise of skilled acrobats, exotic metaphors spell out how dangerous the leaps between steep cliffs of mind have been, the verse rehearses grand risks, invention, resource.” The more important reason, however, is that, Rienzi Crusz, as the name indicates, comes from the same Eurasian background as Ondaatje.
To be fair, Mukherjee is less enthusiastic about Crusz than Gool. She refers to the “uneven quality” of his work, and observes that “like Ondaatje, Crusz seems to like writing poems about making poems.” But “he has a good grasp of rhythm and word music, and knows how to evoke pleasing images,” and his best poems are “rich both technically and thematically.” She likes him, however, “because of the struggle that I perceive going on between his different voices,” and “because of the authenticity of his struggle to forge a voice that will be able to tell the world about a black man’s life.”9 True he writes, “Dark I am / and darkly do I sing,” (1980, 90) but judged from his poetry, Crusz is no more “a black man” than is Ondaatje.
Crusz also writes a poem, “Immigrant,” (1980, 38) about himself in the Canadian context and his poems are strewn with references to the sun, tropical fruits, birds and fish, and a local celebration or two. But these are also, by and large, the ones that any tourist would be attracted to. All this, unfortunately, is “song and dance.” One would have to try hard to find evidence in his poetry of his ever having left the capital city of Colombo, psychologically if not physically, a rare example being a poem dedicated to “the children of the village of Boralesgamuwa” (1980, 68; the village is a mere twenty kilometers from Colombo). Even the life of the average man in Colombo is a rarity, the exception being when he writes of the commercial district of Pettah, lamenting that travelers don’t speak
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of cardboard shacks crumbling in the rain, or the decaying breath of Pettah’s alleys, or how sunburnt beggars limp with pariah dogs in search of the breath of rice.10
The most historical Crusz becomes is when he writes about his own miscegenic origins, “conjuring history from a cup”:
A Portuguese captain holds the soft brown hand of my Sinhala mother. It’s the year 1515 AD when two civilizations kissed and merged, and I, burgher of that hot embrace ...
Perhaps the most political he becomes about Sri Lanka is in the poem, “Dark Antonyms in Paradise” when (returning with the security of a Canadian passport), he bemoans (“O my beloved country”) the changes that have taken place in the country as a result of the introduction of the Free Trade Zone to lure the foreign entrepreneur. While there are the occasional references to “the stillness of a Buddha” (56) and “Karma” (6), it is the dedications that tell the true story. They are to John, Daphne, Maria, Dan, Anne, Michael, Cleta Marcellina, Nora Serpanchy (mother); these are certainly not Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim names.
But could Crusz have helped it? I will let the poet speak for himself: “I came from a Catholic family and had parents who were deeply religious” and “I was often exposed to the Bible, especially the Psalms.” “I do not claim,” he continues, “a separate and special aesthetic. If one has chosen to write in Shakespeare’s tongue, then one must live or die by its idioms and rules.” If one of the first poems young Crusz was exposed to at age ten was Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven,” at sixteen, he was “utterly enthralled by the story, the language of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.” Further, “after [Dylan] Thomas, Hopkins, Yeats and Eliot ..., I entered this magic world of Neruda [who ‘lived down the same street (that I had lived as
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a child) when he was Chilean Ambassador to Ceylon’], Vallejo, Paz, Lorca, Dario” (Crusz 1987).
The point, then, is not that Crusz is to be castigated for hailing from the same social class that Ondaatje comes from (something he cannot help) but that the sensibility reflected in his poetry, measured by the imagery, myth and symbol or the level of historical or political consciousness is only a very little different from that in Ondaatje’s (and something he can be held responsible for). Unlike Ondaatje, Crusz was in his mid-thirties when he emigrated (1965). He had already had a university education in Sri Lanka, allowing him an opportunity to be with peers of all ethnocultural, religious, regional and socioeconomic backgrounds. He was also in the midst of the tumultuous changes that followed the Bandaranaike revolution and as such would have been a witness to all the boiling political and sociocultural issues. Even if Crusz was of non-political bent, as most middle-class Sri Lankans of his (and my) generation were, literature and esthetics are not fields outside his interest. Yet he seems completely oblivious to the literary and cultural revolution that coincided with the political revolution. For example, Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s epoch-making dance-drama Maname,11 produced for the modern theatre in 1956 reviving the traditional folkplay of Nadagam (see Sarachchandra 1966), was playing to packed houses around the country. It attracted not only the Sinhalese cultural elites, but both the English educated elites and the masses who had never taken the time to see a stage play. Lester James Peiris’s films, a sharp contrast to the earlier South Indian type films (with the stock characters of the beggar, snakes and lovers singing and dancing around trees), were being screened in Cannes to international acclaim. Martin Wickramasinghe, the doyen of modern Sinhalese literature, had already completed his famous trilogy about the changing Sinhalese village,12 and Siri Gunasinghe had just introduced blank verse of the western type to the Sinhala reading public.13
Even if works in Sinhala were inaccessible to Crusz, Leonard Woolf’s Village in the Jungle had appeared in 1913 and the lesser known William Knighton’s Forest Life in Ceylon in 1854 (Goonetilleke 1984). George Keyt, Mahagama Sekara and others were complimenting each other on canvas in the art galleries of Colombo. And Amaradeva, who had completed his musical studies in Tagore’s Shantiniketan in India
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as the top student, was creating and popularizing a genre of Sinhalese music based on local rhythm and Indian raga tunes over Radio Ceylon, which was to be followed by a generation of musicians. Yet, Crusz’s poetry reflects none these cultural developments that were so much a part of the Sri Lankan middle class life of his time.
As to being black, when did Crusz, or the Eurasian community in general (or some members of it), become “black,” or discover their “blackness”? The first jolt of reality to hit them perhaps followed the 1956 revolution, when Eurasians applied to Australia for immigration, and after being asked to prove their “100% whiteness” by blood, were rejected for only being half-white (Sugunasiri n.d.-c). In Canada, the realization probably came when, regardless of their fluency in English, European names and Christian background, they came to be called “Pakis.” In sum, then, while Rienzi Crusz may not have hidden his immigrant status and he seemingly identified with blackness, at least metaphorically, he is no closer to being Sinhalese or Sri Lankan, than Ondaatje, in his sensibility or rootedness. However nostalgic he may sound now, he is indeed the bourgeoisie who fled the revolution. Yet we find no such criticism of him by Mukherjee.
Nor indeed Asoka Weerasinghe, who with ten collections,14 is certainly the most prolific of the poets I am discussing. While critics have noted the uneven quality of his works, he has been called a “genuine poet” by Thorpe and “a master of nuance” by Freedman (Weerasinghe 1990, jacket text). “His language is ... elegant” notes Gorman, another critic (ibid.), although others have also noted that he takes too little time editing his work (Mukherjee 1984, 40). But there are “clever images, sound rhythms and well worked structures” to his poetry, observes the Canadian Book Review Annual (Nowlan 1976, 198).
Weerasinghe’s latest collection, Kitsilano Beach Songs (1990), demonstrates a high sense of political consciousness, when he writes “Coughing Beothuck syllables / I try to make you understand / I am part of you and affable, / wanting to be understood / and be alive,” or about the drought in Africa (“Drought,” “Sahelia”), or about “Dev” in India “scrubbing hunger pains / of a shrunken stomach” as he sings “under a coconut palm / to a camel on burning sands, / for sweat- stained paisa / thrown from foreign hands.” But his pain in relation to events in Sri Lanka is evidently more excruciating. His political stance
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begins with support of the Tamil cause: “I admired you without obvious fears for my life, for your persistence to live another thousand years.” But he feels let down,
when I saw big-bellied women lying dead on the floor bringing revulsion to my mind, and taunting my kind Buddhist heart to hate... (1990, 76)
In “Sinha,” he is angered at:
propping a lifeless torso strung onto a Jaffna lamppost, (1990, 49)
the torso clearly being of a Tamil victim.
“The New Canadians” who, “funding the acts on the killingfields” cheer “from the sidelines ... safe in North America” troubles him, but he dedicates a poem (“Intimidation”) to A. Amirthalingam, the leader of the Tamil United Left Front and strong supporter of separatism, ki1led by Tamil terrorists turning against him. If he has “the passion of a lion,” a reference to the Sinhalese people15 as a result of the transformation, he also engages in praxis: “performing the kiss of life / with words, words and more words.”16
While these later poems would make Weerasinghe fit the bill of Mukherjee’s laudable “Sri Lankan poet,” one writing with a political consciousness about the “million people who live in Sri Lanka,” there is hardly any evidence in his earliest poems to show that he is any different from Ondaatje or Crusz—in his political consciousness, historicity, sensibility or rootedness. Another Goodbye for Alfie, his second collection published while still in England (1969), shows him writing about love, senility, snow, autumn, spring and flowers. But, even where he writes about his own appalling life in London—“I shared my bedsitter with house-bugs”—and is critical of the land where a neighbour “is another beast / in a wilderness of convention” or comments on the “need for a social conscience,” there is no indication of his origins or about the suffering of the masses of Sri Lanka, or even of his own middle class. Nor do any specifically Sri
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Lankan images, myths or symbols appear in his poetry.
These blanks can be understood from Weerasinghe’s personal history. Though educated in a Buddhist school, he, like his peers in Catholic schools, had learned about John Bunyan, the tributaries of American rivers and the colonial victories in the conquered lands, but nothing of anything relevant to or significant of the native soil. Further, he left his country at the age of twenty, to be further nurtured by the colonial mother, like many of his (and my) social class had done since the British occupation of 1815. Having left at the height of the social revolution (1956), the turmoil that followed was also, unlike the case of Crusz, not part of Weerasinghe’s personal experience. But if all this explains the apolitical and ahistorical nature of his early poetry, it also puts him, of Sinhalese Buddhist origins, squarely in the composite class to which Ondaatje and Crusz, of Eurasian Christian origins, belong: part of an English-speaking, (sort of) Sinhala-hating and culturally ignorant bourgeoisie that fled the revolution!
Despite his early class-associations, however, Weerasinghe can be said to come closest to being a “Sri Lankan poet” for two important reasons. The first is that we find him sensitive to the political, social and cultural realities of the land (at least by 1981), something not evidenced in any of the other poets. If the title, Home Again Lanka, and the artwork of the cover17 prepares us for this new sensibility, the inside pages confirm it. In a poem titled, “The Birth of Insurgents,” we find, for example, the poet writing, though ten years after the fact, about the uprising of the Sinhalese youth in 1971 which reportedly took ten thousand lives. Though tongue in cheek perhaps, he says “I was at home / when April showered / guns and bullets / ... while offspring of the guilty / book-pedalled in Paris and Oxford.” He is here exposing his own feelings of guilt as he also takes on his own elite class. Local characters and situations, fauna and flora also enter his collection on a scale not evidenced earlier. But the feature that makes Weersingha a “Sri Lankan poet” in my opinion, the point missed by Mukherjee and other critics, is his attempt at the rhythms and the rhymes of Sinhalese poetry. No doubt his attempts are sometimes contrived—“Or is that I sense music, everywhere, / With your young presence without a care”—but they can be quite functional: “As you left behind a trail / of hair to form a lover’s braille” (“Uncertain” 1969, 4).
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“Tikiri Liya,” “the dainty damsel,” is particularly effective. Here is the end-rhyming quatrain in Sinhala, with a literal translation:
tikiri tikiri tikiri liyaa kalet arang lindata giyaa linda wata kara kabara goyaa kakula kaapi diya bariyaa
The dainty dainty dainty damsel with pot in hand went to the well the kabara goya “iguana” around the well [protects her] [yet] would you believe, the “water creature” diya bariya stings [her] in [her] leg!
Weerasinghe’s composition, “Tikiri-Liya,” runs as follows:
Tikiri, Tikiri, Tikiri-Liya The bosomed, lissom, maiden fair With a coveting smile on her lips And hugging a pitcher on her hip, Went down the path to the well To fetch a pitcher of water.
Tikiri, Tikiri, Tikiri-Liya When she arrived at the well Frightened by a monitor lurking there She ran around the well.
Tikiri, Tikiri, Tikiri-Liya The bosomed, lissom, maiden fair Drew a pitcher of water from the well. From the water a water snake fell And slithered quickly around her foot, And “ouch,” stung her shapely foot. (1981, 45)
The kabara goya is an ugly-looking lizard with a coarse skin, always around in the neighborhood, and of which not even a child is afraid.
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The diya bariya, by contrast, is a smaller lizard, with a smooth skin; it is a water animal, rare on land, with a sting but no poison. The village well is, of course, the social centre, as well as where many a courtship begins. Even though Weerasinghe has clearly missed the refined romance (though many a man hovered around her, a little unknown someone sneaked his way into her heart) and the mocking nuances of the folk poet who uses the literary device of suggestion (dhwani, vyangya in Sanskrit esthetics), he successfully retains the structural element of the number of beats (four) and the end rhyming.
Weerasinghe’s search for a local relevance comes to be reflected in other ways as well. He opens and ends “Sinhala Love Song” (in Home Again Lanka) with the rhythm of a traditional dance (thana tharankita / thana tharam) even though he gets the rhythm wrong. And in “Ceremonial Mask,” he draws upon the traditional folk dancing of the eighteen masks, mocking it (“And in case you happen to die, / ... I would say, / when asked to help you / it was just too late”), clearly suggesting the conflict between tradition and change. Weerasinghe does not fail to see the ugly side of Sinhalese culture either, when he castigates the colonial mind of the villager who (like the composite elite, not untouched by the colonial experience) asks “kohomadha, lamaya sudhu parta the?” (“Is the infant fair-skinned?”).
If, then, both Crusz and Weerasinghe started out as the “bourgeoisie that fled the revolution,” and sought in later years to search for roots, it is only Weerasinghe who has made the socioculturally meaningful and relevant transformation. Perhaps it may be his Buddhist background, and later his critical praxis regarding the Tamil separatist movement that helped him recover his past even though in his mastery of technique he may not be up to par with Crusz (and Ondaatje).
Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta must undoubtedly be characterized as a born poet. With only two books, four years apart (1981, 1985), he may not be a prolific writer, but, full of life and pregnant with meaning, his words come down hurling, “shaft after shaft,” as Mukherjee observes (1984, 43), as in a torrential downpour. His, no doubt, is a poetry awaiting full recognition. In the words of Mukherjee, his poetry is “markedly different not only from that of other Sri Lankan poets who continue to use the western lyrical-meditative mode, but also from the kind of poetry so prolifically being written in Canada: personal,
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slightly anguished, mournful about the past, laden with memories of childhood.” “What City? Ethnicity! or How to Make an Ethnic Newspaper,” (1985, n.p.) quoted at length by Mukherjee, is one that shows Bhaggiyadatta at his satiric best. Another taunts a sacred Canadian cow:
Multiculturalism Multivulturalism
In this zoo the animals only come together when the keeper brings them out in a caravan to dance for the visiting citizenry to throw exotic food at each other (1985, n.p.)
Bhaggiyadatta also takes on colonialism:
Mama won’t believe papa’s a rapist and a pirate no no no he’s a good father sends all his money home. (1985, n.p.)
and again:
poor Hitler he was an honest man he was the true face of Europe! he spoke the truth of the white man! (1985, n.p.) He sees the universe in one breath, pulling lands and times together, to provide a conceptual collage, as in “Columbus’s child”:
the cruise is the son of the V-2 the nephew of Auswitzch child of Hiroshima brother of apartheid
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cousin of forced starvation peace thru strength ... (1985, n.p.)
But despite Bhaggiyadatta’s wide poetic resources and his ability to handle them most dextrously, I would have great difficulty considering him any more “Sri Lankan” than any of the other three poets discussed. Not that a poet must wallow in his origins, but what does matter for our argument is that although Bhaggiyadatta closely resembles other Sri Lankan poets belonging to the composite aristocracy, Mukherjee sings praises of him as the epitome of an immigrant “Sri Lankan poet,” and perhaps also suggests that he speaks the voice of the Sri Lankan proletariat.
Of course Bhaggiyadatta cannot be taken to task for not using, as poet, traditional motifs, myths and symbols, or not relating to the land, fauna or flora of his origins, because he is not, as Mukherjee points out, writing about his childhood, or mourning about the past. At first glance, such an ahistoricity may seem understandable for one who left the country at sixteen (the age when Bhaggiyadatta arrived in Canada). How many young people of a democratic society do we know of who are politicized? Yet, the mid-1960s when Bhaggiyadatta left the country was no ordinary time of Sri Lankan history. The decade of social turmoil beginning in 1956 saw “the Buddhist monk, local physician, vernacular teacher, farmer and worker”18 (that is, the “five pillars,” and the real proletariat) break away not only from five hundred years of colonial rule but from eight years or post- Independence Brown Sahib, and upper caste,19 rule by the upcountry Senanayaka-Bandaranaike clan, and the “uncle-nephew party,” as the ruling United National Party had come to be called. The turmoil, which included leftist political parades involving millions, work stoppages at the harbor and in government services, nationalization of the public transportation system, a change of official language, and attempts at transforming the economy, the food distribution system and the educational system, could certainly not have left even teenagers untouched, particularly Sinhalese Buddhist. Unlike the Eurasians, who as a miniscule minority could have lived a class-and- culture closeted life, no Sinhalese, of whatever age, particularly if urban, could have been blind to the ongoings around them.
But Bhaggiyadatta writes nothing of the society of the country of his
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birth prior to 1956, neither of the negative side such as the position of the Sinhalese and the Tamil masses (Buddhist and Hindu respectively), nor of the generally egalitarian nature of society, and the generally amicable living among the Sinhalese and the Tamils.
He makes no reference either, to the post-1956 attempts at socialist change, such as the efforts to unify the bipartite educational system, or to abolish private medical practice, projects intended for the benefit of the masses. When Bhaggiyadatta writes:
A man is slapping your head. After each strike he apologizes he then speaks of how civilized this is ... the hand is the military the mouth is the press, (1985, n.p.)
he certainly does not have the most apt case—of Sri Lanka—in mind here, the Sinhalese secular- and the Tamil-controlled newspaper giants, publishing in English, Sinhala and Tamil holding a hegemony over the news.20 Finally, just as in the case of Weerasinghe, Crusz or Ondaatje, I have yet to see Bhaggiyadatta (who, unlike the other three, would have had his schooling in Sinhala, following the change of medium of instruction after 1956) sharing his poetic and socialistic insights with the people who need it most, namely the Sinhalese, by writing in Sinhala.
Bhaggiyadatta’s ahistorical inclination is not however limited to content. In sensibility, too, he is firmly rooted in the Sri Lankan composite aristocracy. For example, the intellectual source of his idealism is Marxism (visibly active since its introduction to the country), an ideology born in the context of a western and European culture. But Buddhism, which like Marxism, advocates egalitarianism and democracy, but without the violence of rhetoric or the practice of armed revolution, finds no place in his creativity.
In “Big Mac Attack!”, in which the papers, neighbors, military and Pentagon said “they had no record” of the Vietnam war veteran who
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“shot 20 children and others / in a MacDonald’s Restaurant,” the poet says, “But we do / we know him well ...” (1985, n.p.), and goes on to place him in the Americas in 1492, in Sri Lanka in 1505, and in the present day, “Training thugs in Colombo.” The reference is clearly to the Sinhalese thugs who, in response to the killing of thirteen Sinhalese soldiers by Tamil terrorists, went on a rampage and killed innocent Tamils in Colombo. But any reference to the Tamil thugs is missing, thugs also trained by the same “agents of imperialism,” if you like, Americans and Israeli,21 thugs who killed Tamil political leaders such as Duraiappa, the Mayor of the Jaffna and Amirthalingam, as the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front.
