Jaffna’s literary
soul
A tribute to A.J. Canakaratne (1932-2006)
By Rajan Philips
A. J. Canakaratne, who passed away on October
10, 2006, has been endearingly described as Jaffna’s Regi
Siriwardene. AJ was a great admirer of Regi, would have even considered
Regi to be his mentor and did go on to edit and publish Regi’s
writings, but in the circumstances of Jaffna, the role that AJ played
is beyond comparison.
For almost all his life, save for his university
years at Peradeniya and his short stay at the Lake House in Colombo,
AJ lived in Jaffna – in fair weather and foul, in sunshine
and in rain, in the good times of yesteryears and through the traumas
of the last 20 years. Jaffna is nothing without its premium on schools
and students and AJ belonged to a generation when Jaffna students
were encouraged to take to arts and humanities unlike the later
generations who were stampeded into a narrow cramming of the sciences.
It was this grounding that enabled AJ to be a unique resource as
a literary and social critic in Jaffna.
After his early education at St. Patrick’s
College, a bastion of Catholic conservatism, AJ studied English
(Honours) at Peradeniya under the likes of E.F.C. Ludowyk and Doric
de Souza both effervescent and progressive intellectuals of their
time and every time. From Peradeniya English, AJ took the by then
well-trekked path to the Features page in the Ceylon Daily News.
What might have turned out to be a lifelong career at Lake House
was cut short by AJ’s inadvertent act of non-compliance with
a directive from Esmond Wickremesinghe, then the Managing Editor
of the Daily News.
This was the 1960s and the Minister of Education
in the first Sirimavo Bandaranike government, Badudin Mahmud, decided
to open the admission to Royal Primary to all island competition
rather than limit it to the children of Old Boys and other notables
in Colombo. For reasons that are not difficult to surmise, Esmond
Wickremesinghe wanted Mahmud’s move criticized and asked the
Features Editor to assign the task to one of the feature writers.
The task fell on AJ, who did his research, spoke to sources at Royal
College and concluded that the Minister’s decision was a popular
one and was welcomed by those who ran the school. AJ reported back
to his editor that there was nothing to criticize and the two decided
not to write anything on the matter.
The fall out came not long after with the shoving
of AJ from the Features section to the news room. AJ got the message
and took the Mail Train to Jaffna, a rare return journey of the
permanent kind. For over hundred years Jaffna has been an out-migration
community – more people leaving the peninsula than coming
in to earn a livelihood - with hardly any middle-class economic
space except for teachers, who have been aplenty, and much fewer
lawyers and doctors.
AJ’s father was the well known Proctor Canakaratne
of Jaffna. Of his two younger brothers – Selvam Canakaratne
settled down in Colombo becoming the Managing Director of Ceylon
Printers besides continuing his panache for free lance writing,
and Dr. S. G. Canakaratne joined the academia first serving the
Chemistry Department at Peradeniya and now a Professor in Ohio,
USA.
Although not a place for careers, Jaffna offers,
rather it used to offer, its unique charms, customs, challenges
and complexities to anyone with patience, curiosity and commitment.
The source of Jaffna’s cultural and intellectual pride is
its unique traditions of commentary on Tamil literature and in the
practice of Hinduism both of which set Jaffna apart from the mass
of Tamil speakers in South India. To its credit, the practice of
Hinduism in Jaffna did not prevent the Christian and Muslim Tamils
making their own contribution to Tamil literature and society, and
to the creation of a truly secular political culture. Arumuga Navalar’s
precept – “English for the body and Saivam for the soul”
- exemplifies the source and success of this ethos.
It is no exaggeration to say that AJ created his
own niche within this ethos and this tradition, and his role was
well recognized during his lifetime even as he was respected and
loved by everyone who came to know him. It will also be remembered
and celebrated by future generations of Tamil literati. AJ’s
uniqueness stems from his academic and intellectual background that
was almost entirely English and not at all in Tamil classics.
This enabled him to develop his own personality
in Tamil prose that was closer to common usage yet rigorous and
substantive in content, rather than the alliterative embellishments
that provide easy titilations but leave no lasting impact on the
reader.
He began and continued to be Jaffna’s main,
if not the only, gateway between the outside intellectual world
and its native players. His first book in Tamil, Mattu (churn-staff),
a translation of well chosen English essays on literature, culture
and politics, heralded his arrival on the Tamil literary scene.
His later commentaries on contemporary Tamil literature created
a following not only in Jaffna and Sri Lanka but also in Chennai
and South India.
What made AJ lovable to his many friends and followers
were his simplicity, humility and affability. He was a pedant to
many and in more ways than one. In a society where those with ‘little
English’ tend to think no end of themselves, AJ was the affable
resource for anyone who needed help in English. AJ’s resourcefulness
was institutionalized when Jaffna was finally given a university
of its own and AJ was given a teaching position in the University.
His wit and humour became an integral part of Common Room conversations
and university life itself.
He did not give up on journalism; rather journalism
in Jaffna came to him for help. For years, he edited and published
The Co-operator, the journal of Jaffna’s once vibrant co-operative
movement. When the Saturday Review was started, AJ was once again
an automatic resource for the new weekly. The now defunct weekly
epitomized the limitations and defiance of Tamil politics and nationalism.
AJ stuck with Jaffna through its years of trial
and tribulation. He walked the fine line between the occupying army
and the infighting militants, but without sacrificing his intellectual
independence. He did not become a ghost writer or an apologist for
any of the Tamil groups, as many others did. AJ was not brought
up to be a supine fellow traveller of any group, although he had
views – critically reflective views – on all of them.
They were very well known in the grapevine of Jaffna. He dubbed
the men of the cloth who slavishly support the LTTE – “white
tigers”. He equally poured scorn on the so-called Tamil Democrats
who religiously hold that the troubles of the Tamils only began
with the LTTE and can only end with it. AJ called them “stark
raving nuts”.
I have known AJ for 40 years, from my schooldays
when AJ was editing the Co-operator. I last saw him in Jaffna in
2004, and previously in 2002, soon after the ceasefire, in the company
of Rev. Paul Caspersz, Dr. Kumar David, Marshal Fernando, Dr. Vijaya
Kumar, and Jayaratne Malliyagoda – some of us returning to
Jaffna to commemorate our visit twenty three years earlier as part
of the first fact-finding-the delegation of the Movement for Inter-Racial
Justice and Equality (MIRJE) during the Emergency Rule of 1979.
AJ had translated into Tamil the MIRJE publication: Emergency ’79.
In 2002, he gave us the most penetrating analysis
of the situation in Jaffna and the prospects for a permanent peace.
As he put it, it called for a leap of faith for a Tamil to believe
that the UNP that burnt the Jaffna Library in 1981 and burnt the
PA’s Constitutional Draft in Parliament in 2000 would deliver
a lasting solution to the Tamil question. In the musical chairs
that is Colombo politics, it really does not matter who is in power,
and the echo from Colombo is anything but music in Jaffna.
AJ left Jaffna earlier this year for medical treatment
in Colombo. That became his last journey out of the peninsula. He
died and was buried in Colombo, but he will live in the collective
memory of Jaffna’s literati wherever they are.
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