Lit Up

 

Image Credit: sashatarotdiva

Looking at policies of colonization, a force which has carved up the world for 500 years, we can see that its policies trapped those affected in the reactive roles of victimization long after colonized countries have officially attained their independence. 

Lord Macauley articulated the policy underlying colonization very well in an infamous but never delivered Address To The British Parliament on 2nd February, 1835: 

‘I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage. And therefore I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture: for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture, and they will become what we want them to be: a truly dominated nation’. 

It is interesting to see here the ‘double speak’ in Macauley’s simultaneous  apparent objective respect for the population of India, and their culture, which he overtly seeks to aggressively dismantle and replace. He sees India’s wealth, the high moral values and calibre of the people, as being intrinsically connected to their spiritual and cultural heritage and their education system.

It is especially important to understand how crucial education is to the process of developing national self-esteem. This is why Macauley advises that it should be systematically targeted to be broken down, from a colonial viewpoint. It is clear that this policy was implemented in Sri Lanka as well. India retained English as a major language, however, and has used it masterfully as a link language in the decades since. 

In contrast, Sri Lanka demoted it, in an understandable reaction to the colonization it was used to implement, and thus lost access to the capacity of English to itself be utilized. It is a useful instrument, and not just a (two-edged) sword, but an instrument of mass creation. We can, just as systematically as it was used to colonize us, use intelligent thinking to decolonize this policy, which is so clearly (and repugnantly) expressed in Macauley’s viewpoint. We can reverse the dynamic he outlined to restore and renew ourselves: our self esteem, our culture, our education and our spiritual and cultural heritage. 

Whether that heritage is transmitted accurately, wholistically and inclusively is a matter for the rulers and administrators. Just as every individual decides the terms on which they deal with the world, so each sovereign nation decides their own policy, ideally designed to benefit their people.  

Australia, once a nation which was a dumping ground for convicts and a harsh haven for a few free settlers with no concept of the pre-existing land title of indigenous people, a colony to which some people were paid an incentive to come, has decided to toughen up and be discriminating about the calibre of people they let in through their borders, to benefit from their economic prosperity. People are required to know English, the language spoken by most people in the colonized country, to know facts about the Australian Constitution,  and Australian history. People who serve in public positions are required to show that they are solely citizens of Australia. No dual citizenship, no conflicted loyalties. 

Any English teacher in Sri Lanka will tell you that there is hardly any demand by students to study Literature. English Language in Sri Lanka is seen as a weapon of colonial oppression.  Literature is described, as in many countries in the contemporary world, as a ‘non-essential’ subject: a luxury, an indulgence, a pastime, an irrelevancy. Concerned parents tell their children to focus only on what will benefit their careers. English is not compulsory, it is optional. 

In 1956, Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, presided over a government which passed The Sinhala Only Act, which was designed to dismantle English as the dominant language of instruction in Sri Lanka’s schools and universities, and replace it with the national language in all political and administrative processes. 

Macauley would have recognized the effects, if not the motive behind this. ‘Ceylon’ became ‘Sri Lanka’ (in 1972), called itself the Motherland, and increasingly cut itself off from the English Literature-producing world. Yet English, despite its colonial history of oppression, was in some ways a positive link to the wider world, not just economically but philosophically and culturally. If it were not seen as an advantage, the country would not be experiencing the measurable loss of our talented youth through immigration and ‘brain drain’. To remedy this, the National education system must surely provide locally a vibrant, effective and internationally competitive level of Education, not only in the national language, or languages, but also in the international language, English. 

It is no accident that the few writers of Sri Lankan origin who have been published in English, and who have achieved worldwide recognition for their skills, have been educated or currently live in England, Canada, Europe and Australia. Diaspora writers may be praised outside the country, but they are routinely decried within the country, and a lot of the disparaging comments made of them and their work are clearly often based in petty jealousy. This can be seen as the residual product of the negative effects of second and third generation ‘colonization’ still in action. 

Within Sri Lanka, the relatively few writers in English have had to make an effort of goodwill to positively support each other’s work, to bridge existing divides, and even when they can do that, it is sometimes seen as doing so in a cliquey and tribalist manner, with pointed comments being routinely made about favoured circles of elitism, and cocoons of Anglophile classist privilege, and people operating as gatekeepers to the realms of gold. Envy of those who were able to ‘get out’ (a phrase commonly used here, but usually, in other countries, used by people who are incarcerated) and develop their professional lives and careers combine and conflate with virulent anti-elitism and embittered Marxism in a society which is hierarchical and still quite feudal in some aspects, in thought and structure.

      Divisions have indeed often conquered the great talent and potential that exists in the people of colonized countries. To the degree that they feel personally injured and impeded, people are unfortunately often triggered to wreak their own smallness and damaged condition of mind on their fellow citizens, whose co-existence they begrudge, and whose status and authority they compulsively question. 

An Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to apologise for the country’s history of colonial genocide, because he said Australia was a proud nation with nothing to be ashamed of. And he did so expediently, because he and his party and their policies were supported by enough of the voting population, so he could ignore those who did not support him. 

The White Australia Policy was in place in Australia till the early 1970s. But since then, Australia has become a multicultural nation.  Pauline Hanson, a politician who rose to prominence by decrying the benefits being gained by indigenous people, refugees and migrants, ‘at the expense of true Australians of Anglo/European heritage’, called her political party ‘One Nation’, and promoted her policies of whitening contemporary Australia by being photographed draped in the national flag. 

A national literacy rate of 97% is something that we in Sri Lanka can be justly proud of. But that is literacy in the national language only. A truly global nation which sought to empower its people to operate with success internationally would ensure that their literacy in English was also high.

In New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, in which immigrant families form a large and skilled percentage of the population, the study of English is compulsory. Not just is English compulsory to present at the equivalent of the A-level examinations, but each student’s English results are compulsorily included in their University Admission result - even if English is their second language, or their worst result. Furthermore, English Language and Literature are taught together, not as separate subjects, because they are seen as correlated. Thus a literate, educated and internationally respected employment force is created. Home grown education is seen as lacking nothing. A student graduating from a government-funded State school (called public schools in Australia) will be able to compete internationally in the employment sector in their industry without having to do bridging courses. Bridges, not walls. 

Yet Australia, which calls itself a ‘developed nation’, no longer even has an Arts Ministry in name. You shall know a country’s policies by where it invests its resources. It was the Arts sector: the creative writers, the singers, the actors, the journalists and publishing houses, to whom the government in the last ten years has systemically reduced funding and respect, who responded with greatest generosity to the need of their fellow citizens during the current bushfire disaster. 

Investing in the future means that the future will be shaped by the ideas and beliefs of those who implement government policy. Critical thinking skills, the ability to analyze and evaluate words written in any language, the ability to think logically and write persuasively and coherently, are skills which are respected and rewarded in skilled employment. These are the skills taught in the study of Language and Literature. What can be gained through the loss of an educated population which is trained to think critically? 

When will our educational and cultural mindset become a considered response and not formed by a series of triggered reactions? When will our choices be made objectively, and not in response to historical memory of subjugation: of being corralled and herded like a lesser species to enrich a dominant and colonizing nation? 

That is the point at which we can call ourselves decolonized, upright and free. To use the instruments and tools of English selectively, and to our own advantage, rather than seeing them as weapons used against us, to make bridges to empower ourselves, rather than endure walls designed to divide us, would be the perfect considered response.