The poet divides the world into good guys (leftists or underdogs) and bad guys (the white folk and “capitalists” presumably), thus confirming his class membership in the composite aristocracy governed by western dualistic world views, conceptually and esthetically. Despite his identification with the Two-thirds World and the virulent criticism of all that is western, we see no internalization of the African consensual or the eastern communitarian or the Buddhist relational models in his poetry.
Bhaggiyadatta, like Ondaatje, Weerasinghe, and Crusz, belongs to the Sri Lankan composite aristocracy, a member of the bourgeoisie that fled the revolution. One needs to note how much easier it is to be “progressive” in an impersonal, overseas and capitalist society than in one’s own land, with its more personal demands! The Sri Lankan Canadian poets may be, as Mukherjee observes, a “motley group,” but they all were formed within a restricted class.
But what is the Sri Lankan historicity, sensibility and the world view that our poets have been ashamed to own, or noticed only grudgingly? It is a two-thousand-year-old Buddhist culture, literally, esthetically, culturally, socially, economically, politically and spiritually. If the Psalms of the Women Elders (Theragatha), a book of the Tipitaka, the Buddhist Scripture, serve as one of the earliest examples of poetry by women, and the Birth Stories (Jataka), also of the Tipitaka, as perhaps the earliest examples of short fiction,22 the poetry written on the “Mirror Wall” of the Sigiriya Rock Fortress in the eighth century by average folk shows a high level of esthetic and literary participation across society (Paranavitana 1956), a point well reflected in
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contemporary times in a high level of literacy, and a vibrant theatre, literature and film industry.23 The imposing Buddha figures (a recumbent one forty-six feet in length), the seven-storey Brazen Palace, the designer kuttam pokuna swimming pool and the reliquary stupas up to four hundred feet high built in the ancient capitals of Anuradhapura (second century BCE to tenth century CE) and Polonnaruwa (eleventh to twelfth century) speak to the cultural and esthetic levels achieved in early and medieval times. If a multi-tiered system of irrigation which collected and appropriately channeled rain water made the country the granary of the east, the several-mile long Jaya Ganga “victory canal” with a gradient of six inches per mile shows its engineering skills.
As for the country’s tolerance, we have the example of King Dutugemunu (161–131 BCE) having a mausoleum, Elara Sohona, built in honor of the vanquished Tamil rival, Elara, requiring that travelers pay respect by getting off their vehicles. The minority Tamils, having a social advantage over the Sinhalese, are an example of this same tolerance; the recent turmoil is one of a handful of aberrations in a history of two thousand years of amicable living, with the Hindu kovil finding a place within the premises of many a Buddhist temple even today.
As for other egalitarian values, British sociologist Robinson records two litigants seen in courts one day actually working side by side in the field owned by one of them the next; they are honoring the social obligations, under the traditional attam system, of meeting one’s social commitments (in this case, A working in B’s field in return for a helping hand given A by B earlier), even if the participants to the social contract happen to fall out after it has been agreed upon (Robinson 1975). A free weekly ration, free education from kindergarten to university and free health care in post-independent Sri Lanka, a practice abrogated at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, are recent examples of the nurturing and caring values that have governed that society. That the women of Sri Lanka got the vote in the 1930s and that over 50 percent of the student population at the University since its beginnings in the 1940s have been women, serve as examples of gender egalitarianism; that the majority of the university student body belongs to the lower to middle class speaks to class egalitarianism.
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While the orderly change of governments since independence in 1948 by ballot may be seen as a tribute to the British system, it can just as well be attributed to the egalitarian and democratic values taught by the Buddha. We have in King Asoka (third century BCE), who after waging wars and uniting India, embraced Buddhism, an example of the practice of such values in politics and government (see Ling 1973 for a discussion). The election of Sir Chittampalam Gardiner, a Tamil, as the Ceylonese member to the pre-Independent Legislature is a more recent example. Further, every Cabinet since Independence has had representation of Sinhalese,Tamil and Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Christian.
What makes the label “Sri Lankan” inapplicable to the poets of Sri Lankan origin, then, is not simply that they were a bourgeoisie that fled the revolution but that, uprooted in their own land, they are ignorant of the history, culture and myth of the land and its people, and seem unable to relate to such sensibility. The most justice we can do to the four poets is to see them as being hung at different points along several continua. As craftsmen, with technical skills, Ondaatje and Bhaggiyadatta are in the same league: excellent, with Crusz and Weerasinghe, sometimes catching up, but often falling behind. But as to being “Sri Lankan poets,” the order is almost reversed, with Weerasinghe running far ahead of all others, and Bhaggiyadatta not even being on course. To continue with the categories used by Mukherjee in her analysis of Ondaatje, Bhaggiyadatta would undoubtedly be the least “silent about his experience of displacement or otherness in Canada” while Ondaatje would be the most. For being led away “from an exploration of his own realities,” Ondaatje would no doubt lead the pack; even his latest and the most serious exploration of the immigrant experience, the novel In the Skin of a Lion, treats of some other community’s experience, and that, too, European. As for being “trapped by a style and a way of thinking that perforce have to deny life in society,” Bhaggiyadatta is no less guilty than Ondaatje if the society implied by Mukherjee is, as I believe it is, Sri Lanka. And as to “a God, cause or country,” Bhaggiyadatta is again close to Ondaatje, if the bench-mark is Sri Lanka, with Weerasinghe running away with the trophy. But if international socialism is the cause, Bhaggiyadatta is no doubt the hands-on winner with Sri Lankan socialism, however, not being within his ken at all.
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But this is not the balanced way Mukherjee sees them. What is the “history, legend, culture, [and] ideology” she herself brings? Her ideological stance becomes amply clear in her chastising Ondaatje and showering praises on Bhaggiyadatta and other poets of Sri Lankan origins. In this, is she not guilty of a crime that she accuses Ondaatje of—being ahistorical? She fails to place them in the historical context of the country. But she is also siding with the colonizer in that the dualistic, Cartesian world view she adopts is western in origin. She fails to show, or convince us, that this perspective is better, more helpful in understanding reality, than the one she inherits (Hindu, Buddhist or generally eastern).
Mukherjee is siding with the colonizer in another sense as well. There is not anything in her critique (1988) that reflects her own Indian literary critical tradition, Hindu/Buddhist or Sanskrit/Pali (see Warder 1972–88), nor other non-western traditions such as Chinese (see Liu 1975) or Japanese. It appears that she herself has been “trapped by a way of thinking that perforce denies” the validity or credibility of such non-western traditions. Not that a critic has to adopt her own critical tradition for the mere sake of it, but the least one could expect is for some evidence that in rejecting her own in preference for the oppressor’s, she has at least explored its dimensions. Why is the rasa theory of Indian esthetics, for example, not valid in evaluating poetry (Warder 1972–88) and if valid, why hasn’t she resorted to it? Why is Yeats her authority, and not Anandawardhana or any of the other literary critics from the fourth century BCE (Bharata Muni) to the twelfth century CE (Sangharaksita)? Given, then, that Mukherjee’s gods are western, her world view dualistic, and her critique out of balance, it is not without reservation that I could grant her an “esthetic of opposition.”
NOTES
1. Three other poets, Tyrell Mendis, Siri Gunasinghe and Suwanda Sugunasiri, also receive mention in the paper, but are not dealt with here. Gunasinghe, though a renowned writer in Sri Lanka and now Professor at the University of Victoria, has not written anything in Canada, or in English. Mendis has not continued to write, and Sugunasiri has yet to publish a collection.
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2. Though the majority of the 13 percent Tamils (excluding here the non- citizen tea-estate labour) were Hindus, “Christian” is listed here first to indicate that there was a higher percentage, in relation to the population, of Tamils among the Christian hierarchy than Sinhalese.
3. This can be shown with a personal example. All the services—courts, police, hospital, post-office, English-medium Catholic school—of my town were located in the “western quarter” where also lived the local elites. The Eurasians, as a community, can be said to have had the least contact with the rest of the population. At the only club in town, not even the young Eurasians would relate to us, Sinhalese Buddhists of middle class background, even though we spoke English, attended the Catholic school and played tennis at the same club.
4. It is only fair, however, to recognize that other English-speaking Sri Lankans of my generation, Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim, both in- country and overseas, continue to speak of “Ceylon” even today, despite the name change to Sri Lanka in 1971, suggesting a general class attitude. For the average Sinhalese, the country was always “Lanka,” and to the Tamils “Ilankai.”
5. See “The Literature of Canadians of South Asian Origins” in this volume, endnote 21.
6. I must perhaps take part of the responsibility for not drawing Mukherjee’s attention to these points when she wrote her very first article on Sri Lankan poets for me as part of my study (Sugunasiri 1983) . 7. This is a common error made by many a scholar from or on India. A typical example: a Canadian professor at a conference, reading out the Indian statistics of rates of illiteracy, infant mortality and GNP, saying that it is generalizable to the area, not noting the very different figures for Sri Lanka in his very own handout, and the impact Buddhism has had over 2500 years.
8. The quotations are from the jacket of A Time for Loving (Crusz 1986).
9. Originally in Sugunasiri and Suraweera 1984.
10. Crusz 1986. The rest of the quotations are all from this latest work, being a collection of his best works.
11. See Sugunasiri and Suraweera 1984 for the full play in English translation.
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12. See “Forces that Shaped Sri Lankan Literature” in this volume.
13. See “Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist and filmmaker, and Canadian Professor” in this volume.
14. See Sugunasiri 1987 for a complete list.
15. Sinha means “lion,” with Sinhala meaning “(descendants) of lion’s blood” (if written with dental /l/) or “heart” (if written with a retroflex /l/).
16. “The Critics.” The reference here appears to be to his involvement with “Project Peace,” the watchdog outfit he founded in response to the crisis, and through which he put out several research papers.
17. “The title and the author name in this work are written as if in typical Devanagari (Sanskrit) characters and style, with a line connecting the letters at the top.
18. In Sinhala, “sanga veda guru govi kamkaru.” This was the slogan under which the father of socialism, Philip Gunawardhana in particular, ran the campaign, Gunawardhena’s Peoples’s United Front (Mahajana Eksath Peramuna), being one of three Marxist groups of the political coalition led by Bandaranaike, under a commonly agreed upon election manifesto. The significance of the pillars was that they individually and collectively symbolized the disenfranchised under European, and continuing right wing, rule.
19. Challenging the Vedic teaching that birth alone confers nobility status of a Brahmin, the Buddha taught that “By action alone, and not birth, does one become a Brahmin or a vasala (of lowly caste)” (Dhammapada 393). Reflecting this teaching, Sinhalese society has no rigid caste system, but there does exist a thinly veiled one, somewhat based on the traditional form of livelihood: goigama based on farming, karawa on fishing, navandanna on jewellery making and berawa on drumming, etc. Of sociological interest here is the Buddhist twist: the caste that claims the topmost rank, farming, is by definition not the religious one as in Vedism, but the producer of food. Another aspect of the system is that the claim of superiority is granted, if at all, only grudgingly by the rest, particularly the fisher caste of the coastland who has a higher membership in the administrative services, universities and industry. In fact, some of the opposition to the election of the past president, Ranasingha Premadasa, came from the fact that he does not come from the upcountry or the farming caste from which had come all the Prime
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Ministers and the first President under the new constitution, Jayawardhena.
20. When all signs led to the possible victory of Philip Gunawardena’s Mahajana Eksath Peramuna at one of the elections, the Sinhalese daily Lankadeepa, began front-paging, over the opposition of the editors, material damaging to him from his past political statements. It was also well known how the dailies in English, Sinhala and Tamil carried different stories and gave different twists (personal knowledge). As for the Buddhist Sinhalese Dawasa Group, its class interests became apparent when it opposed the abolition of private practice, the son-in-law of the main shareholder (publisher Gunasena) being a physician.
21. “... the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be accusing the Mossad.” (Hoy and Ostrovsky 1990, 130).
22. See Warder (1972–88) for a detailed analysis.
23. See “Forces that Shaped Sri Lankan Literature” in this volume.
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Reality and Symbolism in the South Asian Canadian Short Story
Four
Reality and Symbolism in the South Asian Canadian Short Story
If there is a predominant feature that characterizes the South Asian Canadian short story, it is realism. This feature is evident even in stories which contain folklore and village superstition, for example Cyril Dabydeen’s “A Vampire Life,” “Bitter Blood,” and “Funny Ghosts” (1980a), or which incorporate elements from mythology, such as M.G. Vassanji’s “Waiting for the Goddess” (1982), Surjeet Kalsey’s “Mirage in the Cave” (1982a; written 1976), and Lino Leitao’s “The Miracle” (1979; written in 1977).
Iqbal Ahmad’s “The Kumbh Fair” (1969; written in 1965), perhaps the first South Asian short story in English to appear in Canada, provides an excellent example of this realism in operation. The main character in the story, a rural girl named Vimla, ends up in a city whorehouse as she goes in search of her parents, who are lost among a crowd of a million people assembled at a religious (Kumbh) fair. Even though she comes to the whorehouse, and remains there, against her will and conscience, she tells the policeman who has been summoned by the well-meaning but naive university student to help her that she is there on her own accord! Worldly wise though village bred, she knows, as an older man points out to the narrator, that “she couldn’t go home after what has happened.” If our sympathy is immediately drawn to the girl, we are also puzzled initially when she tells the narrator that she hopes her parents are dead. But this apparently heartless statement becomes a bitter social comment when we read later that her father had indeed wished to die at the fair in the belief that those “who die there go straight to heaven.” In one stroke, Ahmad incorporates superstition into social reality, and adds another dimension to Vimla’s
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character—that of dutiful daughter. Her practical wisdom is further demonstrated by her kind words for the old woman who runs the whorehouse and her customers. Stranded in a big and impersonal city, with parents dead, what would become of her? If the story serves as a comment on the poverty, helplessness, and the superstition-governed life of the average Indian (the family comes to the fair “eager for a dip in the holy waters that would rid them of their sins and ensure their salvation”), it also serves as a comment on the naiveté of a westernized, urban middle class that is out of touch with cultural reality. What Vimla, a young girl, and the old uneducated man know about life, the narrator, the educated university student, does not.
“The Kumbh Fair,” then, can he said to move at two levels. At one level it is an ordinary story, which could take place in any city in the Third World, of a helpless, rural, but practical young woman and an urban but naive young man. At another, symbolic level it is the story of a traditional society threatened by urbanization and its associated values and of the inability of the victims of such urbanization (and westernization) either to solve the problems of the society or to leave it.
To the extent that Ahmad in “The Kumbh Fair” gives a realistic portrayal of a social condition in the Third World, he could be called (to use Woodcock’s phrase though in a different sense) a “realistic chronicler of the region” (1980, 30). The five writers with published collections of stories—Stephen Gill, Lino Leitao, Saros Cowasjee, Cyril Dabydeen and Clyde Hosein—can all be said to fit this description. All of Leitao’s stories in Goan Tales and all but two of Cowasjee’s in Nude Therapy (1979) are situated in India; all of Hosein’s The Killing of Nelson John (1980) and seven of Dabydeen’s fifteen stories in Still Close to the Island are set in the West Indies; and four of Gill’s fourteen stories in Life’s Vagaries (1974) in Africa. Among single works, Harold Sonny Ladoo’s “The Quiet Peasant” (1973) is based in the Caribbean, M. G. Vassanji’s “Waiting for the Goddess” (1982) in East Africa and Suwanda Sugunasiri’s “Fellow Travellers” (1982) in Sri Lanka.
The poverty of the landless peasantry is a proverbial truth in relation to the Third World. But, surprisingly, in chronicling the region only a single story, Ladoo’s “The Quiet Peasant,” can be said to be on the theme of survival in Margaret Atwood’s (1972) sense. In Gobinah’s
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struggle we see the rural poor in their never-ending, and often never- winning, relationship to man’s earliest adversary and asset, land. The absence of stories dealing with the landless peasantry does not, of course, take away from the social realism of these stories. As we have seen, Vimla also represents the rural poor, and the obstacle to her survival is the social system, in an urban rather than a rural setting. The same can be said of Cowasjee’s character in “His Father’s Medals” (in Nude Therapy), the so-called untouchable who is charged with the theft of medals which, in fact, he had inherited from his father, who had earned them through services rendered to a British Imperial officer. In both these stories, we find the obstacle (society) turned “oppressor,” the theme itself now shifting from mere survival to something like “survival under oppression.”
Traditional society as oppressor is also the theme in Vassanji’s “Waiting for the Goddess,” where Didi, a young woman in an East African town, is chastized by society (branded a “whore”) for, among other things, being alone in a room with a white man, although all that the goondas (hooligans) found on tearing into the flat was her “having tea and chatting.” Still within an urban context, but in a West Indian setting, we find society as oppressor, although with a difference, in Hosein’s “I’m a Presbyterian, Mr. Kramer” (in The Killing of Nelson John). Here the oppressor is not traditional society but the imposed colonial order as represented by Mr. Kramer, the president of a soap company for which Reginald Cornelius Hassan had worked for an entire lifetime, beginning at a time when Mr. Kramer was an infant and his father was president. Now he is fired for having the courage to stand up to Kramer’s sexual advances to several women employees and his immorality in general. What we find here is a world where wealth, power, and arrogance, embodied in Mr. Kramer, endowed as it is upon him by a colonial system, are pitted against the virtues of honesty, commitment, conviction, and uprightness, as embodied in Hassan. (Note the religious reference in the title.) The story thus deals with both physical and spiritual survival.
These stories, then, concern the predator-victim relationship. There is a different kind of victim in Sugunasiri’s “Fellow Travellers” and Dabydeen’s “Mother of Us All” (in Still Close to the Island): the domestic servant in an urban Sri Lankan household in the former and an entire rural Guyanese household under the overpowering influence
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of an “auntie” in the latter. Here there is no “predator” as such, the “victimization” being of a mild order in the sense that it doesn’t threaten physical, spiritual or cultural survival, but simply takes place in the ordinary process of living, with no conscious intention of exploitation attributed to the predator. In “Fellow Travellers” the potential predator is also the provider, the housewife who agrees to take under her care a woman subjected to social ridicule and harassment, though once under her care, the treatment the women gets is less than enthusiastic.
The stories above, and many others like them, tell us about particular geographical regions, but taken together, they paint for us a fairly comprehensive picture of the range of social, economic, and cultural life of that part of the world we call the Third World—a picture, by and large, of a rural society, where the problems of survival are compounded by an implicit or explicit oppression, resulting from, urbanization, colonization, and/or westernizing, with a resulting conflict in values, and where both predator and victim contribute to the ongoing individual and societal process. Collectively, then, the Canadian writers of South Asian origin could be called “Third World chroniclers,” (Woodcock 1980) though by no means are they mere fictional historians.
