Rohana R. Wasala, in The Island, 7 & 8 July 2011
The Sinhala word ‘jathiya’, has been rarely used as an exact equivalent of the English word ‘nation’ which, in terms of its modern meaning, refers to all the people living in a country with their own government. Nowadays, however, ‘jathiya’ is occasionally used in the same sense without any ambiguity, for example, in a sentence like: “janadhipathi jathiya amathai” (The President addresses the nation), in which ‘jathiya’ embraces all Sri Lankans as citizens of one country. But ‘jathiya’ usually means ‘race’. The English term ‘nation’, also used to mean race originally. It entered the English word stock somewhere between 1250 and 1300 CE as a derivative from Old French ‘nascion’ from Latin ‘nationem’ meaning “nation, stock, race”; it literally means “that which has been born” from ‘natus’, which is the past participle of ‘nasci’ “be born”. At first ‘nation’ denoted “a body of people with a common language, culture, and history occupying a territory under a government of their own.” Over the centuries, this racial meaning has been gradually replaced by the political notion “all the people living in unity as inhabitants of one territory/country”. The Sinhala term ‘jathiya’ has a similar etymology. It’s a word with multiple meanings: it can mean the same as race, e.g. Sinhala jathiya, Demala jathiya, etc., or kind or type, for example, ekama jathiye sapatthu (shoes of the same type); ‘jathiya’ can denote birth as in “me jathiyedi berinam labana jathiyedi” (if not in this birth, then in the next birth, a phrase that might be used by lovers who pledge undying faith to each other amidst insurmountable opposition); jathiya in some contexts is the same as “caste”. Out of these various meanings of the word ‘jathiya’ the one relevant to this essay is ‘race’. That is the meaning it usually carries. Therefore it cannot always be offered as a translation for ‘nation’ in the non-racial sense, except in a sentence like the one given above. However, today, it’s common knowledge that the adjective ‘jathika’ , though derived from ‘jathiya’ has no connection with its racial meaning; instead it means ‘belonging to or relating to all the people of the country, making it identical with ‘national’. Again, we can talk about a ‘Sri Lankan nation’ in English, but cannot translate the term into Sinhalese as ‘Sri Lanka jathiya’ for then it will mean ‘Sri Lanka race’ which is non-existent. The proper translation of ‘the Sri Lankan nation’ is something like ‘srilanka janathawa’ or simply ‘lankika janathawa’, which are equivalents of ‘Sri Lankan public’ or ‘Sri Lankan people’. It is possible that the political meaning of ‘jathiya’ will gradually substitute for the racial, as in the case of the English word ‘nation’. (Readers please note that I am using the neutral adjective ‘racial’ not ‘racist’) But we call Sri Lankans (or Sri Lankan nationals) ’lankikayo’ (singular: lankikaya) in Sinhala. So, the adjective ‘lankika’ is today completely race-free.
