CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

The Old Press and the New - a Time for Change of Paradigm

R Chandrasoma

The English-language newspapers of Sri Lanka have long operated on the supposition that a forced objectivity in viewing the living current of contemporary events is the hallmark of professional excellence. Doubtless there is a need to clarify and expand this statement which some might see as too sweeping a generalization.

The bulk of the people of this country constitute a cultural underclass with standards of probity and ways of doing things that the affluent West would deem as wayward, or indeed, devious and corrupt. They profess a religion and speak a language that the sophisticated outsider sees as quaintly anachronistic and ill-suited to the dynamism and objectivity that characterize the modern world. This dissonance forces a stark choice for members of the Journalistic Profession. It concerns the modality of reportage - of the adoption or rejection of ruling paradigms. Do they adopt the foreign paradigm?

A paradigm that is not merely Western and Christian but is contemptuously adversarial in dealing with the puzzling complexities of political evolution in this part off the world? Alternatively, do they practice their profession as embedded elements in the predominant culture of the land they live in? We are not speaking here about fair comment on the wheeling and dealing of corrupt politicians or their acts of asininity that outrage the public. We are speaking of the 'deconstruction' of the local political scene from the point of view of a supercilious and haughty outsider - one who has accepted the foreign paradigm of 'look down reportage' as rightful and axiomatic in the practice of his craft.
Before we go further, let me illustrate this perspectival conflict with a revealing example.

In contemporary Sri Lanka, 'Sinhala Extremism' (as reported in the English-Language Press) is a phenomenon that is much discussed and universally reviled. This is a conspectus that has built up over the years through the adoption a framework of understanding that is quintessentially foreign and 'external' in genesis. The ordinary people of this country - the Sinhala-Buddhist majority - see nothing 'extremist' or dangerously destabilizing in the assertion of their rights at a crucial moment in history when the work of cultural destruction is seen everywhere. Theirs is a plaintive cry for a gathering of forces to counter this destruction that has the covert approval of those who are supposed to be their own elected leaders.

How can Sinhala nationalism - the genuine expression of the anxious concern of a beleaguered race that finds its position systematically undermined - be of the kind that the bomb-throwing Prabhakaran exemplifies? How can the JVP and the JHU that work conscientiously for the strengthening of a majority identity based on consensus be regarded as a 'threat' to the political stability of Sri Lanka? They are certainly a threat to the déclassé lumpen-intelligentsia that set the tone in the majority of the English-language newspapers currently published. They are also poison to the foreigners and tie-coat toadies that - until recently - wielded absolute power in our country.

The language of this skewed political discourse is revealing. We often hear (and read) expressions such as the 'Southern Consensus' or that the 'Sinhala South' must get its act together if perdition is to be avoided. Is there a division of the country into a 'Sinhala South' - often demonized as inhabited by a pack of blinkered fools - and the more enlightened part of Sri Lanka that sees sweet reasonableness in the demands of the Tigers in the North and East? This is a supreme example of 'deconstruction' as practiced by journalists and their high-powered political friends. There is one Sri Lanka and its political posture is indefeasibly rooted in the wishes of its dominant autochthons. We have a problem with separatists and murderers in the North and East. That a comparable 'southern problem' exists is a vile invention of the English-language newspapers of this country.

Adverting to the recent presidential election, it is dumbfounding to find that the successful candidacy of a 'Southerner' was a problem for what might be called the 'denationalized press' About a week before the polling day, a well known English Daily had a banner headline reading 'Must we have a Fool as the President?'. The author was a notorious journalistic 'Koha' - welcomed as a contributor across a slew of journals and magazines despite the repetitive anti-Sinhala-Buddhist drivel that was his specialty. Indeed, it was his pertinacity and hardihood in propagating the myth of Sinhala-Buddhist extremism that won him the admiration of his like-minded peers. Let us give another example of this pathological contempt for Sinhala leaders that have the misfortune of standing outside the charmed circle of the Anglicized ruling elite.