Characterisation is the second element through which these stories acquire their realism. The characters in these stories reflect accurately and convincing the societies to which they belong. We have seen this in Vimla in “The Kumbh Fair.” The woman of similar name, Wimala, in Sugunasiri’s “Fellow Travellers” accepts, just as Vimla does, the reality of her fate with a depth of understanding and even abandon, when she, a domestic servant, says almost graciously (if also gratefully): “It is true that the lady beats me and scolds me, but it was she who gave me shelter.” What we see in Wimala is a round and realistic character, one who is realistic about her situation. Another example of such a well-developed character, an ordinary man with a good understanding of his position, is Gobinah, Ladoo’s “Quiet Peasant,” who admonishes his son:
Now Beta, you modder kinda sickly. A few days each week, try and go to school and learn something. Take education, Beta, so when you come a man, you wouldn’t have to kill you yourself for a bread like me. (1973, 15–16)
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Unlike someone of the middle class, education to Gobinah is not something valued for its own sake but something very practical, something relating to one’s very survival.
Hosein’s Hassan in “I’m a Presbyterian, Mr. Kramer,” by contrast, sees the reality of Kramer’s injustice, but is agitated enough by his religious and moral convictions to stand up to him. But what he fails to realize—perhaps due to a lack of capacity to discern character, as Vimla, Wimala, and Gobinah, all village characters, can, or to a weakening of a survival instinct through a lengthy master-servant relationship where the security of a regular income may have resulted in complacency—is that his employer could, unlike his father, the former master, be ruthless. This kind of character falls entirely within the realm of plausibility in a colonial situation, as does the ironic situation in which imported religion governs more the life of the colonized than of the colonizer. The character of Kramer, as the spoiled, ruthless, selfish, and machiavellian son of a rich and moral father, is plausibly drawn and thus well developed.
Vassanji’s Gulu, in “Waiting for the Goddess,” is an embodiment, as seen earlier, of an exopetalized, or outward-looking, middle class. He yearns for everything that is foreign. To him, the visitor “from there” (presumably a white American) even smells different! Not surprisingly, as an extension in the opposite direction, Gulu is over critical of his society and has little respect for its institutions (he desecrates a place of worship), and looks down upon his own people, proudly claiming, “I’m not one of them”—all rather typical manifestations of a colonized mind, as we know from the works of Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon and others.
To take one final example of characterization, Bull, in Dabydeen’s “Bitter Blood” (in Still Close to the Island) gains his authenticity of character through skilful handling. Though Bull’s hand is “like a sledgehammer,” and “even the bakraman from England who runs the sugar estates” is terrified of him, he is the ordinary villager subject to the village belief in vampires (“ole higue”)—he is afraid of his grandmother because “he used to hear people say that ... grandma was an ole higue” (1980a, 9).
The third element that constitutes the realism of these stories is the
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conscious or functional use of language to authenticate the other two elements, place and character. A specific example is the use of pidgin, or dialect, by the West Indian characters in Ladoo’s “The Quiet Peasant” and in certain stories by Dabydeen, particularly “Bitter Blood,” subtitled “A Short Story Written in West Indian Pidgin.” While both Dabydeen and Ladoo put pidgin in the mouths of the characters and use standard English for narrative, the difference in “Bitter Blood” is that even the narrative is attempted in pidgin. Thus the initial sentence reads: “When Bull is walking down Canje road everyone watching him twice.” Dabydeen, however, hasn’t succeeded in maintaining consistency in this story; in places the narrative lapses into standard English for no apparent functional reason, and standard English usage sneaks up on dialect usage, as for example in the inclusion of “is” in the sentence just quoted.
The functional use of language is also pronounced in certain stories written in the Canadian context, Dabydeen’s and Alan Annand’s being good examples. While Cowasjee’s use of scatological vocabulary in “Nude Therapy” seems more artificial than functional—the story being that of a professor—and thus appears graamya (vulgar), to use a term from Indian esthetics, Dabydeen’s use of them adds authenticity. The “chicks” whom Memphis attracts are characterized by a “guy” as “just prick teasers,” the words not only being used about fast-life teenagers but by an average person (a “guy”) as well. Memphis’s response to “other fellas” who pass by in their fancy cars and honk at them is “Fuck off!”—apt words from the mouths of “prick teasers.” If this is authentic North American idiom, matching well with the characters, in Annand we find the most native-like use of language, but, of course, in the mouths of native-born characters. Thus we find in “Rosie Was a Good Old Dog,” (1975) for example, Tom Banner “dunking” Garold in the river, and then “yanking” him out— expressive vocabulary usage. Authentic grammatical forms of the average Canadian—“Ain’t nothin,” “since the other kids growed up and took off,” “the pups is comin’ along real fine,” expressions such as “real fine,” “what the livin’ Judas is makin’ that?” and spoken abbreviations such as “There’ll be more’n two or three pups” and “C’mere, lad”—are not wanting either.
While realism runs as a common thread in the words of the South Asian Canadian short story writers, several effectively exploit the
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symbolic and, to a lesser degree, the mythological; for example, Leitao’s “The Miracle” (in Goan Tales) employs the miraculous and the mythical element in the narrative. Other stories function at both levels, making effective use of symbolism in a realistic situation.
We have already drawn attention to the symbolism present in Ahmad’s “The Kumbh Fair.” While Cowasjee’s “His Father’s Medals” describes the plight of an oppressed “untouchable” individual, it also tells of the plight of a whole oppressed population under the heavy hand of the caste system. Hassan, in Hosein’s “I’m a Presbyterian, Mr. Kramer,” is an individual rendered helpless at the hands of a ruthless employer, but his plight reflects that of the colonized, just as Kramer symbolizes, the colonizer. In Ladoo’s “Quiet Peasant” the whole Third World peasantry fights for survival. Finally, Vassanji’s “Waiting for the Goddess” is not only the story of Gulu and Didi (the “goddess”); it is also a story of different responses to colonialism in the Third World— the reaction of traditional society in the wake of social change on the one hand and middle-class one-upmanship and escapism on the other.
The intentional symbolism of each of these stories is clear, although in each case (except Vassanji’s, to which we shall come presently) it has to be drawn out. But the most sustained and well incorporated use of technique occurs in Ladoo’s “The Quiet Peasant.” Gobinah, the quiet peasant of the Caribbean, is “digging the well.” The topsoil is “hard like iron,” suggesting the hard life of the poverty-ridden farmer. But “with his whole mind centred on the work, and his powerful arms holding the fork,” Gobinah continues digging. With an ailing wife unable to help in the field and five daughters, one of marriageable age and requiring a dowry (tilak), “work” here represents the very struggle for existence. His commitment to his family’s welfare is described as unusual (“Most men would have beaten their wife out of the village”) and requires a totally concentrated effort as Gobinah was making in “digging the well.” To continue the symbolism, “his powerful arms” are his unwavering determination and strength of character as a human being, for his compassion extends to animals. Thus, though he could have sold his dead bull, he buried it instead, only for it to be dug up by butchers who sell the meat in the market. The fork itself is symbolic of his two-fold attack on life: one to keep the land fed with water (for his tomato crop) and the other to keep the family going. The symbolism continues. After digging for six feet, “it was easier for him
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to dig,” but “there were no signs of water” and the earth now “felt cold under his feet” even “as the direct rays of the sun hit his body.” Gobinah’s approaching death couldn’t be suggested more powerfully, one may construe, under the pressures of life symbolized by the life- giving rays of the sun, which at the same time can sap one’s energy through continued exposure to its heat. With his death comes the end of the hopes of the family, and by extension, of all those poor people in the world struggling for existence without giving up their humanity.
Vassanji’s symbolism (in “Waiting for the Goddess”), arising as it does from a combination of myth and ideology, is not simply intentional. It is part of the very structure of the story, and as such is an excellent example of the conscious use of another type of symbolism.
The title itself is symbolic of the attitude of a whole segment of society in the Third World, the middle class, well captured in the Sinhalese idiom “grimacing at the ocean”—basically an exopetal orientation which makes them wait for the goodies from overseas. The “goddess” here is the giver of the gift of emigration for a tortured soul, much as a traditional god is believed to bring salvation. Gulu, the narrator who is awaiting his American goddess, for example, leads the cheer for Devaji, literally meaning “the respected god” but here symbolizing the colonial rulers. The picture printed on the American dollar is referred to as the god of the Americans, and given the name “Niladeva”—blue god. Extending the myth, the question is posed: “Does he have many names like Lord Vishnu—do they meditate on the names? Do they make offerings to him?” The symbolism, then, is part of the structure of the story.
The strength of the works under discussion, then, lies not in the nature of their content alone, but in their characterization, their use of literary technique and their internal verbal patterns which altogether provide a moving esthetic experience, evoking our basic emotions (another concept in Indian aesthetics).
If this summary statement is made in relation to the “regional chronicles,” it is equally a statement, as we shall see, of those other stories written in a Canadian setting, such as Cowasjee’s “Nude Therapy”; Dabydeen’s “A Kind of Feeling” (1980b) and the eight other stories in Still Close to the Island; Himani Bannerji’s “Going Home”
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(1980); the works of Alan M. Annand (e.g. “A Bagful of Holes,” 1977) and Sandy Pandya (“Practical Jokers,” 1979); and the two stories by Surjeet Kalsey, “Confined by Threads” (1976) and “Mirage in the Cave” (1982a), both with universal contexts and translated from Punjabi.
As in the case of several of Dabydeen’s stories, such as “All for Less,” “Mouthful,” and “Mammita’s Garden Cove” (in Still Close to the Island) and of Bannerji’s “Going Home,” the immigrant experience, both negative and neutral, though not as yet positive (perhaps sufficient time has not elapsed for these to appear), serves as the underlying theme. Dabydeen frames racial confrontations within a larger, and sometimes even apparently unrelated, context such as, for example, romance, as in the ease of “A Kind of Feeling,” where we learn that the narrator, whose hopes of love are shattered, is an immigrant only when we read almost at the very end that he is one of a “bunch of immigrant workers.” Bannerji’s “Going Home” by contrast is the typical “racial confrontation,” not in the sense of prejudice or name-calling but in the way immigrants sometimes come to interpret a situation or to feel resentment as a result of their experience. The “confrontation” in this story is psychological, as the Indian mother dying in a Canadian hospital bed brings to mind the impact of the clash of cultures on her children and their relationships with their parents. “Our children ... they don’t know us ... we don’t even speak the same language,” says the mother. The implicit racial confrontation uppermost in the author’s mind is suggested by the following:
There are two ways in which they could punish you for being here. They could look through you to some object beyond you ... as though you didn’t exist ... Another way ... was to concentrate their gaze on you. (1980, 25)
And Bannerji takes a paragraph to expand upon each of the two ways. Indeed the political activist in the writer, as we know for example from her poems like “Revolution in Cuba,” “Imperialist Waltz,” and “Freedom” in her collection A Separate Sky (1982a), seems to have got the better of the artist.
Symbolism, however, is used effectively by both Bannerji and
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Dabydeen. The mother in Bannerji’s story feels hurt at the situation. “There was this knife that they inserted into her body.” Her helplessness is reflected in the words, “She felt that she was floating, drifting down a stream.” She was resentful of it all, the resentment clearly directed at “the voice of authority” manifested in the “white woman in a while dress” standing in front of her, “ready to give a needle.” If the whiteness symbolizes the mainstream culture, it also symbolizes, in the Indian context, death.
Memphis, in Dabydeen’s story of that name, is an affable black man with a way of attracting girls easily, white or black. Often seen with “chicks” who at time “wore cut-offs, exposing as much as possible,” he easily befriends a white prostitute. A man, angered apparently by his ability to attract while girls, sets his Alsatian dog after him, vowing to “keep this city clean,” charging him to be a pimp. And, as it turns out, the prostitute happens to be the man’s own daughter who, “very agitated,” and with “her hands shaking” cries “Memphis ain’t doing any harm,” and vows never to return home. Memphis here stands for all who have suffered prejudice and racism, and the stereotypical father stands for the racist. But more importantly—the daughter stands for the fair-minded people who share the same pleasures, desires, aspirations, values and perhaps weaknesses with the others, immigrant or native.
As can be seen from “Memphis,” and nearly half of his stories in Still Close to the Island, Dabydeen is the only immigrant of South Asian origin who has successfully written about the Canadian or North American situation. (This situation is changing now with recent and upcoming works by several writers.) The only other writer who has made a conscious attempt at this is Stephen Gill, but unfortunately he cannot be considered a serious writer, for, as one critic puts it, his works are “not really short stories” (Barclay 1974, 28). There is little characterization and the plots are artificial. Of the twelve stories in Cowasjee’s Nude Therapy, only a few fall into this category. “Nude Therapy,” set in Saskatchewan, satirizes the North American obsession with sex, but events seem to be artificially strung together, as, for example, when a professor at a nude therapy session runs away with a woman participant he has just met, no sooner than they settle down to a corner for the evening as instructed, and driving without lights, is stopped by a policeman who turns out to he a former student. If the
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story partly succeeds as a satire, it fails in artistry, though plausibility there is.
Sandy Pandya and Alan Annand are both Canadian born, as far as can determined from their stories, both apparently from the Atlantic region. The latter shows great promise. “A Bagful of Holes” is a tender story about a boy’s pain when some kittens are drowned by his uncle. To prevent Uncle Percy’s doing it again Bobby cuts holes in every one of the bags at home. The boy’s character—his naiveté and sentimentality—is well suggested in this act, without other specific description. In his frustration and pain, Bobby doesn’t realize that Uncle Percy can get rid of kittens in a hundred other ways. Annand shows the boy’s pain symbolically, in true Chekhovian style: “Bobby walked back to the house. The trees had lost all their leaves and the sky was dark with clouds.” At suppertime, as he toys with his stew, “A potato kitten floated to the surface,” symbolizing how his pain, and its cause, kept surfacing again and again. The term “potato kitten” is powerful, suggestive of the potato sack that was used to drown the kittens.
Surjeet Kalsey is unique in dealing with a feminist theme—the oppression of women—in a universal setting, that is, with no identifiable geographic location “Mirage in the Cave,” both realistic and symbolic at the same time, deals with the “cave of the subconscious” of a woman deserted by her man. In the story, the woman’s loneliness draws her towards the door of “red and blue compartments,” a clear allusion to her anger and coldness. These feelings, which take her memory “from Volga to the Ganges” make Sirjana a symbol of women through the ages and her memory of a “lost civilization when woman was the Chief or General” serves as a prototype of the aspirations of those who want to see the woman/wife/mother as the guiding light in society/family.
The ideological component of the story peaks when women, whatever the treatment meted out through generations, always rise “from the dirt, with no fear, no sighs and no complaints.” If all this is ideology in symbolism, we have a powerful use of myth when Kalsey ironically gives the name Mokshdev (“god of liberty”) to the husband who has left her to her cruel destiny to be whipped, seduced, chained, and “worn as shoes” by the world.
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This overview draws on the best work of South Asian Canadian writers (Sugunasiri, ed. 1983; Sugunasiri, ed. 1988; Sugunasiri 1985a). Other work, such as Gill’s and Leitao’s, although weak as short stories, need not be considered bad works of literature. If, for example, it is the enthusiasm in presenting a neglected cultural group, namely the Christian Indians of Goa, that has allowed Leitao’s content to get the better of form, this is not necessarily a weakness, for as George Woodcock rather reluctantly concedes in relation to the early works of E. J. Pratt and Hugh MacLennan:
at certain stages in literatures, when they emerge from a kind of colonialism to take their identity, an emphasis on content rather than form may be necessary and is to be encouraged. (1980, 29)
But in the linear rather than spatial form Leitao (like Gill in many of his works) has adopted, suggested in his title, Goan Tales, he is also seeking inspiration from traditional works such us the Kathasaritsagara (“The Ocean of Tales”), the Pañcatantra (“Five Threads”) and its shorter version the Hitopadesa.
In conclusion, it is perhaps not insignificant to observe that the successful stories come from almost all the authors, indicating the overall level of the South Asian Canadian short story. These writers display knowledge of a variety of literary techniques, and examples abound of stories that fall into each of the nawa nalu rasa (nine esthetic experiences) recognized in Indian esthetics— sensitive/sensuous, comic, compassionate, heroic, apprehensive, and so on. We can also see Poe, Maupassant, Chekhov and others in them as well.
If much of the content renders the South Asian Canadian short story “still close to the island,” with writers like Dabydeen and Bannerji, Vassanji and Sugunasiri increasingly producing works in a Canadian context, the South Asian Canadian short story is not far from catching root in Canadian soil. It is a branch of Canadian literature, a sapling if you will, that the literary establishment cannot afford to ignore for much longer.
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NOTES
1 All the works discussed in this article are listed in Sugunasiri (1987).
2 Pat Barclay, book review in Books in Canada, 4, no. 7 (1974), p. 28.
3 George Woodcock, The World of Canadian Writing: Critiques and Recollections (Vancouver: Douglas McIntyre (1980), p. 29.
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Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist and filmmaker, and Canadian Professor
Five
Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist and filmmaker, and Canadian Professor
Professor at the University of Victoria, in BC, Canada. Siri Gunasinghe (S.G. below) is credited with introducing, in the late fifties when he was a Professor at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka (the western style of) blank verse, nisandas (to give the term coined by him), into contemporary Sinhala literature. His first collection Mas Le Naeti Aeta (“Dry Bones”) (1956) is the first collection of this genre. In addition to two other collections, Abinikmana “Renunciation” (1958) Ratukaekula “Red Bud” (1961), he is also author of a groundbreaking novel, Hevanaella “Shadow” (circa 1959), and the film, Satsamudura “Seven Seas” (circa 1960s)1
This interview was conducted by the author (S.S.) at the Gunasinghe residence in Victoria in 1981.
S.S. Blank verse was, of course, no stranger to Sinhalese literature, as has been brought to our attention by Paranavitana’s monumental work, Sigiri Graffiti (Paranavitana, 1956). G. B. Senanayake also had already introduced a few pieces of what could have been termed blank verse, in his short story collection Paliganeema (1946). So why did the publication of your first collection, Mas Le Naeti Aeta, create such a furore in the Sinhalese literary world?
S.G. It is true that we have had something like blank verse written by these visitors to Sigiriya, as Paranavitana has deciphered them. We have also had another form of writing, a style called vrttagandhi, which also used a sort of rhythmic form, but was basically prose. So,
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traditionally we have had other forms of writing besides simple prose. What happened when I published Mas Le Naeti Aeta was a kind of peculiar reaction.
Let me put it this way. When G. B. Senanayake published his pieces in his collection of short stories (1946) he did not call them poems. In his own notes he says these are neither poems nor prose. I forget the exact terms he used. But he did not give them the dignified term “poetry.”2
I published a poem at about the same time as G. B. Senanayake, in the University students’ magazine. I was an undergraduate then. The magazine was called Piyavara. And the poem was titled Aapasuva, which I called a nisandas poem. I created the term nisandas.
S.S. Which is from chandas, so nisandas means “without chandas.”
S.G. In other words, it is a kind of verse, but it does not follow the traditional pattern of rhyme and meter. This was somehow looked upon as an affront by the Sinhalese reading public, because for them, poetry was that which had four or ten or whatever number of lines; it was metrical and could in fact be sung.
Singing poetry was the typical Sinhalese way of doing it. We didn’t have the habit of reading poetry silently and enjoying it silently. And here was a kind of writing which was being called poetry, which had none of the trappings of poetry that we knew.
The other thing, of course, was that it had quite a different type of language and imagery. The Sinhalese critics disliked this, because it was, shall we say, a denial of the values, of all they had been doing up to then, of all the traditional Sinhalese poetic trends ...
S.S. So it was both the free-verse style and the language and imagery used in your poetry that was seen as an affront.
