Sri Lanka: What is the language of cricket?

Sat Aug 2 13:09:21 UTC 2008

What is the language of cricket?

Bandula Abeyewardene's (BA) much hesitant response (Island, 7/23/2008)
to Daya Ranasinghe's (DR) reaction to BA's view on the need to teach
English to cricketers, provided more evidence of the colonial
mentality of BA. English like any other language is a tool like a
computer or a typewriter and nothing more.

Who is a black-white? The black-white phenomenon is found in former
colonies, which is a state of mind. This was why Carlo Fonseka had to
engage in a series of debates in the recent past in trying to define
who is a black-white. Whether one knows English (in the former French
or Spanish colonies those two languages) or whether one lives abroad
has no direct connection with it. Recently, I saw a poem written by DR
on a female soldier on guard duty and the reading it gives one goose
bumps of pride and patriotism. A black-white cannot pen such poems. We
know the poems by the Tibetan monk S. Mahinda who was more Sinhala
than the native Sinhalese.

In Mexico, a black-white is called a coconut—brown outside, white
inside. One of the tests one can use in this regard, if he or she is
visiting Anuradhapura from Colombo, is whether he or she gets goose
bumps or a chill running through the spinal chord (the awesome
feeling) at the first sight of the Ruwanvali Maha Seya or standing on
the bund of the Tissa Vawa. Just think of the mental state of some
Marxists who called the King Dutugamunu, a fool for erecting the
Ruwanvali, but take trips to see the pyramids in Egypt!

As a tuition master in English, BA has every tight to promote English
classes. But his mental status is summarised by his word
"embarrassment." Princess Diana had to take tuition to learn how to
speak English. The current U.S. President has trouble in speaking
English despite a Yale education. SWRD had a silver tongue, but could
not read or write in Sinhala. In USA, 40% of college students need
remedial education in reading and writing. Humans have to communicate
and unlike animals they have developed languages. Why is it that in
Sri Lanka not knowing English is an embarrassment?

In British colonies, English was the language of the ruler and those
who acted as translators became powerful and privileged. The colonial
master needed more people able to work in English and a class of
people evolved who learned English and embraced Christianity, the
religion of the master.

Lord McCaulay, in the 1840s in India, formulated an education policy
to create a class of Indians who were brown in colour, but English in
thinking and behaviour. More than Lord Nelson or Cecil Rhodes, it was
McCaulay who helped the continuation of colonialism after giving the
former colonies "independence". We have a class in Colombo,who are
remote-controlled from London or Paris.

When language is power, it is more than a communication tool. At the
time of independence, only 5% of people in Ceylon knew English. This
group mostly living in Colombo or in big cities continued the white
rule with minimum of changes, spatially or structurally, in the
colonial open economy, exporting rubber and graphite and importing
pencils and erasers. The attempt to change this policy began only
after 1956, which BA brands as a mess and a sin. Poor people had no
means to learn English.

Only rarely, people learn languages for the fun of it. They learn it,
if it benefits them. Taxi drivers and Colombo Ayahs or lads at tourist
sites use it. Thus, in those days people learned how to sign a
document in English because otherwise there had to be a witness to his
or her non-English signature. Today people learn Japanese or Hindi for
the market value of it. In USA, parents force their children to learn
Chinese, Russian, Hindi or Japanese and not German or French as was
done in the past. Nurses going to USA needs English as patients they
meet cannot speak Sinhala. That is why Tamil doctors in Colombo should
know Sinhala not because of discrimination, but to earn money. If
Ajantha Mendis wants to learn English or Hindi, it will be his
decision and not others. Herein lies the mental status problem of BA.
He should not be the person to decide or suggest it. I have no doubt
that Mendis tried to learn English at school, but could not due to
lack of competent teachers or not being able to afford private
tuition.

In the 1936 Olympics when several black Americans won gold medals,
Hitler said they ran fast because unlike the white athletes blacks
were closer to monkeys. The ability to become a good cricket player or
a good dancer-drummer or a musician has nothing to do with one's
language skills. Some people learn so many languages effortlessly.

If the fans of Mendis want to communicate with him and Mendis also
wants to communicate with them in return, they will find a solution of
their own. I knew a Commissioner of Marketing who did not know English
but used his deputy as the English link. To expect to start English
classes as part of training in cricket is to devalue the skill of them
as cricketers and to try to inject one's inferiority or superiority
complexes on to otherwise innocent army-serving, village-born poor
youth by a Colombo black-white. Even in the legal field we find
attempts to convert into English medium as if that will help the legal
empowerment of the poor.

Just like learning a language is a matter of economics, leaving Sri
Lanka for alternative life in another country is a matter of
economics. Most people who live abroad did so due to economic reasons
or due to the corrupt political system in Sri Lanka. They did not have
pastures in Sri Lanka in the first place to look for 'greener
pastures'. They were like Jinadasa in Gamperaliya who went to Sinhale
looking for work. Those who live outside Sri Lanka are in a better
position to help Sri Lanka to help change it from a corruption and
criminal paradise to a land where peace and prosperity is possible so
that those who went abroad can return with a pension because they will
not be under the control of corrupt politicians or officers.

Providing equal opportunity without the necessary support is
meaningless as we see in Sri Lanka today. People like BA can talk, but
even within a radius of 20 miles from Colombo there are few schools
that have teachers qualified to teach English as a second language.
With a colonial drawback of laughing at a person who makes a mistake
while speaking English (this does not happen in making mistakes in
learning Hindi or French), it is much better that Mendis speaks about
his cricket skill in his mother tongue than in broken English without
making his cricket skill secondary to his newly acquired "talent" in
English.

Intentionally or unknowingly BA has done a disservice to village boys
who have talent not blunted by an English barrier. Village boys play
cricket with kaduru balls found at the edge of paddy fields with
polpithi bats. They will never go to Royal, St. Thomas' or to an
international school to learn cricket, because Lord McCaulay did not
play cricket. They say the language of science is mathematics, but the
language of cricket is not English. Fluency in English does not make
one a world class cricketer, but talent and skills one is born with
and sharpened.

C. Wijeyawickrema, USA

http://www.island.lk/2008/08/02/opinion1.html

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