A Sunday Newspaper renowned for its glitzy pictures of half-naked women had a headline that had a salutary and numbing message for the supporters of the current President - 'Prabhakaran elects the New President. Period. The puzzling word 'period' means 'full stop' or 'no room for argument'. This 'Koha n. sp.' - famous for his diatribes against the Sinhala Buddhists - had arrogated unto himself the role of supreme adjudicator and deigned to spit in the face of the Sinhala majority that had voted in the New President.

At the risk of overburdening the reader with a surfeit of examples, let us take the 'cause celebre' that currently engrosses the attention of the elitist warriors of the Fourth Estate. It is the supposed disenfranchisement of thousands - or even hundreds of thousands - of voters who would have turned things the other way given the chance. This is a factitious hypothetical - a 'cock and bull story' in vulgar parlance. If the hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers in the Middle East had been granted their legal right of franchise, the Friend of the Tigers would have been politically destroyed for ever. It is this sickening asymmetry of coverage that stands as the hallmark of the denationalized English-Language Press that has usurped the power of authoritative comment in Sri Lanka .

The slanting of news and tendentious myth-making to spoil the image of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority of this country are not the only charges that can be leveled against the ruling journalistic establishment. For long years, the technique of exclusion was used as a means of chipping away at the foundations of a revanchist Sinhala-Buddhist enterprise. To the ruling Western-Christian elite, this was indeed the bogey-man, the feared emergence of untutored rustics as the rulers of this country.

A coalition was formed between the rulers and business-kings on the one hand and Pilgrims of the Fourth Estate on the other to prevent the 'barbarians' breaking through. In pursuance of this aim, no Sinhala-Buddhist Nationaalist was allowed to disseminate his 'subversive' views in the national newspapers. A few mavericks of the Sinhala-Buddhist camp were allowed to display their 'wares' as a feint or gimmick to reveal their untenability or even idiocy.

In contrast to this studied reticence, the Anti-Sinhala-Buddhist brigade not merely had a formidable presence in newspapers, its point of view constituted the 'paradigm' or prism through which events were viewed and changes analyzed. Any Sinhala-Buddhist viewpoint was subject to the censorship of this entrenched enemy.

How did this sorry state of affairs come to pass? - a state of affairs that has deformed history and robbed the majority race of its rightful place in the post-independence history of this country? Two things conspired to effectuate this debacle. The first was the post-independence rise of an outward-looking Christinized elite to rulership in a predominantly Buddhist country. Conscious of its anomalousness, this ruling elite had a sense of cultural embattlement and sought ways and means of preventing the rude masses from overthrowing an order that they regarded as the sure bulwark against jealous anarchists drawn from the lower classes - the Sinhala-Buddhists of the rural hinterland.

Let us look at the second factor - the role of the English-language Press. This press was dominated by lackeys of imperial power in the decades before independence and continued (after independence) to view with disdain the grass-roots populism that was gathering momentum. The year 1977 - the year of JRJ's victory - marked an historic turning point. If we disregard the brief interregnum of Mr D B Wijetunga, the period from 1977 to the 2005 may be aptly described as the decades that saw a renaissance of imperial seigniorage and a creeping surrender to the fissiparous forces that were quelled in the brave years following the departure of the colonialists.

Today, foreigners bestride our land and we need their warrant to do things that a free country would regard as unarguably parochial. Armed separatists issue threats to a cowed leadership that looks outside rather than within to gain the moral strength to counter a growing and deadly menace. We are no longer a free country thanks to the sycophantic toadyism and fear of the foreigner that the likes of JRJ, CBK and RW displayed in ample measure.

It would be going too far to suggest that the largely Christian and denationalized journalists of the English Language Newspapers of Sri Lanka are a mere appendage of the aforementioned Unholy Triumvirate. None the less, their complicity cannot be gainsaid. They played a heroic role in destroying the national spirit of this country. Under a new president - a nationalist and a man from the South - let us hope that a new generation of patriotic journalists will reverse the damage done by their bigoted and lackluster predecessors.

20.12.05

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