S.G. They didn’t know what to do with it. And, of course, they didn’t understand the language. I used non-traditional imagery. As you know, Sinhalese poetry had a very traditional type of imagery which was derived largely from the Sanskrit poetic tradition.
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S.S. Like comparing the eyes of a woman to the eyes of a gazelle.
S.G. Something like that. And anything unusual they thought was alien. But every time someone writes something, it is somehow or other a little different from what he wrote previously. Or what anybody else had been writing previously. Is this enough reason to reject it or to be so nastily critical about it? There was something more behind it.
S.S. What do you think that was?
S.G. I think it was the fact that I was in the University. That I was a University person, that I belonged to the faculty. The critics were mostly journalists. G. B. Senanayake’s pieces were not criticized at that time ... Very few people took notice of them.
S.S. They were hidden among the short stories.
S.G. Nobody thought seriously about them. It was just one of those things. They were in the book and that was it. Nobody spoke about them until my book was published. Most of the critics were journalists of the Sinhalese press. They were very traditional. Top to bottom. And they had a built-in animosity toward the University.
S.S. Was that justified in any way?
S.G. I guess in their own eyes it was justified. But they could not justify it rationally.
S.S. What do you think was the basis of the animosity? Was it that the University was seen to be “westernized”?
S.G. Yes. If you read the critical literature of that time, you will find that the University was regarded as the last bastion of western culture in Sri Lanka ... which observation may not be entirely false. About seventy-five percent of the faculty and students came from western- oriented homes. They learnt English, some of them also Greek and Latin. They did not read any Sinhalese—they could not. They never learnt it. So they could never read the Sinhalese press, read its literature, speak the language. In fact Sinhalese culture did not exist as
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far as they were concerned. They were never, shall we say, well disposed toward Sinhalese drama or folk plays or folklore ...
S.S. So when you came and wrote something new, you were immediately identified with “western” values, that you were trying to import and impose something.
S.G. That is right. But these critics did not realize that there were a certain number of people at the University who were very much Sinhalese educated. I, for instance, went to a Sinhalese school before I started my English education. There were people who had learnt the Sinhalese classics at school. We read the Sinhalese press; we knew its folk stories and legends. We were as much Sinhalese as any of them. But we had the extra bit of English education. We used to read English literature. Our medium of instruction at the time was English. All the lectures at the University were given in English and very often we spoke English. So naturally we were looked upon as a kind of alien people.
S.S. So you were a kind of symbolic target ... To proceed, you wrote, I believe, three collections of poetry. The first one was Mas Le Naeti Aeta “Dry Bones,” and the second was—
S.G. Abinikmana.
S.S. Does that name have any relevance ... why did you call it Abinikmana “Renunciation”?
S.G. As a symbol, taken from the actual renunciation by the Buddha. That symbol is very pregnant with meaning for the Sinhalese reading public. They know the story of the Buddha, how he gave up all his worldly wealth, all his pleasures, his wife and child. Symbolically, I was speaking of the need to renounce certain things in our cultural baggage, so that you create a new way of life, a new form of thinking ...
The third collection was called Ratukaekula, which means “Red Bud.”
S.S. That was more a celebration of life.
S.G. Yes. It was what I might call a lyrical collection, full of lyrical
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poetry. I was looking for all the beautiful things I could find to write about. Of course, I did not go on walks to look for them. Whatever struck me as beautiful somehow turned into poetry in my mind. Most of the poems that were written in classical times dealt with the Buddha’s life and things like that. The more popular poetry was all about flowers and girls and music ...
S.S. I remember one of the poems you wrote was about empty houses. Do you think your novel Hevanaella “The Shadow” as also a breakthrough, in the same way as Dry Bones was in poetry?
S.G. I think so. For two reasons. First, because of the style, and second, because of the theme. Novels up to then were basically story- telling. Martin Wickramasinghe, the leading novelist at that time, did write a few pieces that dealt with more realistic subjects. The earlier novels were what you might call non-realistic ...
W. A. Silva’s early novels were of the Rider Haggard sort ... Piyadasa Sirisena wrote about nationalist themes; it was very proper at that time. The material dealt with by Sirisena was very opportune. He was a very strong nationalist and that was the time when people were talking about independence, and fighting against strong-minded colonialism.
Piyadasa Sirisena was probably not the greatest novelist, but the most useful novelist ... Martin Wickramasinghe, on the other hand, took over realistic themes—village life and so on—which sort of prepared the ground for a novel like mine. I always feel though that people don’t recognize this, that my novel was in the same tradition, that it was another step in the direction we were all taking. In that sense, my novel did not break away from anything. But it broke new ground from the point of view of style and theme. It was about the mental conflicts of a young man. Nobody up to that point had written of such things, except Gunadasa Amarasekera, who wrote some stories dealing with psychological problems and mental conflicts.
S.S. What does the “shadow” of the title symbolize?
S.G. The shadow is that of the mother. In this young man’s life, as in the lives of so many young men of that time, the mother played a very strong role. Mother was the guiding principle. It was the mother who
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told him what was right and wrong, who wanted him to become a civil servant, and so on. In addition there was the chief priest of the temple, who as you know, even today, is a very important guide in the whole setup.
The problem with the young man was that, on one hand, he was being introduced, in the University, into a new kind of thinking and a new kind of life—coming into contact with students from Colombo, from posh homes, who used to run about like playboys, having a good time, carefree, with plenty of money, lots of girlfriends, dances, drinking parties. And, on the other hand, he couldn’t break away from the influence of his mother.
S.S. How was the novel a breakthrough in terms of style?
S.G. In writing it, I used what is known as the stream-of- consciousness technique.
S.S. Did you get this from Joyce’s writing?
S.G. It is reading Joyce that made me think of it. But it would be wrong to say—it would be unfair to myself to say—that I sat down to write a novel like Joyce’s. The idea for the novel had been working in my mind for a long time. As an undergraduate, I lived among such people, I was one of them and a lot of my friends came from the same background. I finished my secondary school education at Mahinda College which, I think you know, is a stronghold of Sinhalese culture. So I knew their problems, which were also my problems, and I was trying to write them down. And I felt that the only way I could write this was as my thoughts. For one thing, there was no story to it, no beginning-middle-end kind of story. Nothing happened to this man. He was faced with situations, and all he could do was to react to them. And his only reaction was his thoughts.
S.S. Can we move on to yet another area of your involvement. I know that you were involved in the Sinhalese theatre in the fifties, in particular with Maname. which was a groundbreaking play produced by Sarachchandra, who adapted it from a folk play.
Now Sarachchandra was not loved by the Sinhala intelligentsia either.
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He was a university professor, and also a symbolic target. Yet they raved over Maname when it was produced. You were in charge of sets and design. And you were relentlessly criticized for keeping the stage bare, which was also part of the traditional Nadagam theatre. Why do you think they went for you while raving over Maname?
S.G. It is not easy to answer, why this double standard. Possibly the Sinhalese theatre goers were used to a very elaborate stage, such as that of the Tower Hall Theatre. When we were doing this play, it was decided that the stage should be empty, because, for one thing, in the traditional Nadagama, there was no stage setting. Since this as supposedly a revival of a traditional form, we thought we might have it that way. The play itself could have done with a stage set. There is no harm as far as that goes. Another thing is that the stage set I created was an abstract recreation of the actual folk theatre building.
S.S. A kind of shed which was built with a central post, with a thatched roof.
S.G. What I created was a very abstract idea of a triangular roof supported on a big post ... which I thought was quite nice. But there were two schools of thought. There was one critic who felt that it was an obstruction, for which reason Sarachchandra removed it after a couple of shows. And then there was the other school, which felt that the play should have had the typical stage designs.
S.S. There was another aspect to the row—to do with the costumes and make-up.
S.G. They came in for a lot of criticism from people who were interested in the theatre, or who had a personal interest, or had produced plays earlier ... [One was a] leading producer at the Tower Hall Theatre. He felt that my costumes were garish. But I felt that the costumes were very successful because they were based on traditional costumes, not of Sinhalese theatre, but of ancient Indian sculpture and painting ...3 The play was set in ancient India, and I thought it best to go back to those times. And I created this new set of costumes based on the designs you find in sculptures and paintings. I thought they were very successful and I think most people thought they were successful. And even now I think they are still copying them, though they never give credit ...
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S.S. I agree there was an acceptance. Today if you looked at any sort of semi-classical theatre, you find the same costumes in different forms. There is no question your costumes had an impact. Moving on, now, how many films did you produce?
S.G. I produced only one film ... in addition to a documentary.
S.S. And, in your own mind, did you try to break new ground here as well?
S.G. I tried to make the movie more cinematic. In the sense that I wanted to make the visuals the main medium. I used very little dialogue in that movie. No dance and music and fighting ... The Sinhalese film was all dancing and singing ... of the Bombay variety kind.
S.S. What made you leave Sri Lanka?
S.G. I didn’t really leave Sri Lanka. I came here as a visiting professor for one year. And then certain political problems—not national politics but university politics—compelled me to stay on.
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Siri Gunasinghe: poet, novelist and filmmaker, and Canadian Professor
NOTES
1. Since then, he has published two more novels: Miringuva Aellima “Chasing the mirage” (2002) and Manadarama “Louring Skies” (1994); an anthology: Beyond Words (1998); a collection of poetry: Alakamandava “Place in Heaven” (1998); and four collections of essays in criticism: Chirantana Sampradaya Saha Pragatiya “Tradition and Progress” (1986), Rasavadaya Ha Sinhala Sahityaya “Rasa Theory and Sinhala Literature” (1965), Navakathava Ha Jivita vivaranaya “The Novel as a Criticism of Life” (1964), Vicharaya Ha Vicharakaya “Criticism and the Critic” (1963).
2. This is how they are characterized by Senanayake (1946, 101): “The poetry-like pieces in this book I consider as something between prose and verse. They are to be read as prose, but in reading them, the attention paid to the beauty (sweetness?, harmony?) of sound concatenation (shabda sanghatanayehi maadhuryaya) needs to be more than in relation to reading prose.”
3. It may be noted in passing that, though Gunasinghe taught Sanskrit in Sri Lanka, he teaches Art History at the University of Victoria.
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Forces That Shaped Sri Lankan Literature
Six
Forces That Shaped Sri Lankan Literature
Of the Sri Lankan Canadian poets, “a more motley group could be hard to conceive of,” Arun Mukherjee (1984) observes. This description is true also of the Sri Lankan literary scene in general, as a glance at any of the several anthologies of this literature would show.1 Who, then, is a “Sri Lankan writer”? Reflective of the truly multicultural reality of the country, he or she is of Sinhalese, Eurolankan (Burgher) or Tamil ethnic origin (the order reflecting the extent of activity), of Buddhist, Christian or Hindu background, writing in Sinhala, English or Tamil.2 To complete the picture, we have native and émigré writers.
There is thus a range of writers, from those writing in Sri Lanka in one of three languages all the way to emigrants writing only in English. In between can be found any combination of ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds and places of domicile. Noteworthy is the Sinhala writing only in English, in Sri Lanka.3
The conditions for the emergence of such a complex matrix are rooted, obviously, in history; and in particular in three sociohistorical processes: Buddhism, South Indian colonialism and British colonialism.
The short stories by Amarasekera and Vithana, in Sugunasiri and Suraweera (1984), belongs to a tradition of serious short fiction that dates back to 1924, with the publication of Martin Wickramasinghe’s collection Geheniyak (A Woman) [see Sugunasiri, 2002 for a study], the same period around which Morely Callaghan was writing short stories in Canada. Wickramasinghe’s stories, as laconic as Callaghan’s,
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derived their strength from their characterization, as did the first serious Sinhala novel, Gamperaliya (The Changing Village; 1944), also by him. While undoubtedly the structure of Wickramasinghe’s works, as those of other pioneers of fiction and poetry, can be attributed to the influence of western writers, Chekov, Maupassant and Poe in particular [see Sugunasiri (2002) for a discussion], their sophistication in terms of realism, language and characterization must be attributed to other influences as well.
One of these influences, as Wickramasinghe (now turned critic) persuasively argues in the The Buddhist Jataka Stories and the Russian Novel (1956), lies in the Jatakas,4 stories of the Buddha’s Birth in 550 previous lives and part of the Buddhist canon (Tipitaka). Unlike the early narrative works of Sanskrit, such as the Pañcatantra and the Hitopadesa, which are animal stories, the past story of the Jataka contains character study—the sexually aroused elderly woman who has her sadistic yearnings satiated by having her husband blindfolded and knocked on the head by her young lover, in the Andhabhuta Jataka, or the wise minister who, in the Mahasara Jataka, through logical thinking and scrupulous enquiry worthy of a Sherlock Holmes, bails out an innocent vagabond accused of the theft of a pearl necklace belonging to the Chief Queen Consort, recovering from the real thief, a she-monkey, “who had conceived a longing to wear” the article.
The influence of Buddhism on Sinhala literature is, of course, part of a larger tradition that spread over several golden eras of civilization, beginning with Anuradhapura (sixth century BCE to tenth century CE), perhaps the longest unbroken civilization anywhere in the world,5 through Polonnaru, Dambadeni, and Kotte, and ending with Mahanuwara in the nineteenth century.
The origins of Sinhala poetry as well can be traced to at least the seventh century CE. Although there are only references in literature to the “twelve great poets” of the Anuradhapura period but no trace of their works, the “haiku-type” poems, as Reynolds (1970) calls them, inscribed on the mirror wall of Sigiriya by hundreds of folk poets, in response to the over 500 “heavenly damsels,” and which even recently inspired Michael Ondaatje to write:
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Women like you make men pour our their hearts.
(Running in the Family, 1982), are concrete evidence of a great poetic tradition that continued to be reflected in later poetic works—the Kavsilumina (The Crest Gem of Poetry) of the thirteenth, the Guttilaya of the fifteenth, and the Sandakindura-daa-kawa (The Bodhisatta Born as a Centaur) of the sixteenth centuries. Preceding all these works, which are in Sinhala, is, of course, the Mahavamsa (sixth century CE), a history of the Sinhalese in poetic form in Pali (see Wickramasinghe 1963).
The quatrain-type formula poetry of the Colombo school of the fifties shows the latest decline of Sinhala poetry. Nevertheless, it still shows a conformity with tradition in its use of colloquial Sinhala, which had been used in the earliest literature and had later been replaced with a Sanskritized version. The works of Munidasa Kumaratunga, the turn- of-the-century nationalist and founder of the purist “hela hauwla” movement, and those of his pupil, Raipiel Tennakone, basically still written in quatrain but more elegant than of the Colombo poets, points to an excellence derived from yet another tradition of language: the Sanskrit-free “Elu,” fossilized from the Amavatura and Butsarana period (c. 1200–1300 CE). The first shaping influence on Sri Lankan literature, then, was Buddhism.
The hela hauwla movement serves as a symbolic backdrop against which we can begin to look at the impact of the second sociohistorical force—South Indian colonialism—on Sri Lankan literature. For Kumaratunga’s movement (1887–1944), by its insistence on going back to a pre-colonial language and culture, stands out above other similar twentieth century movements—Piyadasa Sirisena’s (1875–1946), for example, which was willing to accommodate a Mixed Sinhala. Kumaratunga saw the roots of the underdevelopment of Sinhala—its weakening in the very same process of the development of the colonial language and culture—in the Polonnaru period that followed the first successful though short-lived invasion of Raja Raja (eleventh century). In this period, Sinhala, which had up to then developed as a prakrit under the influence of Pali and Magadhi (the Buddha’s language), came under the increasing influence of Sanskrit. Theistic notions and themes, alien to Buddhism, crept into
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the content of literature; literary flexibility, both in technique and theme, gave way to rigidity and formula writing—as is evident from the several “messenger” poems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, poor imitations of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger). And finally, simplicity, the hallmark of Buddhist culture, as seen in the architecture and sculpture of Sanchi, the paintings of Ajanta (in India), and the Samadhi statue of the Buddha in Anuradhapura, to give a few examples, gradually came to be replaced by an ornate complexity exemplified in Hindu works. The decline of Sinhala language, literature and culture continued through a sociopolitical instability brought about by the intermittent and short periods of South Indian rule which ended with the advent of Portuguese rule in 1505.
The earliest Christian newspapers of the nineteenth century, the works of W.A. Silva (1892–1957), credited with popularizing the Sinhala novel, and the translations of Iriyagolla (for example of Hugo’s Les Miserables) serve as contemporary examples of a weakened and Sanskritized Sinhala. (With some works even glossaries were supplied!) The use of such a highly Sanskritized language is, however, symbolic of yet another trend that emerged under the influence of Hinduism. This was a particular world view, one result of which was literary elitism. While the Sigiri poetry of the seventh century is evidence of access to literature for the ordinary person, the new attempt seemed to be to direct it consciously at the educated and the elite. Indeed the highly charged invectives directed more recently at the Peradeniya school—the criticism of university dons by the Sinhala-only and even bilingual, elites and critics for embracing western literary norms and values—must be seen as a social rather than a literary conflict, in defence of an elitism in literature—an attempt to keep it in the hands of the few. For it was certainly the literary movement headed by Wickramasinghe, Gunadasa Amarasekera and Siri Gunasinghe, and the critical norms popularized by Sarachchandra, that has led to the present literary flowering, that both Goonetilleke (1984) and Suraweera (1984) allude to.
Be that as it may, there was one significant development that was at least partly conditioned by this rising elitism. This is the emergence of a popular literature of the Deeman Ananda variety, directed at the not-
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so-educated but the literate and the highly politicized—thanks to a Marxist movement that predates Independence (1948), working and middle classes.
South Indian colonialism, though it had a generally debilitating effect on Sinhala language, literature and culture, wasn’t without its positive influences. One of the most important of these is that it served to enrich Sinhala, not only in terms of its vocabulary (through Sanskrit and Tamil) but, perhaps more importantly, also in contributing to the emergence of the present diglossic (more appropriately, perhaps, triglossic or mesoglossic) condition, in which different varieties of the language are used for different purposes (for example, a Sanskritized Sinhala in literature, Parliament, radio and television, and a more prakritic one in everyday speech). This development, too, however, undoubtedly also had a hand in driving the wedge between writers and their audience.
The contact with South Indian culture also contributed to the development of the Sinhala folk theatre Nadagama, which more recently, in the hands of Sarachchandra, inspired by Japanese Kabuki theatre, provided the most powerful impetus to the development of the vibrant contemporary theatre. Sarachchandra, in his The Folk Drama of Ceylon (1966) traces the history of Nadagama to the South Indian street theatre Terukkoottu. But, here again, we also find the influence of the earlier Buddhist tradition, in its themes, stories and characters, and in its simplicity.
It is entirely understandable that South Indian colonialism would underdevelop the Sinhala language and culture, but the irony is that it seemed to have underdeveloped Sri Lankan Tamil literature, language and culture as well. This is the inevitable conclusion one arrives at from the little evidence available on Tamil literature, which indicates that a Sri Lankan Tamil literature failed to emerge until the seventeenth century. As scholars of both shores sought to continue a South Indian and Sanskrit tradition in its pristine form, the very first Sri Lankan Tamil literary works were “primarily religious in tone” (Kanaganayakam 1984), limited to commentaries on the ancient classics, and “monotonous and convention ridden” (Indrapala 1973, 356). The language of the commentaries was “as compendious and terse as the original masterpieces,” (Indrapala 1973, 357) similar to
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some of the Sinhala works.
