have discussed some theoretical positioning on history and on historiography in
my previous column and I am going to focus another important section of it in
this week. As we experience in our day-today lives the importance of the
subject of history remains foremost and central to many issues that we prioritize
today. In particular, the ethnic issue that we all were engaged with, either
inclusively or exclusively according to our standings on the issue, has been a
part of the historiographical process of our PAST. The official stand of the sort
of narratives, established as ‘state approved histories’, has filled a main
part of the ethnic tensions between communities from 19th century on
words.
The
role of historian, though we have some accepted definitions in many
dictionaries and though they don't know their importance in sometimes, becomes
a crucially significant profession in the society today. As mentioned by Eric
Hobsbawm in his book, On History this profession has its own dynamics which are
rather different from many of other social sciences. He says the “though history should be based on ‘facts’
and it should be investigated the somewhat ‘real’ things on a given temporal and spatial
context, it should maintain a central position between ‘establishable fact and
fiction. Further, it should be in the central position on the studying process
of historical statements based on evidence and not only who are subject to those
evidence but also who are not’ (p vii).
As
an outsider to the professional authority of the subject of history; but as a student
who has had continuous interest on it, I would like to discuss couple of issues
which are either related to subject of history or to the process of writing Sri
Lanakn history.
First
issue is on the intellectual developments of historiography in colonial Sri
Lanka. As Prof PVJ Jayasekara interestingly places it, unlike in Indian
experience, our process of historiography was not transformed into a new or a
radical position with the challenges that we faced at the time. Further, we had remained as an ‘obedient
subject’ to the Western civilization in many ways including creating the
historical narratives in the way which colonial empires wished. According to
Prof. PVJ Jayasekara “ The Sri Lankan writings on the British
colonial encounter have remained, except for a few isolated attempts on
peripheral aspects, within the paradigm set by the European historiography of
colonialism”. (Confrontations with Colonialism
P xx). This inclusivity of ‘writing within the framework of Europeanism’ on Sri
Lankan past mainly relates with the theoretical and philosophical ground of the
West in the 19th century. The intellectual domination to the
positivism and the scientific methods in one hand and the so-called modernity
based on the roots of Enlightenment with the assumption that the human
controlled the universe by means of reason, on the other hand were considered
as the conceptual pillars of this project. Though the hidden aim of colonialism
related to the interests of the dominant class of the empire’s capital ( In
this case interest of London), the public face of it was colored with the idea
of ‘civilizing the subjects’ in the Eastern colonies such as Sri Lanka.
Academic
practice of historiography in Sri Lanka mainly follows above ‘rationalistic
approach to construct the discourse on their past’ and the historical
imagination, mainly has taken one-dimensional path. It was, therefore, obvious
that almost all the academic and intellectual practices on documenting history
on colonial period have been operated in that line. A leading intellectual on the subject, Dr
Colvin R de Silva’s in his famous study, Ceylon
Under British Occupation recognizes that the ‘colonial project’ was a mission,
which ‘unified’ the land (Ceylon) by overthrowing the Kandian Kingdom. He uses
the same conceptual frameworks of western civilizational vocabulary on the
‘progress’ of in terms of the colonial strategies. It is correct to say that
many later researchers followed the same footpath in the process of writing
colonialism and colonial history.
The
Second issue which I think would be important to see is the ideological
positioning of this positivistic historiography projects suggest to the future
developments of the country. The instrumental arrangements such as ‘ethnicity’
and ‘nation – state’ and the template
that the nation-state argument suggests in order to make a ‘civilized form of
government’ made two considerable justifications in state making endeavors. The
first assumption that the nation-state argument made was that there was a link
between the new format of government and the ethnicity and the second
assumption was to force forgetting the ‘differences within the communities’ in
the colony.
The
third issue I would like to bring into discussion relates with the ongoing
debate on the construction of history and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. I think
there is a very interesting problematic
that we can see in this issue. There is one
section of the intellectuals’ in the country who reject colonial project of
rationality and modernity but try to protect colonial product of ‘nation-state’
template. The other section of intellectuals who reject the nation-state
template but try to protect the colonial project of rationality as a universal
product.
Getting
deep in to this debate needs more careful reading on the process of
historiography in post colonial Sri Lanka