| by Shelton A. Gunaratne
( May 10, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I was a journalist with the Ceylon Daily News from 1962 to 1967. Therefore, I thought I had a reasonable grasp of the mental disposition of the breed of journalists who worked for the English language newspapers in Sri Lanka.
In general, the journalists of the English language press thought they were intellectually and culturally superior to the journalists who worked for the vernacular press. I believe that this mindset is still intact although the political power of the country has shifted in favor of the Sinhala speaking country folk.
However, I have noticed a twist to the old norm: the gradual take-over of the English language press by a new breed of upstart journalists who owe their editorial positions to the country’s political heavyweights. This is particularly noticeable at Lake House, where the Sunday Observer and the Daily News have passed on to this new breed of Sinhala Buddhist journalists blessed by the current Brahmin clan (Bamunu kulaya).
First, these two newspapers have introduced magazine-style sections to promote local literature and to look at foreign literature from a local angle. This is not an entirely bad development except for its poor implementation. For more than two years, they have used the free-lance work of two retired professors to guide the hoi polloi attain literary enlightenment. Readers have begun to yawn because of the monotony of ideas reiterated by the much-respected gurus and their journalist acolytes. The Sunday Observer—with a surfeit of sections labeled Montage, Spectrum, Impact, Magazine and, so on—reminds me of the feature-rich Irida Lankadeepa of the mid-century. Being the property of the public trustee, the Lake House press should be more open to promote the concerns and views of the general public rather than the egocentric views of a selected few.
Second, the English language journalists, who still imagine themselves to be superior to vernacular journalists as in the mid-century despite the twist I mentioned, seem perfectly content with their imperfect English because it is not their mother tongue. If the Chinese and the Japanese can get away with pidgin, why shouldn’t the Sri Lankans? Thus, they try to disparage the English-educated kultur clan of the mid-century whom the English language press served at the time I was at Lake House. The new Sinhala-Buddhist English language journalists seem to dislike corrections and resent reader queries but enjoy their gatekeeper power and position allotted them by the political heavyweights.
With that background, let me discuss the behavior of the current editor of the Daily News. Apparently a Sinhala-Buddhist journalist, Rajpal Abeynayake took over as chief gatekeeper last September. In the summer of 1990, I served as an American coach and intern for the Observer under the editorship of H.L.D. Mahindapala. I naturally had contact with Abeynayake, who was Mahindapala’s features editor. But when I telephoned him from the U.S. after he took over as editor and asked him whether he could remember me, he said, “Not really.” May be, or may not be. I wondered whether his ego had something to do with his memory.
A true Buddhist knows that existence is anatta (asoulity or no self), anicca (impermanence) and dukkha (unsatisfactoriness). But Abeynayake’s latest column published in the Artscope of the Daily News (“Jayantha dives from Pugwash to hogwash,” 8 May 2013) leads me to the suspicion that he has become the victim of self-delusion. (Admittedly, he has better writing skills than most other journalists in the Daily News despite his weakness to dabble with unusual words to impress his readers.)
The entire column, even as a satirical piece, ridicules Jayantha Dhanapala, an English major of the kultur clan of the sixties, well beyond the accepted Buddhist ethical norms relating to Right Speech and Right Livelihood. Dhanapala was at Jayatilaka Hall with me during our undergraduate days in the late 50s and early sixties. I am not defending Dhanapala’s activities as a diplomat or government official. I know Dhanapala no better than I do Abeynayake. However, I have taught journalism for almost four decades to know when ego-centrism of a journalist goes beyond limits.
Abeynayake ridicules Dhanapala who headed the panel of judges for this year’s Gratiaen awards. Abeynayake shoots from his hip: “There is nothing sacrosanct about an ex-diplomat who should have politely refused to judge a literary award if his understanding of the evaluation of literary merit was so abysmally bad.” Abeynayake goes onto ridicule the author of the unpublished winning entry, thus: The language was trite, ridden with the most inane malapropisms and overwrought to the point of making the text appear badly leaden and contrived.
But Abeynayake fails to document this criticism.
Abeynayake concludes his vicious essay, written in a diction that reminded me of the unpleasant sputtering of a rundown tuk-tuk, with a note that brings his egocentrism to a crescendo:
For those who are frothing at the mouth, there is no point complaining to the Editor about this piece; the writer IS the Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper.
Writing to The Nation newspaper on 28 Oct. 2012, reader Shelton Dharmaratne wished the very best of luck to Abeynayake on his appointment as editor in chief of Daily News.
Dharmaratne wrote, “This new appointment provides an opportunity for you to help redirect the course of not only your newspaper but the course of journalism in Sri Lanka, particularly at these trying times. My prayer for you is that the good God would grant you uncommon favor, the wisdom, single-minded devotion and determination to do those things that your recent predecessors perhaps have deliberately failed.”
In my view, Abeynayake has already missed the bus. He should cease making his livelihood by ridiculing and disparaging the lives of his real or imagined adversaries. Instead of stifling opposing points of view, he should open up the Daily News to all.
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