The first thaw in the scene appears in the late nineteenth century, with the growth of propagandist Christian literature, different both in content and style from Hindu literature, the growth of journalism and polemic literature, and the genius of Arumuga Navalar. While this resurgence produced isolated creative minds such as Pulavar of Navaly, who introduced variations of old verse forms and themes, fiction and even plays, the rigidity and conventionalism allowed no real breakthrough. The presence of a large reading public in India no doubt did not help. But the trend, once set, continued, with writers like C. Vaiththiyalingam, Sivagnana Sunderam (Ilangeyarkone), T. Sabharatnam and others. Only from the 1950s on, however, after Independence, do we see the emergence of writers who were “determined to break free of South Indian models, of established conventions, and speak with a genuine Sri Lankan voice” (Kanaganayakam 1984). The absence of a serious Sri Lankan Tamil film industry or a local ballet, and the continuation of art forms like the Bharata Natyam, Kathak and Kathakali, for example, as the major if not the only popular forms of mass entertainment, indicate on the one hand a continuing South Indian hold on Sri Lankan Tamil culture. On the other hand, the appearance of the numerous stories, novels, poems and plays (encouraged by Literary Academy awards and drama festivals) indicates a burgeoning Sri Lankan Tamil literary activity that is increasingly reaching out to the local dialects as well.
Twentieth century developments in both Tamil and Sinhala literature take us to the third force that shaped Sri Lankan literature. This is British colonialism. The influence of western literature (including a large amount of Russian literature translated into English) on Sinhala writing has already been noted. It started even before Wickramasinghe and G.B. Senanayake began to write in the twentieth century. Already in the nineteenth century, it had spurred the Christianized Sinhalese, as it had the Christianized Tamils, to use literary forms in the newspapers for proselytizing. This prompted the Buddhist nationalist elements to use the same tools in counteraction. The outcome was a healthy one.
The discouragement of ethnocentrism in Buddhism (as seen, for example, in the concept of anattà, “soullessness”, and anicca, “change”) and the encouragement of freedom of thought (for example
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in the Kalama Sutta),6 the presence of a realism-based tradition and a prakritized language well allowed for an easy entry of western literary forms into Sinhala. This was first accomplished, ironically, not by the Buddhists but by the Christians, who have continued to provide initiatives in all areas of contemporary culture, and then by the Buddhists.
Undoubtedly, English education had a hand in all this. Perhaps the most significant development here has been the emergence of a class of writers among the Sinhalese, who write only in English—Yasmine Gooneratne of Australia, Ashley Halpe of Sri Lanka and Asoka Weerasinghe of Canada for example. Marxism is another influence, as writers, both young and old, reminded perhaps of certain similarities between Buddhism and Marxism (for example the principles of equitable distribution and rational analysis), sought out the social realism of Soviet literature.
Colonialism is curiously though understandably responsible for a trend that is increasingly becoming visible, more so in English than in Sinhala works. This is a return-to-roots theme, so much in vogue now in Canada. Thus Halpe, an English professor, sings of Gemunu, the Sinhalese hero of the second century BCE, who humbled the Tamil King Elara to unite the country (a story which Colin de Silva captures in his 500 page novel, The Winds of Sinhala), and of Yasodhara, the wife of Prince Siddhartha. Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, for whom writing in English becomes “a form of cultural treason” (Goonetilleke 1984), writes (cited in Ondaatje 1982, 85–6):
Don’t talk to me about Matisse the European style of 1900 the tradition of the studio where the nude woman reclines forever on a sheet of blood. Talk to me instead of the culture generally how the murderers were sustained by the beauty robbed of savages: to our remote villages the painters came, and our white-washed mud huts were splattered with gunfire.
Lucien de Soyza, one of the few English dramatists in Sri Lanka, bases
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his best play, Fortress in the Sky, on the life of the seventh century king Kassapa—the king, his rock citadel and the period in general also providing a source of inspiration for other writers (for example, Suraweera’s novel Sada Melesa Pura Derane and Ondaatje’s “Women like you”).7 James Goonewardene (A Quiet Place), Raja Proctor (Waiting for Surabiel) and Sarachchandra (Curfew and the Full Moon) are three novelists who have returned to history, the last two dealing with the Sinhalese youth insurgency of 1971.
It is intriguing to conjecture why British colonialism did not succeed in producing Tamil literary writing in English, despite the fact that one finds full Tamil participation in the professions, government service, judiciary and politics, all requiring English. One plausible explanation lies in the general lack of Tamil literary development, as observed earlier. A second possible explanation is that the Tamil community’s preoccupation with science8 as a means of getting ahead, perhaps underdeveloped its literary potential. The fact that any novel direction would have challenged tradition whereas science could steer clear of a collision course could well have contributed to this situation.
Buddhism, South Indian colonialism and British colonialism all having influenced the literature of Sri Lanka, where do the Sri Lankan Canadian writers fit in? They can be viewed as a microcosm of the writing scene in Sri Lanka. One notes first the fact that a community of a mere three to six thousand has produced six poets with a total number of twenty-four published collections, two of them (Ondaatje and Weerasinghe) having won gold medals and others critical acclaim, and two producers of plays. These writers come from Eurasian, Sinhalese, Buddhist and Christian backgrounds. Conspicuously absent are writers of Tamil (Hindu or Christian) background, despite the fact that the percentage of Sri Lankan Tamils is much higher in Canada than in Sri Lanka.
Given the background of these writers, it is not surprising, then, that Mukherjee (1984) sees a “motley lot.” The themes, situations, characters, images and symbolism in their works are as diverse as the backgrounds, from Ondaatje’s universalism to Bhaggiyadatta’s revolutionary fervour to Crusz’s sun-man motif (see Sugunasiri 1992 for a discussion). Ondaatje’s Running in the Family is not the only return-to-the-roots work. Weerasinghe, who took to writing after
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leaving Sri Lanka, names one of his later works Home Again Lanka (1981). Many of his poems, in fact, display the influence of the tradition of rhyme and (quatrain type) formula poetry, even though his rhymes sound contrived, as in the works of the Colombo Era (when poetry was very popular). His “Tikiri Liya” is an example. But it goes further. Based on the Sinhala nursery rhyme, it seeks to capture the original rhythm:
Tikiri, tikiri, tikiri-liya The bosomed, lissom, maiden fair, With a coveting smile on her lips And hugging a pitcher on her hip, Went down the path to the well To fetch a pitcher of water ...
The Sri Lankan Canadian writers, unlike their Punjabi counterparts, and also unlike many East European writers, write exclusively in English, reflecting often a lack of written skill in their own language,9 but perhaps the elitism noted earlier as well (indicated additionally by their practice of conversing in English). It is not surprising that they would read each other’s works, but generally their writing does not have much relevance to the everyday life of their community. Their attempt to write only in English can be seen as a continuation of the tradition of open-mindedness; but the result may be that they write mostly for an audience consisting of the Canadian mainstream literary community when and if they are accepted.
In striking a balance between the Canadian and the Sri Lankan material on the one hand, and critical and creative work on the other, we believe we have been able to present a representative overview of Sri Lankan literature in general.10 Here we have the first poetic translation of Sarachchandra’s epoch-making Nadagam play Maname (1956), the works of relatively new writers, and a collection of Tamil poetry. It is our hope that the Tamil collection, introduced by Kanaganayakam and translated by several writers, will go some way in making Tamil literature more accessible to the wider Sri Lankan community and the world, and encourage more translations.11 One regret we have is that the selection contained here is not indicative of the high level of literary activity among women writers in Sri Lanka. In the Canadian material, we have been able to include works by all the active poets.
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The Sri Lankan literary scene, as it emerges in this issue,12 is one that can be characterized as vibrant, independent and multicultural. It is vibrant in its quality and quantity of output; independent in that it shows how Sri Lanka, a country with a mere thirteen million people, has been able to withstand the cultural onslaughts of its giant neighbour India, which is also the mother country (in terms of ethnic and cultural origin). Despite the Tamil community’s regrettable literary isolation, Sri Lankan literature is multicultural in that language, religion or ethnic origin have not come in the way of literary activity or cultural involvement by writers working in close cooperation with each other, multicultural to the extent that creative minds can come together. In addition, the literature is not closed to outside influences.
This is surely a model that Canada can emulate as it strives for a multicultural society. It is particularly relevant since, like Sri Lanka, it has (in Britain and France) mother countries which have provided both its original (European) settlers and cultures, and, besides, has a giant, politically and economically dominating, neighbour (the United States). It is relevant further in that Canada is historically bi-ethnic (tri-ethnic when we include the Native peoples), and currently multi- ethnic, as Sri Lanka has been.
On the negative side, the Sri Lankan Tamil literary scene should serve as a stern reminder to the Canadian literary establishment of the dangers of ethnic enclavism. While the wider literary tradition in English will ensure that Canadian literature will not go into oblivion, it faces the definite danger of losing its identity in the face of American, British, and other English literatures. Precisely because Canadian literature is at the critical stage of developing its own identity, it is the right moment to take the first steps to ensure that it does not end up as just another manifestation, or mere continuation, of British literature. This it can do by including within its ranks and identifying with other literary traditions besides British and American, traditions originating in other parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America.13 All that is needed for such an efflorescence beyond ethnic enclavism is a hospitality of mind—inspired by a Sri- Lanka-type (Buddhist) model, Tagore’s pronouncement “Let my windows be open to the world,” and Mao’s famous dictum, “Let a
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hundred flowers bloom,” or indeed a literary free enterprise where the market forces (readership), rather than a literary establishment, decides what should stand the test of time.
NOTES
1 The articles by Goonetilleke (1984) and Mukherjee (1984) in Sugunasiri & Suraweera (1984) contain some references.
2. The tiny Muslim population has produced no writers, with even the Qu’ran translated into Sinhala only in the sixties.
3. This breakdown is purely for analytical purposes and is not to be construed as reflecting a literature developed along segregated lines.
4. A Jataka has two parts: the “past story” linking the characters and events to the “present story.”
5. We have some indication or the extent of this civilization from the engineering marvel of the Jaya Ganga Canal, which had a gradient of six inches per mile, and the unique irrigation system of multi-layered catchment areas, which rendered the country the “granaries of the East.”
6. In the Kalama Sutta the Buddha proclaims: “Do not go by hearsay, nor by what is handed down by others, nor by what people say, nor by what is stated on the authority or your traditional teaching, nor out of respect ... but when you know yourselves ...”
7. Lester J. Pieris’s film God King and Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Fountains of Paradise are Sinhalese examples.
8. Missionary education reached the Tamil community first, and science texts were translated into Tamil a hundred years before such translations began to appear in Sinhala (after 1956).
9. The present writer is an exception, with two collections of short stories in Sinhala.
10. This chapter was originally the introduction to Sugunasiri and Suraweera 1984.
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11. There is only one translation of Tamil works into Sinhala, Kanakaratnam’s (1979), which contains twelve stories.
12. The reference is to Sugunasiri and Suraweera 1984.
13. See, for example, the special issue Canadian Ethnic Studies XIV (1982).
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Sexism in Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Sinhalese Operatic Play, Maname
Seven
Sexism in Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Sinhalese Operatic Play, Maname
I. Introduction
At the climax of the epoch-making Sinhalese play, Maname (1956),1 the Hunter King, in combat with Prince Maname, snatches the sword from the hand of Princess Maname to make short breath of the prince. Yet, in the ensuing duets, Princess Maname confesses to wanting to give the sword to the Hunter King, rather than to her husband, being “... fickle of mind ... through the strength of my love.”2 When playwright Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra developed the story line in this manner, he may not have been conscious that he was allowing himself to be gripped in the crutches of Sinhalese patriarchy.
Initially swept away by “Manamania,”3 but later with a personal involvement,4 Maname is an operatic-play I want to love. But, listening to it on tape, and re-reading it today, in a North American context and after nearly four decades, it troubles me very much. If the primary basis of my unease is my egalitarian, humanist, moral, Buddhist, or as some would call it, feminist sensibilities, it is based on esthetic and literary grounds as well.
From this literary perspective, then, I shall in this paper first outline the treatment of the female character, Princess Maname, and then examine it critically, particularly in light of the treatment of the character of the Hunter King. In section IV, we briefly take up the issue of whether the personal is the political. Finally, we deal with some possible suggestions for overcoming the play’s sexism as it also perhaps makes a contribution to literary theory and a practical one to society.
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In order to place our discussion in context, however, let me first give a synopsis of the play:
A royal prince from Benares, India, spends his youth in Taxila (a Buddhist learning centre), mastering the (sixteen) arts, including archery and swordsmanship, under the tutelage of a Master Guru. Upon completion of his studies, and being the best student, the Guru’s daughter is given in marriage as was the custom. The couple’s way to Benares is through the forest where they encounter the Hunter King who not only demands that the prince bow before him but also orders him to “leave your woman here” (pp. 57–8).5 Insulted and enraged, the prince challenges the hunter to come “with your tribesmen” (58), but the Hunter King chooses to battle him alone. In the ensuing combat, Prince Maname is killed. The play ends with the Hunter King wooing the Princess, but later abandoning her. We come to know her eventual fate from the narrator:6
Grief and remorse too bitter to be borne, Broke her frail heart and there she died forlorn. (63)
II. The Depiction: Woman as Fickle and Deserving of Punishment
In our analysis of the character of the Princess, we begin with the combat scene when the Hunter King is subdued by Prince Maname who addresses his Princess consort:
Prince. (Recitative)7 Sweet, give me my sword to strike off this savage’s head. Princess. (Chant) Courageously with you he fought Nor succour from his warriors sought Alone he faced you unafraid Must his neck bow beneath the blade? Prince. (Recitative) Lady, I do not understand this speech. In fair fight I vanquished this villain. Swiftly give me my sword to end his life.
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Princess. (Recitative) Could he not have destroyed us at once with his army at hand? Yet he chose to face you alone. A savage he may be; yet he is brave and noble. It is not fitting, Lord, that he should be slain. Pardon and spare him, I pray.
(Disturbed as he hears her words, he stands staring at her; his grasp slackens; the Hunter King takes advantage of it, frees himself, leaps and takes the sword from the princess and stabs the prince. The prince falls down dead.) (59)
As scripted, and played on stage, there is no indication at this point certainly (see later, however, for a switch) that the Princess consciously, willingly or intentionally gives the sword to the Hunter King. Nor is there any evidence, verbal, behavioural or postural, of even an intention. Nor does she, for that matter, give the sword to the Prince. All we see here is a Princess, caught between two conflicting instincts—helping (or obeying) her husband or saving a life—holding the sword in hand when it is grabbed by the Hunter King. She says as much later: “... you snatched it from my hand” (62).
But then the playwright introduces a twist, making her say to the Hunter King who woos her:
When he to slay you sought the fatal blade The weapon in your hand I would have laid! (61)
A literal translation of the last line, “My compelling thought was to give the sword to your hand” (situne kaduwa oba atata ma denta) (emphasis added), with the emphatic particle, ma, perhaps helps us better understand the playwright’s intent—of getting her to make her case as strongly as possible, thereby also rendering her undeniably culpable by intent. Later, in response to the Hunter King’s words, “... I saw you prepare to give the sword which he demanded to slay me,” she confirms the earlier intent, not once but twice: “I took it to give it to you, not to Prince Maname” (61) and “... I would sooner have given the sword to you!” (62).
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And, as if to prepare the audience/reader for the twist, we have the playwright put the following words in her mouth a few lines earlier:
Darling I saw you, valorous in fight Love instant filled my heart there at the sight Then all the terrors of the forest fled My trembling heart grew tranquil, comforted I love you only, though I lose the right To thrones; enough with you, this mountain height. (61)
These and earlier lines leave no doubt that Princess Maname has indeed been of fickle mind! But the final ignominy is yet to come. Just prior to the Hunter King abandoning her (we shall examine this in detail later), she pleads with him:
Forgive me, Chief. Oh pardon this great wrong ... Do not chastise my feebleness of soul.8 (62)
And still later, she is reduced to a helpless “wretch” (in the words of the Hunter King as we shall see later) as she pleads, as if to the winds (the Hunter King having left):
Have you no pity left for me? Loved Lord, in mercy,9 oh, be kind! Why will you leave me here alone ... ? (62)
Then, in the same breath, she turns to self pity:
Has any woman in this world of mortal fully even known Anguish and torment such as mine?
If that is not enough, the Princess is now made, in a complete surrender, to turn to the gods:
Oh, you on high, whose power is shown Over the three worlds where you rule Above us all your mercy lies10 Protection give to me Oh gods, Look down on me with pitying eyes. (62) 116 StepDownShakespeare 4/22/08 7:26 PM Page 117
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This is the final spiritual insult! Buddhist spirituality is based on self- reliance, the Buddha’s last words being, “Be a lamp unto yourself.” Yet, it is the practice of the average Sinhalese Buddhist, influenced as they are by centuries of Hinduism, to turn to (Buddhist) gods (who are supposed to, ironically, depend on us) for their everyday needs,11 particularly in times of distress. To this extent, it is in keeping with tradition for the Princess to turn to the gods.12 But it is nevertheless a spiritual battering, since she has been forced into it by the conditions created.
If that is her self-depiction, we also find it confirmed by the Hunter King, as we see in the following lines. She is here called a “wretch” for her behaviour:
Hunter King (Song): With women such as you I have no part Out of my forest kingdom—wretch, away! (62)
If that is not enough, to give line two of the above song, she is characterized as being “inhuman, mindless, void in head and heart.” The words could not have been more scathing, and insulting!
As the story unfolds, then, the Princess is not simply shown to have “erred” in judgement (clearly from an androcentric point of view) under stress. Fickle of mind, and thus a “wretch,” she is simply despicable, and thus deserving of the punishment she receives at the hand of the Hunter King, and indeed society, namely abandonment to her own destiny. But this is not the end. The Narrator, who enters here to give us emotional relief, ironically gives the final blow:
Heedless of lamentations tears and moans The chieftain went; the queen was left alone Grief and remorse too bitter to be borne Broke her frail heart and there she died forlorn. (62–63)
In true macho fashion of the type we see in the battle of the two men (the Prince’s intention to kill the Hunter King, and the eventual killing of the Prince by the Hunter King), the Princess is denied her very existence!
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III. Discussion
One can hardly fail to note the androcentric and patriarchal bias in this treatment of the character of Princess Maname, but let us examine it in detail. To begin with, is the Princess “inhuman, mindless, void in head and heart,” as is portrayed by the Hunter King? In fairness to the playwright, we must first not fail to note that the translator is taking a license in rendering the single phrase in the original, amana gati, literally, and more commonly, “foolish ways” but possibly “superficial,”13 with the several words, “inhuman, mindless and void in head.” But we must assume that each of them individually, or in some combination, is intended, since the translation has the approval of the playwright, this being understandable particularly in view of the difficulty of translating the phrase. That, then, means that according to the text, or its intent, the Princess is a complete moron and/or is guided by superficiality!
Is she indeed, or is what we have here an androcentric mindset projected onto the Princess? To explore the point, we need to go to studies on moral behaviour. As well demonstrated by Carol Gilligan (1982) in relation to the Kohlbergian stages of moral development (Kohlberg 1971) when faced with a moral dilemma, female subjects would time and again go for a relational resolution while male subjects invariably go for an oppositional one. To take the famous Heinz dilemma, a woman is dying, and the only druggist in the village has the life-saving drug. But the family is poor and can’t afford it. The dilemma the husband faces, then, is whether he should let the wife die, or kill the pharmacist to get the drug. In typical fashion, the cross- culturally validated male, lets one or the other die while the female looks for ways of keeping both wife and pharmacist alive (Gilligan 1982).
