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to concur These school texts, written as simple narratives were coupled with Geography and Civics texts, which complemented and sometimes duplicated each other, building a superstructure of consistent knowledge up to O’ Level or Senior School Certificate (SSC). At the SSC, we graduated to Father S.G. Perera’s A History of Ceylon for Schools dealing with the Portuguese, Dutch and British periods. These were complex narratives of detailed events, hardly proposing interpretations, but interesting enough to hold the growing historical understanding, which was also fed on Warner, Marten and Muir’s British History. British history provided the ideological backdrop in which we saw the emerging picture about Ceylon. In the University Entrance class we studied G.C. Mendis’s Early History of Ceylon together with British and European history, beginning with the Renaissance, plus Politics or Systems of Government (texts by A. Appadorai—The Substance of Politics-- and Ivor Jennings: The Economy of Ceylon and the British Constitution) for which too S.F. de Silva had prepared us. I happened to do a General Degree with English, Economics and History, so that I had three more years of history, government and economics. These three years contained another dose of European and British history plus the economic history of the great powers as well as more Ceylon and Indian history, particularly featuring research work on Knox by Karl Goonewardene, which I supplemented by reading Ralph Peiris’s Sinhalese Social Organisation. Looking back on this long enrolment in studying Ceylon and world history, in the context of how a current American undergraduate curriculum in history evolves, I seem to have about or more than the required number of hours to obtain a degree in history. Yet I do not claim nor am I entitled to call myself a historian. But my purpose in recounting the history of my education in history is not to tell the reader how different was our background as English medium students in the immediate aftermath of Independence (which Sarojini Jayawickreme too shared) and thereby to point to comparisons with education in social studies later on, but to show clearly what Jayawickreme means by “new historicism”. If someone were to comment on what I say in this paper “new historically” he would, I dare say, not merely take my words on face value but also delve behind them to find out what brought them about. So does Robert Knox find himself analysed “new historically” in this superb research work, bringing to light many new sources of knowledge and throwing open the windows of the mind to great gusts of insights. Jayawickreme’s thesis in this book is to “re-read” Knox in terms of the new knowledge about him and his times. While doing so she illuminates Knox’s role as writer as similar to that of being a reader: Knox “reads” Ceylon, just as Sarojini reads Knox and I read Sarojini. This is the “trope” or “figure of speech” that clears the view; Knox is not merely looking and hearing and smelling (Karl Goonewardene, in his lectures, kept us amused by quoting Knox’s opinion that water and the left hand is better than toilet paper) and so on but also “reading” because what his senses feel are also controlled by his own thought, upbringing and “ideology”. There is nothing, of course, astonishing in this point of view. It derives from Plato’s idea that the “world is an idea” as well as from Aristotle’s idea of “whatness” or the objectivity of things. We combine both subjectivity and objectivity in our own lives and that is what Knox does too. Having thus got over the initial hurdle of explaining “new historicism” as best as I can, what is left for me to do is to give the reader some samples of the new knowledge that we get from this book about Knox. There is so much of it that nothing will suffice except reading the book itself. However let me take the story of the way Knox’s ship Anne took refuge in Kottiyar Bay (Trincomalee). We usually believe that the ship was blown there by a storm. “Was it as innocent as it seemed? Were they simply merchant sailors…? Or did their trading activities have a more significant dimension making [it] a covert enterprise of reconnaissance tinged with espionage?”(65) Sarojini reveals that two others from the Anne also escaped from Kandyan captivity and “they state that Knox carried with him a letter seeking the release of the crewmen of the Persia Merchant who had earlier in 1658 being taken captive and were believed to be held in the Kandyan kingdom near the court”. (67) “Knox in his deposition made to the Dutch says, `my Father the Captain ordered me with Mr John Loveland, Merchant of the ship to go on shore and wait upon him’ (Rajasingha’s General) but omits to refer to the letter he had been asked to deliver. (67) Why? Sarojini speculates intriguingly, bringing in Paulusz, the contemporary editor of Knox, into the discussion, as well as Knox’s later doings in the service of the East India Company to provide another perspective on the event. This “speculating about causes”, which is a component of good and interesting writing, is a major feature of this fascinating and beautifully written dissertation. We are much obliged to the author and to the Social Scientists Association for publishing it. Learning
