Issues of Historiography in Sri Lanka

I 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 19^th 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 19^th 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.

Dr. Charitha Herath

Senior Lecturer at the University of Peradeniya

Writer can be reached via charith9@yahoo.com

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