The moral dilemma faced by Princess Maname is not unlike the one in the Heinz dilemma: whether or not to hand over the sword to her husband in the knowledge of the only outcome—certain death, to the Hunter King—never envisaging, of course, that any harm would befall her husband. And her intent, as we hear in her words, “Must his neck bow beneath the blade?” (59) is clear. So what we find in the words of the Princess is, in typical fashion, what I would prefer to call the feminine approach14 to conflict resolution, and indeed a humane one.
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To that extent, the Princess is certainly not “void in ... heart.” And of particular relevance to a Buddhist society, the relational stance taken by the Princess is Buddhistic, too, in that a fundamental teaching of Buddhism is that of dependant co-arising (paticca samuppada) that posits a relationality of all phenomena (see Macy 1991). So she who saves life can hardly be called heartless!15
As for the use of the head, what better evidence is needed than not giving the sword to the husband when asked? She knows the consequence of obeying him only too well, as we hear when she tells the Hunter King, “If I had given the sword at my husband’s command, he would have slain you” (62). And unsaid in the play, but well known in the culture, Buddhist in its staging and Hindu in its context,16 is that depriving of life, for whatever reason, would only bring bad karma, including possibly in this very life. This is hardly something that a young wife would wish for her newly found husband with whom she would, in traditional fashion, live for the rest of her life. So the use of her head in the sense of being both spiritually and rationally wise is amply evident from her behaviour.
Now from a street-smart sense, too, the Princess can hardly be said to be “void of head.” Even in pure utilitarian terms, she surely knows that by sparing the life of the Hunter King, she would lose nothing— certainly not her husband (after all, he, skilled in the arts, defeated the Hunter King). And even if she were to lose him, then there would be the equally powerful protector, the Hunter King, with a full retinue at his beck and call, to look after her! After all, he had rejected the Prince’s challenge to “Come forth with your tribesmen to battle” (58) and fought “this jackal” single-handed! But at a more “spiritually utilitarian” level, if I were allowed to pull together two apparently conflicting concepts, she would be accruing more merit as well by the mere thought of kindness towards the Hunter King.17 The Princess is street smart in another sense, too, when later she seeks to entice the Hunter King with her love!
So in many a sense—wisdom, compassion or utilitarianism—then, the Princess is indeed no bonehead! She is not “mindless” either, in either of the two senses that the term brings to mind. In the sense of being, again, sensible, we have seen how she is not mindless. In the other Buddhist sense, “mindlessness”
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is the opposite of “mindfulness”—the discipline required for liberation. She is hardly mindless in this sense either, since she does have the presence of mind, even in a time of crisis, to play it cool, be rational (i.e., be with the mind) and moral! Our analysis then shows that Princess Maname was hardly any of those characteristics assigned to her by the phrase amana gati!
The depiction of the Princess as contained in the first two lines we have analyzed is clearly to make way for the next two: “With women such as you I have no part / out of my forest kingdom—wretch away!” What a fate to befall, one cannot help feeling, to one whose only fault was to plead for another human being’s life! It may generate pathos, or karuna, in Indian esthetic theory (for a lengthy treatment, see Warder 1972), in the reader/viewer, but the outcome is certainly contrary to the Buddhist teaching of natural cause and effect, in this case, the good following one “as your shadow.”18 It also may give every indication of contradicting the Buddhist teaching relating to karma, namely, that while (as in Hinduism, too) one would, no doubt, be inheriting one’s karma from past lives, one could also act upon it (as in Buddhism but not in Hinduism) to change its direction, course and/or intensity, with possible results within this very lifetime.
But the last two lines merit further comment. If the patriarchal treatment is thus far evident only from the negative portrayal of the female character, the lines begin to show the positive light put on the male character—of the Hunter King.
To explore this character, we initially posit that he was equally if not primarily responsible for the Princess’s alleged infidelity and fickleness of mind. And his contribution to it all begins way before the climactic point of the combat. When the royal couple, passing through the woods on their way to the Prince’s kingdom, is sighted by tribesmen, this is how the pack leader describes the Princess to the Hunter King:
Hunter Chief. (Song) Here stands the lovely woman that I saw Oh King, look on her well—does your heart with joy not swell? Since I saw her in the wild—I have thought am I
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beguiled By enchantment? Can there be a maid so fair? Give me unstinted store—largesse and gifts galore If you take her in this wise—she is an ambrosial prize. (56) In response, Hunter King. (Song): This cannot be an earthly maid. She seems a goddess rare—or a forest nymph so fair It is decreed by fate that she must be my mate Why should I then delay to carry her away? ... His immediate thoughts are on carrying the Princess away! Later on, he offers the Prince a bribe—protection to the edge of the forest. But, this is for a prize: “Leave your woman here!” (57–58).
What we have, then, is, in the words of the Prince, a “barbarous creature” who “speak[s] vileness unfit for hearing” (58). It is, then, such a one of lustful, immoral and questionable character (see next line) that abandons the Princess for the claimed heinous crime of being fickle.19 The hypocrisy becomes even more transparent when we consider the literal translation of the Sinhalese term, wanacara. Though rendered here as “barbarous creature,” it literally means “forest dweller” (or “forest-walker”), but in contemporary Sinhalese usage, it has the additional connotation of “sexually immoral.”
So is it indeed her fickle mind that eventually turns this king of the wild20 against her? We let the text speak for itself. After the Prince is killed, this is how the Hunter King seeks to win the Princess:
All for love’s sake I faced the fray Because my love for you was strong. (60)
She then asks, “Can I believe in your deceit?” and immediately sees death as her only alternative:
... I have no other sanctuary No other hope remains for me Save in the forest to die!
A literal translation of the original text gives the sense even better—
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that “assuredly (venu nam niyata) death right here (metana ma marana).”
Calling her now, for the first time, “Loved lady,” he says, “do not speak such words—You will I ever guard from [sic]” (60). Giving a hint of what her life might be with him, he now says, “Here in the forests you shall reign,” and then implores, “[B]ecome my queen, become my queen” (60). And still later, “You I adore while life shall last” (60). It is at this point that she says, “I have no refuge now but you.” That she is falling back on common sense, and is streetwise as we have seen before as well is evident, from the very next line that tells us that she is fully cognizant of her reality: “Among these forests must I dwell.” The original text adds, “forever” (sema da).
“What else could a helpless Princess have done?” we ask. What would you and I do, if placed in such a situation? Could she have realistically rejected him? Indeed her concern was survival, in a hostile forest. And so we hear her say, “From forest fears, from lynx and wolf / Guard me from harm, guard me from harm.” While the repetition here may have a rhyming and metrical function, it also indicates intensity, showing her deep fear. Fast to latch on to the niche perceived, the Hunter King immediately offers protection: “My forest folk shall guard you well ...” Then, we hear the meeting of another basic need: “On nature’s bounty we shall live in joy”; the original is more specific: “eating fruits” (budimina palawela).
Protection and food offered, now the Hunter King beseeches, “Your love for Prince Maname can you remove / from your thoughts, and desire a forest king’s love?” (61). It is finally at this point, then, that the Princess reciprocates, “I love you only.”
A careful analysis of the text then makes it abundantly clear that it was not indeed a fickleness of mind that pushed the Princess towards the Hunter King, but simply desperation. She is, at worst, acceding to the advances made by a lustful man! To put it in a more positive light, the Princess can simply be said to be exercising her independence of judgement and freedom of thought and behaviour allowed for, or if that sounds too patronizing, available, in the Sinhalese Buddhist culture.21 This is hardly being “fickle of mind” in the ordinary sense of the word, or in the literal sense of being unable to decide. There is
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certainly no indecision here, but to repeat, a definitive pragmatic decision. And no infatuation either.
We now know, then, that the Princess was neither off-base, nor being self-defensive when she points the finger, “You are to blame, you are to blame” (59). But if the Hunter King is to be blamed for inveigling her to her decision, why does he now turn around and abandon her? Is it because she, rightly as we know from the story, but perhaps innocently, or even foolishly for the first time, forces him to face his own conscience?
Here is the full verse bearing the ominous words:
Princess: My loved lord lies low in death. Why have you done that dreadful crime? He that was strong and young you killed. You are to blame, you are to blame. (59)
The Hunter King seems still not offended, simply contending, certainly tongue in cheek it has to be, that it was “He [who] tempted me into this strife” (59), throwing the ball back to the dead Prince. “Through wilfulness to his own death he went.” What then? Here are the next revealing words:
Princess. (Recitative) I saved your life, Oh Chieftain ... (61) Hunter King. (Recitative) I do not understand your words, beloved. I defeated him by my own prowess, not by your aid ... (61)
Clearly the Princess’s claim, factual as it was, seemed to have touched a raw nerve and bruised a male ego! This then clearly seems to be what turns him against her, not some moral position against a claimed fickle mind! It was that the sense of manhood, specially of a forest dweller associated with the rough and tumble of life, was cut from beneath his very feet!!
It is at this point, in response to his next line (“I saw you prepare to give the sword which he demanded to slay me”) that she definitively
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says, “I took it to give it to you not to Prince Maname” (61). So it is that we claim that the Hunter King was equally if not primarily responsible for the Princess’s change of mind. Yet the princess is called a “wretch,” and we find him bray, from on high, “[W]ith women such as you I have no part!”
If the bias in favour of the Hunter King is clear, there is more evidence. Despite his blatant and abrasive expressions of desire for her in the very presence of her husband, he is portrayed as upholding the virtues of (formal) marriage. The princess is deemed to be “inhuman” because she sought to slay her “wedded lord” (62; emphasis added), a point repeated in the following lines: Dazed and amazed I stand. To work such evil on the lord you wed! (62) This is despite the fact that he earlier sings to the Princess, “All for love’s sake I faced the fray / Because my love of you was strong!” (60). It is possible, of course, to be faithful to Sarachchandra’s text, that the Princess’s partiality towards the Hunter King in not giving the sword to her husband right away might have been conditioned by her awe and respect for the Hunter King. For example, at the first sight of the Hunter King, she not only thinks that “He is not fearsome to look upon” (56; reflecting the folk view of the country’s forest dwellers (see endnote 24)), but “By the majesty of his beauty he seems a king.” When we note that the words, “of his beauty” are the result of another license by the translator, with the Sinhalese text merely referring to “the majestic look” (tejas penuma) we cannot even allow any sexual connotations to the words of the Princess. But even if we were to allow for the distant possibility of the Princess being contributory, in a very extended and circuitous sense,22 to her own eventual fate, the Hunter King must be held at least more responsible for encouraging the indecision by his very overpowering stature!23 We also know from the Hunter King’s very first lines that he indeed dreams of carrying her away. Such a one could hardly be praising the virtues of marriage! Yet in these lines, he has the hypocritical and chauvinistic nerve to castigate the Princess for seeking to have the wedded husband slain!
What we find in the play, then, is that despite everything the Hunter King does, he ends up being the upholder of virtue—fidelity and wisdom—and even the arbiter of justice on behalf of society. He is
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indeed the anti-hero hero, not a bit without the help of physical prowess and bravado, typically macho characteristics.
As our analysis shows, then, we have a woman rendered helpless by two egocentric, impatient and life-denying men; yet it is the woman that faces death. And worse, from a moral point of view, the man with the lesser morality ends up not only merely living but also earning the respect of society too! Do we need any more evidence of the androcentric bias of traditional society?
But what it also shows is the patriarchal nature of society. A man fares well in society even if immoral. Worse, a woman is lower than even an “uncultivated” man—the view that folk Sinhalese culture, as noted, holds of Veddhas (forest dwellers).
In feminist terms, this would be called the victimization of the victim. The victimization is that the words are first put into her mouth with no justification, and are then made to eat it—a typical behaviour of one acting in power. In another sense, this is like an animal, toying with its captured prey before finally gobbling it up! For all such reasons, then, the treatment of Princess Maname is disparaging of womankind, and hence, patriarchal—in its literal sense of “power over.” So what we see is a clear victory of androcentric thinking and behaviour over “feminocentric” ones, to coin a term.
IV. Is the Personal the Political?
We have seen that the story of Maname, in its traditional version as put on stage by Sarachchandra, is essentially androcentric, and patriarchal. But can playwright Sarachchandra also be called androcentric and patriarchal?
This is not easy to answer primarily because the story line is a traditional one, played before folk audiences probably for centuries. So it can be cogently argued that Sarachchandra was merely being faithful to the tradition. This argument is rendered the more compelling when we consider the background against which Maname came to be produced for the contemporary theatre.
Sarachchandra’s goal, as he says in his introduction to the Sinhalese
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text of the play, was to “generate an interest in the average public in the theatre” (1956, 16). As a professor, he had studied the evolution of the modern Sinhalese theatre: the nurti theatre of the turn of the century, influenced by a decadent Indian theatre in which conventions of classical Sanskrit drama (as outlined in the Natyashastra, and later theorists; see Warder 1972) had been juxtaposed with elements of the western theatre, through the “Jayamanna dramas” in the forties and fifties in which contemporary themes were presented within the same admixture. But it was Kapuwa Kapoti (a Sinhalese adaptation of The Marriage of Figaro; mid forties), Professor E. F. C. Ludowyke’s adaptations of Gogol’s Marriage, which introduced “the real techniques of a play” (Sarachchandra 1956, 15). Unlike earlier and later plays produced at the University, including adaptations of Moliere, Oscar Wilde and Chekov, Kapuwa Kapoti had a run of over fifty shows in Colombo and the rest of the country.
But, “whatever high quality was reached by these plays, theatre-lovers of recent times began to wonder whether the Sinhalese theatre could become a part of our cultural life by following the western naturalistic tradition” (Sarachchandra 1956, 16). Thanks to his studies of the traditional Sinhalese theatre in his The Sinhalese Folk Play and the Modern Stage (1953), and the Chinese, Japanese and Indian classical traditions along with their contemporary manifestations, he had finally put his finger on the missing element: the stylized technique, common to all four traditions. The Natyashastra had defined theatre as “telling a story through abhinaya” (Sarachchandra 1956, 7), i.e., “dramatic action,” of four types: gesticular (angika), verbal (vacika), facial (sattvika) and costume (aharya). He had also distinguished the theatre of two types: “of the nature of the world” (loka dharma) and “of the nature of the theatre” (natya dharma). What had captivated the Sinhalese folk audience for a century or more was indeed the latter: sokari in which actors (all males), some with masks, showed movement and action through dance; kolam in which there was more characterization than story element; and Nadagama which alone, he was convinced, had “a fully-developed (anga sampurna) theatrical style” (Sarachchandra 1956, 12). Having also spent a year in Japan on a sabbatical studying Kabuki (personal knowledge), he saw a unique opportunity of not just attracting audiences and critics, but equally importantly, to raise the level of the Sinhalese theatre. In this endeavour, his focus, judging by both Maname and his next (Nadagam-
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inspired) play, Sinhabahu “the lion-armed,”24 was on style, technique and theatrical convention rather than on theme and content. That he had the right mix was evident from the roaring success of Maname, operatic from beginning to end. The ever-critical Sinhalese critic couldn’t find enough words to heap praise, and Manamania was born!
The story content of Maname (and next Sinhabahu), then, being a mere vehicle for the delivery of theatrical style, the inherent androcentrism and patriarchy might never have crossed the playwright’s mind. It was not a time of feminism, and nobody had even begun to raise the issue. It certainly had not been a concern of the folk audiences who had returned night after night (for up to seven nights sometimes) to see their favourite stories enacted on stage. So the natural inclination for Sarachchandra would have been to leave the story line untouched. In a sense, to change the story would have been to tamper with tradition. His concern for retaining (and re-introducing to urban audiences) authenticity was such that he went to the extent of seeking out a traditional master,25 for words, melodies and dance steps, and another (the master’s son) to play the maddale drum, not part of the instrumental repertoire of the urban Sinhalese. There was also, secondly, the danger of the audiences rejecting the play for the wrong reasons, namely, change of story line, rather than for esthetic proclivities.
If, on this evidence, we exonerate Sarachchandra of overt androcentrism, there is some evidence that he held no particular respect for males over and above females either. An example is a later play, Elova Gihin Melowa Awa “Just Returned from the Other World,” in which we find a husband fuming at his wife for being outsmarted by a beggar. When the beggar says that he just returned from the other world (elowa), he was simply indicating the lot of the hungry who are always on the verge of death. Taking it literally, the woman enquires whether he had by any chance met their daughter who had just died. Seeing his opportunity, the beggar feigns familiarity, upon which the woman gives him the jewelry that belonged to the daughter to be taken to her. It is this that makes the husband fume.
If at this point we see a foolish woman of weak mind, as if to confirm an androcentrism, we come to be convinced otherwise when in the end we find the husband also fooled when the beggar first lures him away and then rides away on his horse! Now we laugh at the follies of life,
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not of women but of men, too. An apparent androcentrism turns out to be an androgyny.
Returning to Maname, we also note with interest that the woman (namely, the Princess) who lusts after the man is characterized simply as “fickle” (62; capala), with an etymological connotation of a “quivering bow,” but the man as “barbarous” (57; wanacara), with the contemporary meaning, as noted, of “sexually immoral,” but with a literal meaning of “forest-dweller” or “forest-walker,” and with the further connotative meaning of “lowly,” and the further extrapolative meaning of “close to being animal-like.” So, if the use of the linguistic terms in a traditionally and contemporarily acceptable way shows the playwright’s interest in sticking to tradition, it also shows that, as part of the same tradition, he is harsher, if there is any intent at all, on the male character than on the female!
If we are correct in our analysis, we then have an example of a situation where the personal is not political, as often claimed by feminist critique. Since Sarachchandra did not intend bias, there is, from a Buddhist perspective, no culpability. The words of the Buddha were, “Intent, I declare, is action.”
V. Overcoming Androcentrism and Strengthening the Claim of “Calming” as a “Taste” in Esthetic Theory
If as we have seen Maname is androcentric, it needn’t have been. The playwright could have portrayed the Princess more realistically—and here I am clearly going beyond my competence, and so with apologies to Professor Sarachchandra—by simply introducing an additional scene at the point where the Hunter King entreats her with the words, “Become my queen, become my queen” (60). To prepare the audience/reader, the narrator could have been brought in to share with the audience the difficult choices the Princess faces, followed by a walk around the stage by the Princess (in keeping with drama technique), to show passage of time, with a soliloquy in song perhaps (as in the case of the Prince pining for the teacher’s daughter at the beginning of the play (50), to the accompaniment of an instrument like the flute, by itself or in some combination with the maddala drum (both used in the play), to symbolize the internal conflict. Then, as the Hunter King re-emerges, the Princess could with all honesty, and
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realistically, say the very next words in the text, “I have no refuge now but you.” The Sinhalese term sarana (as in the text) now takes on new meaning, and begins to give religious and spiritual overtones. The Buddha, dhamma (his teachings) and the sangha (the community of ordained monks and nuns) are a Buddhist’s ti sarana “three refuges.” So here, too, when the Princess says, “I have no refuge (sarana) but you,” she is expressing not lust or love, but simply seeking help.