to lead others in life Leaders are evidently more competent, more visionary, more committed to achieve goals, and therefore more powerful and knowledgeable than the rest. Here lies a paradox of leadership: more powerful leaders create more competent followers, and more powerful followers have more competent leaders. The best of leaders in powerless societies will be less competent than lesser individuals of more powerful societies. Societies have the task of building their leaders through culture. History is replete with such evidence. The lakkana sutta of Buddhist scriptures describes signs that individuals will possess which would lead them to be either a Buddha or a chakravati. The ten transcendental virtues or parami are finely blended of such hard virtues as virya and adittana and the soft ones such as dana and upekkha. The bodhisattvas of the Jatakas give excellent examples how the ten transcendental virtues drive their leadership roles. Max Weber in his Protestant Ethic thesis describes how a powerful set of virtues enabled the economic rise of Europe and eventual colonization of the world in the recent past. Confucian ethics and the way of Tao in addition to Buddhist Zen have been accountable for the discipline of leadership in East Asian countries like Japan, China and Korea. Leadership therefore like all management behaviour is culture bound and indicates the strategies evolved by societies to develop their own champions. Are leaders born or made? Recent research in genetic studies have shown evidence that they may indeed be born, in that individuals could carry in their genetic structure such traits as tendency to dominate, be alert, be of high energy, and as such pre-determined to be leaders. Individuals should also be capable of being developed as leaders, or else management science would not be viable. But what would happen if everyone is trained to be a leader? Would a society have an over-abundance of leaders? The normal distribution would always take care of this and shift the mean to a higher point to make room for leaders of higher quality. Here we come to the importance of the present work of Deepal Sooriyaarachchi. In writing this collection of vignettes on leadership; he implicitly and expertly covers the entire range of leadership thought in deed and precept and in doing so makes a contribution to shifting the mean upward. Waves
of terror and trauma The
various tactics of the tormentors are described in graphic language,
such as the scene where all the freshers are asked to dump their
food on an unclean banana leaf and eat together, with those from
high-class, English speaking families, having cockroaches mixed
in, as a special treat. Despite the brutality of the rag, Sujatha is impressed with the ideals and beliefs expressed by the leader of the party, Kumudu, who both attracts and repels her. The speech of another enigmatic student leader, Kalinga, convinces her that the union is on the right path to uplifting the rural poor of Sri Lanka and she joins in. She happily throws herself into union activities and student life, along with her friends, Nali, Harith and the cripple Mithra. Her wide eyed reaction to life in the city and modern technology is both amusing and pathetic. It reminds us that there are still those in this country who do not know what a washing machine is for, or who have never been in a lift.When Kalinga introduces the Giniralla (wave or tsunami, of fire) project, as a plan to eradicate the cities of corruption, and bring the poor to their rightful state, Sujatha is one of the first who wants to join. However, she is thwarted by Kumudu, who feels she will disobey the leaders at the crucial time. The first inkling of trouble comes when Palitha, a boy from Sujatha’s village, is killed after he tries to speak to her of something that is frightening him, something to do with Giniralla. Even so, Sujatha tries to justify this by the worthiness of the cause-“That cause is so worthy; the needs of the poor are so urgent, that even killing is justified.” It is only when her mentor and supporter, Father Basil, is killed in the name of the cause, that the atrocity of it all strikes home, and Sujatha is torn apart by the mercilessness of the group she has joined. Life goes on and Sujatha leaves university and begins a career as a journalist. She begins to get wind of a terrible conspiracy afoot, to ‘cleanse’ the city of Colombo, and knows that it is connected to Giniralla. An investigation into the movements of Kalinga, now a cabinet minister, points to a plan that is as horrific as the purge of Phnom Penh. When a stranger tries to contact her with information of this, he is killed before she can speak to him. A friend of hers is mistaken for her, and also killed. Terrified, she flees the city with Mithra, who has returned from studies in Australia, with a Master’s degree and a new brace on his leg. They escape to Tangalle and experience a short lived bliss which is shattered by the arrival of Kumudu, who wants to warn Sujatha that her elimination has been ordered by Kalinga. They flee the conspirators again, narrowly escaping detection. Then
they are contacted by Harith, who claims to have discovered something
like a concentration camp in Yala that is connected to Giniralla.
It is only when they all arrive at the camp to investigate, that
they discover they have walked into a trap, straight into the arms
of the power hungry maniac, Kalinga. |
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