Peradeniya Practices: Face-to-Face in Debate

Michael Roberts

Both Kingsley de Silva and this writer were nourished as undergraduates, and then as teachers, in the History Department at Peradeniya University in the 1950s and 1960s. This atmosphere fostered vigorous debate. The epitome of debate was deepened in the cross-disciplinary setting of the Ceylon Studies Seminar inaugurated on the 10^th November 1968[1] and held within the premises of the Sociology Department (then headed by Gananath Obeyesekere – an initiative in which I was one of the hands and a tradition sustained into the 1980s via the exertions of CR de Silva and SWR De (Sam) Samarasinghe.[2]

In juxtaposition with his own prolific research work, Kingsley de Silva promoted research work on the history and politics of Sri Lanka – with the History of Ceylon (1973) involving many scholars and standing as one testimony to this inspiration. In a context marked – and marred – by internal ethnic strife, it is not surprising that one of the new institutions in which KM de Silva was partnered by Neelan Tiruchelvam & Radhika Coomaraswamy, namely, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, should launch a journal entitled Ethnic Studies Report in the 1980s.

When, in the aftermath of the ethnic riots of 1977 and 1983, Kingsley de Silva produced a book entitled Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-ethnic Societies. Sri Lanka 1880-1985, its editors approached me Roberts for a review. Having taught in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Adelaide since 1977 and having foreseen (in 1976/78) the deterioration of Sinhala-Tamil relations into a condition of armed conflict,[3] my review was critical of some of Professor de Silva’s interpretations in that book. It was (and is) a lengthy appraisal.[4]

This essay in Thuppahi was Kingsley de Silva’s article length response in 1988 within the Ethnic Studies Report.

This essay does not mean that we two, Kingsley and I, are daggers drawn (like some Tamils, some Sinhalese and some Muslims in the island-and-elsewhere).

All of us now have the benefit of over three decades since then spent amidst strife, torment, respites and continued political tensions to reflect on these academic tussles of the 1980s. I have over the years extending from the mid-1980s to the 1920s visited Peradeniya and Kandy often and invariably had chats with KM de Silva at his home or at the ICES. In fact, I presented a talk on the topic “Learning about the Tigers from the Tigers” at the ICES in Kandy on the 8th August 2019 which was chaired by Kingsley.

Kingsley chairng various seminars.

END NOTES

[1] Ironically the first seminar was entitled “Sinhalese-Tamil Relationships and the Problem of National Integration” – an analysis presented by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, a doyen of the Political Science stream and a son-in-law of SJV Chelvanayakam (a genial and astute scholar who was a bosom pal of both Kingsley de Silva (pro-UNP) and HA de S. Gunasekera (pro-LSSP).

[2] The Ceylon Studies Seminar could not have worked without the dedicated work of Mrs Hettiarachchi and Mr Kumaraswamy, respectively secretaries in the Departments of History and Sociology at Peradeniya University, and of Sathiah, the peon operating the cyclostyling machine at the Sociology Department. Its tale has been set out in Michael Roberts, 2018.

[3] I had secured a Humboldt Fellowship to the Sud-Asien Institut, Heidelberg University in 1975-76. Mainline English newspapers were available therein and I was aware of the political ferment among the Sri Lankan Tamil intelligentsia in Sri Lanka and abroad …. and the agitation among Tamil students in London. By 1976 I was also made aware that some Tamil youth were receiving arms training in Lebanon and/or Palestine. My first draft of the article on “Barriers to Accommodation” (1978) was coined in Heidelberg in 1976 and was initially presented at seminars there and at SOAS in London in 1976. Readers are invited to reflect on its pessimistic ending.

There is a ‘comic,’ typically Lankan, vein to this tale. When I presented the seminar at London University, one of those attending was a senior SL Tamil diplomat from the SL embassy. He must have provided a summary of my reasoning to the ambassador Dr Vernon Mendis, who happened to be a Sinhalese scholar with a History Ph. D. While still in UK on my academic visit in the summer of 1976, I was informed that Mendis had conveyed the gist of my seminar to the SL government headed by Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike (Sri Lankan kusu kusu working every which way). At that point I knew that I had a job in Adelaide Anthropology and my intentions were to travel via Sri Lanka in early 1977 in order to gather our family belongings et cetera. So, … I faced the possibility of governmental intervention in Sri Lanka. Should I, then, avoid the island?

Fortunately, Kingsley de Silva was visiting Oxford then. I consulted him face-to-face. He calmed my fears. Pro-UNP he may have been …. but his political sagacity was on the nail. Our family passed through Sri Lanka in January 1977 without mishap ….. and, in the meanwhile, my seminar article was accepted by Modern Asian Studies and appeared in print in 1978. See 1978a “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation,” Modern Asian Studies, 12: 353-76.