The androcentrism in Maname could also have been mitigated with a different ending. If, as we have claimed, the most likely reason why Sarachchandra left the androcentrism in the story of Maname untouched was a concern about violating tradition, he could have been equally true to tradition by making the ending androgynic, capturing the essential respect, as noted, for women in the culture.
In her recent work, Buddhism After Patriarchy, an exhaustive study of the three schools (yana) of Buddhism, Rita Gross points out not merely that “The Dharma [the Buddha’s teachings] is neither male nor female,” (1993, 125ff.) but that it is “... both female and male” (209ff.; emphasis mine). She concludes that “the Buddhist world view and ethic are more consistent with gender equality than gender inequity” (209) and that “Buddhism is remarkably free of gender bias” (210). Indeed she, an ardent feminist by her own claim, writes that “Buddhism is feminism” (italics in original).26 Despite the Buddha’s initial reluctance to allow women to be ordained, he did establish a bhikkhuni sangha “Women’s Order” in his very life time, and the Theri Gatha “Psalms of Women Elders” constitutes (along with Thera Gatha “Psalms of Men Elders”) a book of the T(r)ipitaka “Tricompendium” that is the Buddhist scripture.
This, of course, is not to say that in its practice, women in Buddhist societies have always enjoyed equality, Gross pointing to the “intolerable contradiction between view and practice.” (1993, 209) Women’s ordination, e.g., is today not available in Sri Lanka,27 even though it was from Sri Lanka that it went to China where it exists today as the only tradition which allows it.
But ordination is merely one index of equality. There are other indices, both historical and contemporary, to show that the position of women, meaning laywomen here, in Sinhalese society, the group relevant to
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our discussion, was not as “intolerable” as some would like to think. In historical times, a queen, Leelavati by name, reigned for several years, and in contemporary times, it was perhaps no accident that it was a Sinhalese, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who became the first woman Prime Minister in the world (1958), paving the way for Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and the rest.
The report by the British revenue officer footnoted earlier (note 21) speaks to the position of women two centuries ago. Here is the fuller text:
... the Cingalese women are ... in many respects the companions and friends of their husbands ... polygamy being unknown and divorce permitted among the Cingalese,28 the men have none of that constitutional jealousy, which has given birth to the voluptuous and unmanly despotism that is practiced over the weaker sex in the most enlightened nations, and sanctioned by the various religions of Asia. The Cingalese neither keep their women in confinement nor impose on them any humiliating restraints.
In contemporary Sinhalese society, women students have outnumbered men at the university since its inception in the forties, and there are no child-brides or girl-baby killings. Regarded as the “lamp” (pahana) in the family, the birth of a girl is rejoiced, and puberty is, for the family and the community, a “Celebration of the Treasure House” (Kotahalu Mangula; see Swarna Sugunasiri 1983 for a discussion). Children pay homage to mother first, and then to father.
This, then, is the tradition that would have allowed Sarachchandra to render Maname androgynic without offending Sinhalese, and Buddhist, cultural sensitivity. If any, what such a gender egalitarianism would have brought about is more acceptance and accolades rather than less!
Basing himself upon this respectable status of the woman, then, what change in the ending would have helped make Maname androgynic? A dramatic possibility would have been for the Hunter King to be abandoned by his retinue in a revolt in protest of the injustice wrought upon the Princess, and his hypocrisy (see above)! That would also have
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helped elevate the level of respect Sinhalese society has for the aboriginal people of the land. The Princess could, then, become their queen, betrothed to the Hunter Chief (i.e. the Hunter King’s Chief of Staff) who shows no less amorous interest in the Princess upon seeing her, to repeat the lines (quoted above) sung by him, upon returning with the Hunter King to where the couple was first sighted:
Hunter Chief. (Song) Here stands the lovely woman that I saw O Chief, look on her well—does your heart with joy not swell? Since I saw her in the wild—I have thought am I beguiled By enchantment? Can there be a maid so fair? Give me unstinted store—largesse and gifts galore If you take her in this wise—she is an ambrosial prize. (56)
Even though the panegyrical language could be seen as an attempt on the part of the Chief to extract a larger benefit for himself, there is little doubt about the amorous desires engendered in him by the sight of the Princess.
Another possible ending would have been not to allow the fate of death to befall Princess Maname when the Hunter King abandons her. She could go on to Benares, and ask to ascend the throne as the rightful wife of the Prince, reminding the audience of the historical Queen Leelavati (see above).
A third alternative ending could have been, following either of the above or instead of them, for Princess Maname to take to a life of renunciation in search of liberation. Already homeless, this being a way of life for one wishing liberation, the next step would have been a natural.
In Indian esthetics, a connoisseur of the theatre (sahrd, literally “one with heart”) is moved by a play in one or more of eight rasas,29 literally “taste” but meaning “esthetic experience,” rasa being “simply the basic emotion much increased or intensified” (Warder 1972, 35). It was the accepted rule/norm that, in a play, while several other esthetic
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experiences could be brought in as auxiliaries, only one should predominate (Warder 1972, 26).
The major rasa by ending Maname in either of the first two ways would have been the “heroic” (vira). But ending the play in the manner lastly proposed, it would have been the “calmed” (santa). What is particularly relevant here is that this rasa does not appear in the original list (of eight), but was specifically introduced, as Warder points out, by Buddhist writers of esthetics.30 Had the play ended in such a manner, not only would the play have been even more Buddhistic, but also would have lent credibility to the particular rasa through a living example. “Calmed” fared badly in Indian esthetics over the years not only because it was not one of the original eight, but perhaps also because “renunciation” didn’t receive serious literary respect from Vedic/Hindu theoreticians. For example, despite the fact that the hero, Yudhistira, of the Indian Great Epic Mahabharata, does renounce the world in the end, the character is held in high esteem, even today, for its depiction of dharma “virtue” or “justice” (see Warder 1972, 37–8), but not renunciation. It would, then, have been a great contribution to literary theory, particularly in the year when Sri Lanka was celebrating the 2500th year of the Buddha (1956 CE), and the year when Maname was first staged, to reaffirm the “calmed” taste.
At the personal level, such an ending would have established Sarachchandra as a “socially responsive” artist, taking the Buddha’s teaching of attha samhita “social good” seriously, making a theatrical dent in the latent androcentrism (despite the respectful place of women as above) in Sinhalese society. This would have set a precedent as well for later, and younger playwrights, who came to flourish following the Sinhalese theatrical resurgence that followed Maname.
Finally, Professor Sarachchandra could have added one more to his multiple accolades, as perhaps the world’s first feminist male artist, even preceding the world’s first woman Prime Minister!31
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NOTES
1. See Sarachchandra 1984 for the author-approved English translation by Lakshmi de Silva.
2. This is my own translation in which I try to keep as close to the original as possible. The authorized version runs, “Fickle my faith, because my love was strong” (Sarachchandra 1984, 62), presumably meaning “faith in my husband.”
3. The reference here is to its instant success and its continuing popularity even today, after nearly four decades.
4. My personal involvement came in the form of acting in two minor roles and dance-performing a traditional pre-play character, and being part of a two-year tour (1961–63) of the play throughout the island for 150 shows.
5. Unless otherwise indicated, the page references throughout are to Sugunasiri and Suraweera 1984.
6. In the tradition of Nadagama (see Sarachchandra 1953 for a comprehensive study), a narrator who appears on stage with curtain closed, serves to carry the thread of the play.
7. In true operatic form, all characters in the Nadagam plays either sing or recite, just as all movements are stylized and the stage set is symbolic. See Sarachchandra (1953) for details.
8. Although the term “soul” helps retain the English idiom well, it is a poor rendering, indeed a mistranslation of java, a Buddhist term which literally means “life.” It is misleading as well since the Buddha denies that there is a soul, the concept captured in the teaching of anatta “asoulity,” or “soullessness.” See Warder (1970, passim) for a scholarly, and Sugunasiri (2001) for a popular, characterization.
9. “Mercy,” again, is un-Buddhistic, indeed Christian sounding, and is a mistranslation of karuna in the text. A better rendering would be “compassion.”
10. This line is not in the original but perhaps included to rhyme with the last line.
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11. See Gombrich and Obeyesekere (1988) for an extensive treatment of the topic in contemporary times.
12. It is perhaps an interesting aside that playwright Sarachchandra did make some changes to the opening invocatory lines which had a Hindu-like theistic fervour in favour of the present version. Is it then that the theism implied here did not come to the attention of neither himself nor anyone else?
13. This is the interpretation given by the late Martin Wickramasinghe, the doyen of literary criticism during his lifetime: that amanatvaya, i.e., “amana-ness” (the nominal form associated with amana gati “habits”) is perhaps best exemplified in Chekov’s characters, and can be understood as the characteristic of those in Sinhalese society whose values are guided by an urban middle class superficiality. It is in this same sense that I have titled one of my own stories amanayo (1963). But it is difficult to say, without having compared the original, folk kolam version of Maname with Sarachchandra’s, whether the term amana, in the mouth of the Hunter King, has the same connotation or not. It is indicative of such a sense, however, in that the Princess is geographically if also culturally urban as compared to the Hunter.
14. Although what I want to indicate here is the biological gender of being female, I use the term “feminine” to indicate the gentleness as well, because it also confirms the next concept I am using in the sentence, “humane.”
15. One is reminded here of the well known story of Prince Siddhartha (later Buddha) who seeks to take possession of a bird shot by cousin Devadatta on the argument that the bird belonged to the one who saves life and not to the one who seeks to destroy it.
16. Like many a Sinhalese traditional story turned play, Maname, too, is set in India, in the city of Benares, where interestingly and perhaps not coincidentally, the Buddha gives his first sermon upon experiencing Enlightenment.
17. “Intent, monks, I declare is action” (cetanaham bhikkhave kammam vadami) were the words of the Buddha.
18. The full lines in the Dhammapada (Byrom 1976) runs as follows: We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
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Speak and act with a pure mind And happiness with follow you As your shadow, unshakable (p. 3).
19. An interesting parallel from contemporary North American society comes to mind here: when a wife is battered, the woman comes to be removed from the scene while the batterer continues to enjoy the comfort of the home! Today in Canada, this is luckily reversed.
20. The prototype of the Hunter King along with his retinue in Maname is undoubtedly the aboriginal people of the land, the Veddhas who live in the bush. Contrary to the popular image of these forest dwelling people, as probably also captured by the play, there is no evidence that the Veddhas are uncivilized. The Veddha chief, Tisahamy, for example, is known to be punctual, as linguist Sugatapala de Silva (1964) found in his dealings with him.
21. The reference here is to the freedom of thought and behaviour allowed for by the Buddha, “Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by ... the idea, “This is our teacher.” But when you know for yourselves ...” (Kalama Sutta, translated in Rahula 1959, 2–3). Its social reality is captured by a British writer reporting in 1872: “The Cingalese women are in many respects the companion and friends of their husband ... Cingalese neither keep their women in confinement nor impose on them any humiliating restrains” (Dewaraja 1981). It is also perhaps not irrelevant to note here that marriage in Sinhalese Buddhist culture is a civil affair. In our play Maname, e.g., reflecting contemporary social practice, the Guru-father simply gives the daughter in marriage to the Prince with the words, “I will marry you” with the blessing, “May you flourish long in happiness, my children” (53).
22. Buddhist causality (see Macy 1991) posits several layers of conditions for an event to occur. While some of them are immediate, others are “supportive,” We refer here to the supportive condition of her very presence, but without laying blame, being a factor in the Hunter King’s desire for her. This is what is called the “object condition,” as e.g., the need for the presence of an object for there to be eye-consciousness.
23. Here, too, we fall back on both multicausality, but particularly the “object condition” (see note 22). The Princess would not have been impressed by the Hunter King’s majestic look had he not projected one and he was not present there physically.
24. This play is based on the mythical origins of the Sinhala people out of
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a union of a lion (sinha) with a woman. As the story unfolds, the couple’s son, Sinhabahu, eventually challenges, and kills, the lion father who had begun to terrorize the villages in search of mother, daughter and son who had abandoned him.
25. Master Charles Silva Gunasingha of Ambalangoda, a traditional cultural centre of south Sri Lanka, and his son, Norman Gunasingha on the drum.
26. Among the features shared by both Buddhism and feminism that allow her to make the claim are the following: they both “begin with experience,” have “the will and the courage to go against the grain,” “explore how mental constructs operate to block or enhance liberation” and “speak of liberation as the point of human existence” (Gross 1993, 130–2). If I may add my own, Buddhism allows intuition as a valid source of knowledge, intuition being a particular strength of women but left out of western epistemology.
27. Since this writing, the bhikkhuni order has been re-established in Sri Lanka (see Yasodhara 1998, 3–7).
28. As noted, Sinhalese marriage is a civil affair with the temple having no formal or informal role.
29. The eight rasas are: sensitive (srngara), comic (hasya), compassionate (karuna), furious (raudra), heroic (vira), apprehensive (bhayanaka), horrific (bibhatsa) and marvelous (adbhuta) (Warder 1972, 23).
30. While Rahula, whose work is known only from references, may have been the first to formulate the santa (calmed) rasa, and Abhinavagupta accepted it, “[t]he earliest critic, whose work is extant, to accept the calmed rasa is Udbhata” (Warder 1972, 40) in the eighth century CE.
31. I thank my wife, Swarna, for her many insights during our conversations on the topic, listening to Maname on tape, she herself having been at the university during the era, and having studied under Prof. Sarachchandra.
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Toronto Board of Education. 1979. Final Report of Sub-Committee on Race Relations. Toronto: Toronto Board of Education. Vassanji, M. G. 1982. Waiting for the Goddess. Toronto South Asian Review 1 (2): 78–83.
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Warder, A.K. 1970. Indian Buddhism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
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INDEX A 61, 68, 75 Bandaranaike, Sirimavo, 130 Aapasuva, 92 Bannerji, Himani, 35, 51, 85, 86, 88, Abhinavagupta, 136 137 Abhinaya, 126 Bengali, 21, 26, 49 Adaptations, 32, 48, 126 Bhaggiyadatta, Krisantha Sri , 8, 51, Africa, 22, 25, 34, 37, 45, 47, 62, 78, 53, 58, 66-70, 72-73, 108, 137 110 Bhajan, 34 African, v-vi, x, 10, 17, 20-21, 47, 70, Bharata muni, 73 79 Bhava, 8 Afro-American, 15, 17 Bias, viii, 19-20, 118, 124-125, 128- Ahmad, Iqbal, 35, 44, 77, 78, 83, 129 137 Birbalsingh, Frank, iv, viii, ix, 29, 37, 45, Amana, 118, 120, 134 46, 49, 51, 137 Amanayo, 134 Bissoondath, Neil, x, 10, 137 Amaradeva, 61 Black, 6, 9-10, 15, 17, 39-40, 59, 62, Amarasekera, Gunadasa, 95, 101, 104 86 Amavatura, 103 Blaise, Clarke, 10 America, 25, 35, 43, 63, 70, 111 Blank verse, viii, 51, 61, 91 American, 3-4, 10, 20-22, 47-48, 53-54, Bourgeoisie, ii-iii, 53-54, 62, 64, 66, 64, 70, 81-82, 84, 86, 110, 113 70, 72 Amirthalingam, 63, 70 Brazen Palace, 71 Ananda, Deeman, 105 British, vii, x, 4, 6, 15-16, 20, 22, 35, Anandawardhana, 73 54-55, 57-58, 64, 71, 79, 101, 106, Androcentric, 117-118, 125 108, 110, 130, 135 Androcentrism, 127-129 Brooke, Frances, 9, 138 Androgynic, 129-130 Brown Sahib, 68 Androgyny, 128 Buddha, vii, 24, 38-39, 60, 71-72, 75, Anglophone, 7, 20 94-95, 102, 104, 111, 117, 128-129, Annand, Alan, 44, 82, 85, 87, 137, 132-135 Anuradhapura, 71, 102, 104 Buddhism, vii-viii, 17, 49, 69, 72, 74, Aquin, Hubert, 11, 48 101-104, 107-108, 119-120, 129 Arabic, 21, 26, 49 and feminism, 136 Asian, ii-iii, v-xi, 3, 7, 10, 12, 15-17, Buddhist, ii, vi, x, 10, 12, 15, 18-19, 20, 23, 25-31, 33, 35-37, 39, 42, 44- 24, 48, 54-56, 63-64, 66, 68-76, 101- 46, 48-50, 53, 74, 77, 80, 83, 86, 88 102, 104-108, 111, 113-114, 117, Asoka, King, 72 119-120, 123, 128-130, 132-133 Asoulity, 133 spirituality, 117 Attam, 71 Butsarana, 103 Atwood, Margaret, 9, 19, 79, 137 Awards, 51, 106 C Ayurveda, 56 Calgary, v, 27, 49 B Callaghan, Morley, 102 Calm (Calmed; Calming), viii, 128, Balkanization, 8 132 Bandaranaike, S. W. R D., vi, 53-54, Canada's Tolstoy, 22
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Canadian, ii-viii, ix-xi, 3-4, 6, 8-26, Co-hearts, 8 28, 31, 33-34, 36, 40-41, 43-45, 47- Cohen, Leonard, 48 48, 51, 53, 58-60, 62-63, 67, 70, 74- Colombo Era, 109 75, 82, 84-89, 91, 101, 108-110, 112 poets, 103 Anglo-, vi, 4, 9, 15-16 Colonialism, 20, 67, 83, 88, 95, 107 Black, 15, British, 101, 106, 108 Carribbean-South Asian, 53 Dutch, vii, 54 East Asian, 15 Portuguese, vii, 54, 104, Euro-, 17 South Indian, 101, 103, 105, 108 Franco-, 3, 11-12, 15, 16, 20 Compassion, 41, 83, 120, 133 Jewish, 15 Composite Elite, 54, 56, 66 Native, 11, 15 Confucianism, 17 South Asian, ii-iii, v-vi, viii-xi, 7, Connoisseur, 131 10, 15-16, 23, 25-30, 33, 35, 37, Connor, Ralph, 9, 138 39, 42, 44, 48-49, 77, 88 Cowasjee, Saros, 12, 45-47, 49, 78-79, West Indian, 7, 10, 16 82-84, 86, 138 Canadian Crusz, Rienzi, vi, ix, 51, 53, 59, 60-64, autrephone, 20 66, 69-70, 72, 74, 108, 138, 139 baroque, 10, 48 English, 3, 6-8, 11, 14, 16, 19-23 D literature, ii, v-vi, x, 3, 8-11, 13- 14, 19-20, 22-23, 35, 42, 88, 110 Dabydeen, Cyril, vi, ix, 10, 16, 35, 38, of S. Asian origins, ii-iii, viii, xi, 43-44, 51, 53, 77-79, 81-82, 84-86, 12, 25-27, 74 88 Standard English, 6-7, 16 Dambadeni, 102 Canadianizing World Culture, vii, 13 Dawasa, 76 Cannes, 61, De Silva, Colin, 107 Capitalist, 70 De Silva, Colvin R., 54 Catholic, 54-55, 60, 64, 74 De Soyza, Lucien, 108 Celebration of the Treasure House, Dhammapada, 75, 134 130 Dhanjal, Surinder Pal, 40 Ceylonese, 53, 72 Dharma, 129, 132 Chandas, 92 Loka, 126 Chekov, Anton, 102, 126, 134 Natya, 126 Chelvanayagam, S. J. V., 54 Dialects, 3, 8, 15-16, 20, 43, 106 Chinese, 19, 21, 25, 73, 126 Dilemma, 118 Chohan, Raj, 48 Heinz, 118 Christian, vi, 4, 7, 9-10, 12, 15, 22, 54, moral, 118 56, 62, 64, 72 Doukhobor, 11, 15 hierarchy, 74 Drama, of South-Asian origin, vii, 24- literature, 106 25, 30, 32-33, 37, 43, 48, 61, 94, 105- Christianity, 17, 49 106, 126, 128 Cinematic, 98 Dravidian, 18 Cingalese [Sinhalese] women, 130, languages, 21, 28, 49-50 135 Ducharme, Rejean, 11, 48 Clarke, Arthur, C., 111 Duraiappa, 70 Clarke, Austin, 10, 14, 16, 138 Dutugemunu, King, 71, 107 Co-arising, 119
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E G
East Africa, 8, 25, 34, 78-79 Gallant, Mavis, 14 East Asia, 3, 15, 17 Galloway, Priscilla, 19-20 Edmonton, v, 27 Gamperaliya, 102 Education, x, 3-6, 8, 23, 35, 49, 61, 71, Gandhi, 43, 130 80-81, 94, 96, 107, 111 Gardiner, Chittampalam, 72 Educational, 4, 6, 8, 21, 34-35, 50, 68- Gaspe Peninsula, 7, 16 69 Geheniyak, 102 Elara, King, 71, 107 Gemunu, King, 71, 107 Elu, 103 Gender bias, 129 English, ii, v-vii, 4-9, 11-16, 20, 23, Genji Monogatari,18 26, 28-33, 35-38, 42, 46-50, 55, 61- Gi, 18 62, 64, 69, 74-77, 82, 93-94, 101, Gill, Stephen, 8, 36, 45-47, 78, 86, 88 106-110, 133 Gool, Reshard, v, 10, 14, 35-36, 45-49, English curriculum, vi, 3, 5-6, 8, 14, 51-52, 59, 15-16, 20-21 Gooneratne, Yasmine, 107 ESL, 5 Goonetilleke, D.C.R.A., 61, 104, 107, Esthetic Experience, 4, 8, 19, 84, 88, 111 132 Goonewardene, James, 108 Esthetic of Opposition, 73 Graamya, 82 Esthetics, Indian, 73, 82, 88, 131, 132 Grants, 51 Ethnic, ii, viii, ix, 4-5, 13, 15, 23, 26, Greek, viii, 21, 93 34-37, 43, 49, 67, 101, 110-112 Gross, Rita, 129, 136 Ethnicity, 4, 9, 14, 67 Gujerati, v, 26, 28-33, 37, 41-42, 44, Ethnocentrism, 107 48-50 Ethnocultural, vii, 7-8, 10-13, 15, 21, Gunasingha, Charles Silva, 136 61 Gunasingha, Norman, 136 Ethnolect, 3, 6-8, 13, 15-16, 20 Gunasinghe, Siri, ii-iii, 10, 51, 61, 73, Eurasian, 54-57, 59, 62, 64, 68, 74, 75, 91, 99, 104 108 Gunnars, Kristjana, 10, 23, Eurolankan, 101 Guru, 75, 114, 135 Guttilaya,103 F H Fanon, Frantz, 81 Farmer, vi, 56, 68, 83 Haggard, Rider, 95 Feminist, vii-viii, 87, 113, 125, 128- Halpe, Ashley, 107 129, 132 Heathen, 4 Feminocentric, 125 Heavenly nymphs, 24 Fickle, 113-114, 116-117, 121, 123, Hebért, Anne, 10 128, 133, Hela hauwla, 103 Fickleness, 120, 122 Heritage language, vii, 8, 12-13, 20 Five pillars, 68 instruction, 8 Folkplay, 61 plays, 13 Frank, Gunder, 20 Hindi, 21, 26, 28, 49-50 French, vii, 3, 7-8, 10-13, 15, 17, 20, Hindu, vi, 10, 12, 15, 19, 50, 54-56, 26-27, 48, 50 69, 71-74, 101, 104, 106, 108, 119, 132, 134
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Hinduism, vii, 17, 49, 104, 117, 120 Kogawa, Joy, 10, 14 Hindustan Gadar, 33 Kohlbergian, 118 Hitopadesa, 88, 102 Kolam, 126, 134 Hosein, Clyde, 78-79, 81, 83 Konkani, 26, 49 Hospital-Turner, Janette, 9 Kotte, 102 Hugo, Victor, 104 Kovil, 71 Hunter King, 113-124, 128-129, 131, Kumaratunga, Munidasa, 103 134-135 Kuttam Pokuna, 71 Hypocrisy, 121, 131 L I Ladoo, Harold Sonny, 8, 10, 35, 44-47, Icelandic, 10, 17 78, 80, 82-83 Ilankai, 74 Lake House, 55 Immigrant experience, 36-37, 40-43, Lanka, 39, 64, 66, 74, 109 45, 72, 85 Lankadeepa, 76 Immigrant writers, 23, 57 Latin, 3, 21, 93 Indo-Aryan, 21, 28, 49 Laurence, Margaret, 9-10, 12, 14, 16, Indo-Caribbean, 45 22 Indo-Pakistan, 25 Layton, Irving, 9 Iriyagolla [I. M. R. A.], 104 Leacock, Stephen, 14, 46 Islam, 12, 17, 49 Legal, 3, 6 Italian, 7, 17 Leitao, Lino, 8, 77-78, 83, 88 Literary Academy, 106 J Literary Matrix, 8, 12 Literary theory, 21, 114, 132 Jamaica, 16 Literature, ii, v, vii, 4-6, 8-9, 13-14, Japanese, vii, 9-10, 17-18, 21, 25, 73, 16, 19-22, 24, 26-28, 33, 35-37, 41- 105, 126 42, 45, 47, 49, 51, 61, 71, 88, 94, Jataka, 18, 24, 70, 102, 111, 101-106, 110, 111, Jaya ganga, 71, 111 American, 110 Jayamanna drama, 126 British, 110 Jayawardhena, Junius Richard, 54, 76 Canadian, ii, v-vi, x, 3, 8-11, 13-14, Jewish, 4, 9, 11-12, 15-17 16, 19-20, 22-23, 35, 42, 88, 110 Joyce, James, 96 Christian, 106 Comparative Canadian, 23 K English-medium, 14, 17 Gujerati, v, 26, 29-33, 37, 41-42, Kabuki, vii, 18, 105, 126 44, 48, 50 Kalama Sutta, 107, 111, 135 Hindu, 106 Kalsey, Surjeet, 24, 29, 31, 33-37, Indian, xi, 50 40-41, 43, 45, 50-51, 77, 85, 87 Punjabi, 34, 45, 50 Kanaganayakam [C.], 105-106, 109 Sinhala (Sinhalese), vii, 9, 26, 50, Kannada, 26, 49-50 61, 91, 99, 102, 105-106 Karuna, 120 South Asian Canadian, ii-iii, v, viii, Kavsilumina, 103 ix-xi, 25, 44, 48, 74 Kavya, xi Sri Lankan Tamil, 105 Keunaman, Peter, 54 Tamil, 105-106, 109
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Lord Vishnu, 84 Nadagama, 18, 24, 97, 105, 126, 133 Lyrical poetry, 94 Naganathan, E. M.V., 54 Namjoshi, Suniti, 35, 39, 49 M Nationism, 24 Nationist, 19, 23-24 Macho, 118, 125 Naturalistic, 126 Maddala (Maddale) [drum], 127, 129 Nava nalu rasa, viii Mahabharata, 18, 132 Niladeva, 84 Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, 75-76 Nisandas, 91-92 Mahanuwara, 102 Novels, of South-Asian origin, v, 10- Mahavausa, 103 11, 14, 32-33, 45-47, 95, 99, 106 Major, v, vii, 10, 24, 27, 29-33, 51, Nurti, 126 106, 132, Malayalam, 21, 26, 49 O Manamania, vii, 113, 127 Maname, 109, 113, 125, 127-130, 132, Ondaatje, Michael, vi, 9-10, 12, 14, 30, 134-136 32, 39, 48-49, 51, 53, 56-59, 61-64, Prince, 113-114, 116, 122, 124 66, 69-70, 72-73, 103, 107-109 Princess, 113, 116, 118, 120, Ontario, iv, 8, 23, 27-28, 49 125, 131 Marathi, 26, 49 P Marxism, 40, 54, 69, 107 Marxist movement, 105 Paki, 62 Masses, 54-57, 61, 63, 69 Pakistan, 25-26 Maupassant, 88, 102 Pakistani, 25, 28 Maupassant, Guy de, 88, 102 Pali, vii, 24, 73, 103-104 Meghaduta, 104 Pañcatantra, 18, 88, 102 Memmi, Albert, 81 Panegyrical, 131 Minor, viii, x, 30-32, 133 Parameswaran, Uma, iv, ix, 35-36, 51 Mirror Wall, 24, 70, 102 Paranavitana, Senarat, 24, 71, 91 Mohammed, M. H., 54 Patriarchal, 118, 120, 125 Montreal, v, 27-28, 37, 42 Patriarchy, viii, 113, 127, 129 Moslem, 26, Pedagogical, 3, 7, 19 Motley lot, 108 Peiris, Lester James, 61 Mukherjee, Alok, iv, 49 Peradeniya School, 104 Mukherjee, Arun, iv, 11, 47, 49-50, 53, Perera, N. M., 54 101 Piyavara, 92 Mukherjee, Bharati, 10, 12, 14, 46, 49 Poe, Edgar Allan, 88 Multicultural, ii, vi, 4-7, 9, 11-13, 19- Poems, haiku type, 17, 102 23, 27, 101, 110 Poetic form, 103 Multiculturalism, iv-vii, x, 3-7, 36, 49, Poets, Punjabi, 31, 41 67 Poetry, x, 10, 17-18, 25, 30-34, 37, 40- Multiculturalizing, vi, 3, 5, 15-16, 21 42, 57-58 Murasaki, Shikibu, 18-19 Gujerati, 42, 44 Muslim, vi, 11, 15, 54-56, 60, 72, 74, of South-Asian origin, ix, 24, 37, 111 39, 51, 53, 59, 61-62, 64, 66, 70, Muthanna, Dr. I.M., 50 73, 92, 94-95, 99, 102-104, 109 N Punjabi, 32-33, 40-42 Political, vi, viii, 3-4, 17, 20-21, 39-41,
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54, 57, 60-64, 68, 70, 75-76, 85, 98, Secretary of State, iv, vi, viii, xi, 25, 113, 125, 128 49, 51 Pollock, Sharon, 50 Sekara, Mahagam, 61 Polonnaruwa, 71 Senanayake, Don Stephen, 54 Portuguese, 60 Senanayake, G.B., 54, 91-93, 99, 106 Post-Colonial, 57 Selvon, Sam, 10, 14, 51 Post-Colonial Nations, 52 Shakespeare, ii-iii, vi-vii, 3, 20-23, 60 Prakrit, 18, 43, 104, 105, 107 Short stories, 111, 31-32, Prince Siddhartha, 107, 134 of South-Asian origin, 42, 44, 86, Proctor, Raja, 108 88, 92-93, 102 Proletariat, 54, 68 Sigiri, 24 Punjabi, v-vi, 12, 26-37, 40-45, 48-50, blank verse, 91 85, 109 graffiti, 91 novels, 11, 33, 45 mirror wall, 24, 70, 102 Purdy, Al, 9 poetry, 104 Sigiriya, 70, 91, 102 Q Sikh, 12, 15, 17, 24, 34, 36, 49 Silappadikaran, 18 Quatrain, 65, 103, 109 Silva, W. A., 95, 104 Queen Leelavati, 130-131 Singh, Gyani Kesar, 11, 32-33, 35, 50 Qureshi, viii, 18, 143 Singh, Mewa, 23-24, 34, 45 Sinha, 63, 75, 136 R Sinhabahu, 127, 136 Sinhala, vii, 21, 24, 26, 49, 51, 55-56, 60- Rasa (Indian esthetics), 8, 73, 99, 132, 61, 64-66, 69, 75-76, 99, 101, 103-105, 136 107, 109, 111-112, 136 nava nalu, viii, 88 intelligentsia, 96 santa, viii, 132, 136 Mixed, 103 Revolutionary, 33, 35, 40-41, 45, 50, Sanskritized, 104-105 108 Sinhalese, ii-iii, vi-viii, 9, 18, 54-56, Reynolds, Christopher, 18, 102 60-64, 66, 68-72, 74-76, 84, 91-94, Richler, Mordecai, 9, 17, 46 96-98, 101, 103, 106-108, 111, 113, Rode, Ajmer, 13, 33, 48, 50 117, 121, 123-127, 129-132, 134-136 Romanian, 17 Christianized, 106 Romanticism, 41-42 classics, 94 culture, 66, 93, 96, 125 S film, 98 folkplay, 61, 126 Sabharatnam, T., 106 literature, 9, 50, 61, 91 Salmon, Singleton, 54 novel, 102, 104 Sandakindurudaa kava, 103 operatic play, ii-iii, 113 Sangha, vi, 129 theatre, 96-97, 126 Bhikkuni, 129, 136 Sirisena, Piyadasa, 95, 103 Sangharaksita, 73 Skvorecky, Joseph, 14 Sanskrit, 8, 11, 18, 21, 43, 66, 73, 75, Social good, 132 92, 99, 102-105, 126 Sociolects, 3, 6, 8, 20 Sarachchandra, Ediriweera, 108109, Socioliterary offences, 53 113, 124-130, 132-134, 136 Sokari, 126
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South Africa, v-vi, 10, 25, 34, 45, 47 Taste, viii, 128, 132 South America, 25, 35, 111 Taxila, 114 South Asia, 25-26 Technique, viii, 4, 18, 39, 47-48, South Asian, ii, iii, vi-viii, ix-x, 7, 10, 51, 66, 83-84, 88, 96, 104, 126- 12, 15-17, 26-31, 33, 35-37, 39, 45, 128 49-50, 53, 80, 86, 88 Telugu, 26, 49 drama, v, vii, 24-25, 30, 32, 37, 43, Tennakone, Raipiel, 103 48, 61, 94, 105-106, 126, 128 Theatrical convention, 127 literature, v, viii, ix, x-xi, 3, 10, 20, Theragatha,70, 23, 25, 44, 48, 74 Therigatha, 19 novels, 46, 48 Tikiri-Liya, 65, 109 short stories, vi, x-xi, 42, 77, 88 Times Group, 55 Sri Lanka Tipitaka (Tripitaka; (T(r)pitaka), 24, independence, 53, 68, 72, 95, 105-106, 70, 102 123 Toronto South Asian Review, ii, vi-vii, political makeup, 54 ix, xi, 36, 50 socioeconomic makeup, 54, 61 Trade Union Leadership, 55 Sri Lankan literature, ii-iii, v, vii, xi, Travelogue, 45 50, 75-76, 101, 103, 106, 108-110, Third World, 52, 78, 80, 83-84 Sri Lankan poet, 53, 63-64, 66, 68, Tolerance, 71 72, 74 Tower Hall Theatre, 97 Stead, Robert, 14 Trudeau, 3 Stone Angel, ii-iii, vi-vii, 3, 16, 22-23 Two-Thirds World, 58, 70 Stream of Consciousness, vii, 51 Stupa, 71 U Style, vii, 4, 18, 24, 43-44, 48, 53, 72, 75, 87, 91-92, 95-96, 106-107, 126 Udbhata, 136 Stylized, 126, 133 Ukrainian, 11 Sugunasiri, Suwanda, ii, iv, vii-viii, ix- Underdevelopment, 20, 103 xi, 5, 7, 23-24, 26, 29, 31, 34-37, 44, Urdu, 11, 17, 26, 49 48-49, 52, 54, 62, 73-75, 78-80, 88, UK, 34 101-102, 108, 112, 133, 137 US, x, 34 Sugunasiri, Swarna, iv, 130, 136 Utilitarianism, 120 Sunderalingam, C., 54 Sunderam, Sivagnana, 106 V Suraweera, A.V., ii, vii, xi, 24, 74-75, 101, 104, 108, 112, 133 Vaiththiyalingam, C., 106 Sutherland, Ronald, 10-11, 13, 14, 20, Vancouver, v, 27-29, 34, 48, 50, 89 48 Vassanji, M.G., ii, iv, vi, ix-xi, 36, 44, Symbol, 61, 64, 68, 87, 94 77-79, 81, 83-84, 88 Symbolism, ii-iii, 8, 22, 44, 51, 77, 83- Veddha, 125, 135 84, 86-87, 108 Vernacular, 7, 68 Vernacular teachers, vi, 56 T Vietnamese, 25 Vithana, 101 Tagore, 61, 111 Vrttagandhi, 91 Tamil, vi-vii, 9, 21, 26, 49, 54-56, 60, Vyangya, 66 63, 66, 69-72, 74, 76, 101, 105-112 Tamil literature, 105, 109
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W
Washington D.C., 50 Watno Dur, 29, 31, 34 Weerasinghe, Asoka, vi, 35, 39, 51, 53, 62-66, 69-70, 72, 107-109 West Indies, 16, 25, 35, 51, 78 Westernized, 78, 93 What o' clock, 16 Whorfian, 7 Wickramasinghe, Martin, 61, 95, 101- 104, 106, 134 Wickremasingha, S. A., 54 Wikkramasinha, Lakdasa, 107 Women Punjabi, 43 South Asian, 45 Woolf, Leonard, 61 Worker, vi, 40, 68, 85 World literature, ii, 20-21 classical, 21 contemporary, 20 Wright, Richard, 39
Y
Yana, 129 Yudhistira, 132
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Prof. Suwanda H J Sugunasiri is the pioneering researcher on South Asian Canadian Literature. Down Commissioned by the Multiculturalism Directorate of the Government of Canada, he traveled across Canada to dig out the vast literary Shakespeare, treasure, unknown not only to the Canadian literary establishment but to South Asians themselves. His Report, The Search for Meaning The Stone Angel Is Here (1983), opened the doors for a many a contemporary writer, critic and academic. Essays on Literature: Canadian and Sri Lankan
Poet, fiction writer and soon to be novelist, Sugunasiri was, before leaving Sri Lanka on a Fulbright Scholarship, active in the Sinhalese cultural and literary scene as a writer, dancer, actor, radio artiste, critic and newspaper coumnist. Founder of {Discussed or referred to} Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies (Canada), and Adjunct Professor, Trinity Gunadasa Amarasekara College, University of Toronto, he has been a spokesperson for Buddhism for over Margaret Atwood quarter of a century. Himani Bannerji Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta Neil Bissoondath Rienzi Cruz Cyil Dabydeen Reshard Gool Siri Gunasighe Surjeet Kalsey Margaret Laurence Michael Ondaatji Uma Parameswaran Mordecai Richler Ajmer Rode The seven critical pieces that make up Step Down Ediriweera Saracchandra Shakespeare, the Stone Angel is Here, provides a G B Senanayake historical window to two little known literary and M G Vassanji geographic landscapes - the emerging Asoka Weerasinghe multicultural literature in Canada beginning with
Step Down Shakespeare,Step Down H J Sugunasiri, Suwanda Angel Is Here The Stone PhD Martin Wickremasinghe the eighties and the Sinhalese literature of Sri Lanka with a history of over a thousand years. Suwanda H J Sugunasiri, PhD Pioneering researcher on South Asian Canadian Literature