END NOTES

[1] Ironically the first seminar was entitled “Sinhalese-Tamil Relationships and the Problem of National Integration” – an analysis presented by A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, a doyen of the Political Science stream and a son-in-law of SJV Chelvanayakam (a genial and astute scholar who a bosom pal of both Kingsley de Silva(pro-UNP) and HA de S. Gunasekera (pro-LSSP).

[2] The Ceylon Studies Seminar could not have worked without the dedicated work of Mrs Hettiarachchi and Mr Kumaraswamy, respectively secretaries in the Departments of History and Sociology at Peradeniya University, and of Sathiah, the peon operating the cyclostyling machine at the Sociology Department. Its tale has been set out in Michael Roberts, 2018.

[3] I had secured a Humboldt Fellowship to the Sud-Asien Institut, Heidelberg University in 1975-76. Mainline English newspapers were available therein and I was aware of the political ferment among the Sri Lankan tamil intelligentsia in Sri Lanka and abroad …. and the agitation among Tamil students in London. by 1976 I was also made aware that some Tamil youth were receiving arms training in Lebanon and/or Palestine. My first draft of the article on “Barriers to Accommodation” (1978) was coined in Heidelberg in 1976 and was initially presented at seminars there and at SOAS in London in 1976. Readers are invited to reflect on its pessimistic ending.

There is a ‘comic,’ typically Lankan vein to this tale. When I presented the seminar at London University one of those attending was a senior SL Tamil diplomat from the SL embassy. He must have provided a summary of my reasoning to the ambassador Dr Vernon Mendis, who happened to be a Sinhalese scholar with a History Ph. D. While still in UK on my academic visit in the summer of 1976 I was informed that Mendis had conveyed the gist of my seminar to the SL government headed by Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike. At that point I knew that I had a job in Adelaide Anthropology and my intentions were to travel via Sri Lanka to gather our family belongings et cetera in early 1977. So, … I faced the possibility of governmental intervention in Sri Lanka. Should I, then, avoid the island?  Fortunately, Kingsley de Silva was visiting Oxford then. I consulted him face-to-face. He calmed my fears. Pro-UNP he may have been …. but his political sagacity was on the nail. Our family passed through Sri Lanka in January 1977 without mishap ….. and, in the meanwhile, my seminar article was accepted by Modern Asian Studies and appeared in print in 1978. See 1978a “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation”, Modern Asian Studies, 12: 353-76.

[4] See Roberts “Sri Lanka:  Ethnic Conflict and Political Crisis, A Review Article,” Ethnic Studies Report, 6: 40-62.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. M.De Silva 1986 Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-Ethnic Societies. Sri Lanka 1880-1985, Lanham: University Press of America.

Michael Roberts 1978a “Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation”, Modern Asian Studies, 12:353-76.

Michael Roberts 1978b “Reformism, Nationalism and Protest in British Ceylon: The Roots and Ingredients of Leadership”, in Rule, Protest, Identity, Aspects of Modern South Asia, ed. by Peter Robb and David Taylor, Centre of South Asian Studies, SOAS, Collected Papers on South Asia No. 1, London, pp. 259-80.

Michael Roberts 1979a “Meanderings in the Pathways of Collective Identity and Nationalism”, in M. Roberts (ed.) Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, Colombo: Marga Publications, pp. 1-90.

Michael Roberts 1979c “Stimulants and Ingredients in the Awakening of Latter-Day Nationalisms”, in Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, Colombo: Marga Publications, pp. 214-42.

Michael Roberts 1979d “Problems of Collective Identity in a Multi-Ethnic Society: Sectional Nationalism vs Ceylonese Nationalism, 1900-1940”, in Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, Colombo: Marga Publications, pp. 337-60.

Michael Roberts 1979e”Nationalism in Economic and Social Thinking, 1915-1945″, in Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka, Colombo: Marga Publications, pp. 386-419.

Michael Roberts 1981 “The 1956 Generations: After and Before, G.C. Mendis Memorial Lecture for 1981, Colombo, Evangel Press.

Michael Roberts 1988 “Sri Lanka:  Ethnic Conflict and Political Crisis, A Review Article”, Ethnic Studies Report, 6: 40-62.

Michael Roberts 2017 “The Early Phase of Sinhala-Tamil Rivalry in Ceylon, 1931-70s,” 14 November 2017, https://thuppahis.com/2017/11/14/the-early-phase-of-sinhala-tamil-rivalry-in-ceylon-1931-70s/

Michael Roberts 2018  “Nationalist Studies and the Ceylon Studies Seminar at Peradeniya, 1968-1970s,” 2 October 2018, https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2018/10/02/nationalist-studies-and-the-ceylon-studies-seminar-at-peradeniya-1968-1970s/