It’s a
Sunday morning. I cannot explain why I thought of reposting this column I wrote
almost a year ago, of some of the people
who influenced my life, with their own craving for exploring what is beyond our
physical reach with their mind’s eye. I remember those Sunday mornings of
almost forty three years ago, well spent...sitting at a corner table at ‘The
Lion House’, listening to them explore their world... our world to be.
I do not
know why I thought of Franz Fanon and his 1952 book that carries my column
title today. I recollect picking up an English translation of Fanon’s work in
French (Peau noire, masques
blancs) some time
in early 1970’s from my friend late Ranjith Gunawardena, then lecturer in
English at the Keleniya University. He had it on the table beside him sipping a
cup of tea at the Lion House in Bambalapitiya and was kind to lend me that copy
upon my asking. Ranjith was a student of our mutual guru in English late Reggie
Siriwardena, and won our additional regard and respect as he was also well
versed in the work of Spanish, African and Latin American writers of the time.
Melting
pot
The Lion
House, the elite teashop also known for its bakery products (mostly the Teabanis, Chinese
rolls, the cutlets) and the lime juice, was a melting pot of ideas where
discussions on issues literary, political and social took place each evening in
the decades of 1950s, 60s and the 70s. There was a band of learned university
dons, social activists, some Editor s
of newspapers and journalists who gathered there after a day’s work (and on Sunday mornings) to engage
in vibrant discourse on matters that mattered, the world and our own nation. I
guess it could also be called the meeting place of teetotallers, where saner
discussion was the hallmark. I remember the large glass panels that made the
Lion House special. Passers-by saw the inside of the teahouse through those
clear-glass doors. It was perhaps the owner’s way of telling the world that
there was an air of open and transparent discussion and that the most sought
after minds in the country were engaged in.
Right
across the street from the Lion House stood another monument at the entrance to
Bullers Road (now Bauddhaloka Mawatha). That was an unusually designed marvel
of a glittering advertising signage for one of the popular Sri Lankan shoe
companies of the time. It was like the ‘thing’ in the pre-electronic era of
advertising signage with thousands of little shiny metal pieces so arranged on
hooks to highlight the brand danced in the wind, creating an audio-visual
experience for those who passed that signage and a visual experience for those
who saw it from afar.
Reality
check
That to my
mind stood as a reminder of the world of commerce and as a reality check of
what was happening around those that engaged in discourse on matters
philosophical. I remember those good old days when we as cub university teachers
used to hang out at the Lion House occupying a table at a far-corner to eaves-drop
on the many words of wisdom spoken by those doyens of intellect of the yore.
I must
have thought of Fanon and those ‘Lion House’ days for I read that the recent atrocity
of the killing of innocents in Toulouse was carried out by a 23 year old
Frenchman of Algerian decent. I recollected that two of Fanon’s other work that
touched on the plight of Algerians in living in France in the Post World War II
era. They were “A Dying
Colonialism” (1959) and “Wretched of the Earth”(1961) and thought that there could be
much beyond what some analysts saw as the reasons for the most irrational
action of this young man.
I read the book I borrowed from Ranjith with much interest
and learnt much about Franz Fanon and that ignited my interest in reading most
of his other work at the time. Fanon (1925
– 1961) according to a Wikipedia account was a “Martinique-born French psychiatrist,
philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in
the fields of post-colonial studies, critical
theory and Marxism. Fanon is known as a radical existential
humanist thinker on the issue of decolonization and the
psychology of colonialism. Fanon supported the Algerian struggle for
independence and became a member of the Algerian National Liberation
Front. His life and works have incited and
inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four
decades.”
Equal
citizens?
Much of
Fanon, the psychiatrist’s work was dedicated to seeking answers to why
Algerians who fought in World War II as part of the French army felt alienated
within French society, while living within a domain of declared rights as equal
citizens. In the study that led to
the publication of “Black Skin White Masks”, as the Wikipedia account
states “Fanon uses psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theory to explain
the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that Black people experience in a
White world. He speaks of the divided self-perception of the Black Subject who
has lost his native cultural originality and embraced the culture of the mother
country. As a result of the inferiority complex engendered in the mind of the
Black Subject, he will try to appropriate and imitate the cultural code of the
colonizer. The behaviour, Fanon argues, is even more evident in upwardly mobile
and educated Black people who can afford to acquire status symbols.”
Taking my mind back to
the ‘Lion House’ days I wonder why most of our discussions on issues now are
limited to domains that are either immediate or near future. We seem to learn
little from history and the happenings of the past. At a time when the world’s
nuclear powers and some aspirants are meeting to determine the future course of
how those destructive armaments are to be handled, should there not be
discussion among our learned intellectuals about what that should be? Should we
not be focusing the attention of the world’s and nation’s leaders drawing from
the many experiences that are documented or demonstrated, that alienating
peoples, subjugating their belief systems and creating oppressive social
environments can lead to even more disastrous human tragedies and can serve to
be softer weapons of mass destruction.
Disarmament
I think it is
appropriate here to revisit the call made by the 14th Dalai Lama on
the issue of nuclear disarmament of “by far the greatest single danger facing
humankind - in fact, to all living beings on our planet - is the threat of
nuclear destruction. I need not elaborate on this danger, but I would like to
appeal to all the leaders of the nuclear powers who literally hold the future
of the world in their hands, to the scientists and technicians who continue to
create these awesome weapons of destruction, and to all the people at large who
are in a position to influence their leaders: I appeal to them to exercise
their sanity and begin to work at dismantling and destroying all nuclear
weapons. We know that in the event of a nuclear war there will be no victors
because there will be no survivors! Is it not frightening just to contemplate
such inhuman and heartless destruction?”
On the same token it
must be impressed upon leaders of the world of the danger of the soft weapons
of destruction at play everywhere in out midst. Fanon’s work focused on the
scenario of the immediate aftermath of the World War II and not much seem to
have changed deep within the human conscience in dealing with these issues. The
answers are certainly with genuine attempts at treating all human beings with
equal dignity regardless of their importance in the scheme of things of those
seeking power, wealth and access to resources. There can not be any “Wretched
of the Earth” or those in “Black Skin White Masks”.
Humanist
We must all be one and
need to work for the good of all regardless of who we are or what we are for we
are all members of this one human-race.
I remember our Guru
late Reggie Siriwardena reading excerpt from Charles Dickens’s ‘Great
Expectations’ during one of his university English fiction teaching sessions.
He read a passage from the text of how Pip, the little orphan boy was sent up
the chimney filled with black soot and there were tears flowing from his eyes
wetting his entire face during that reading.
And then there was his
poem ‘Colonial Cameo’ of the encounter at Missionary school when his fellow
English speaking students mocked his mother when she bade him goodbye in
Sinhalese, the language she knew…
“My mother pretended not to
hear that insult.
The snobbish little bastards! But how can I blame them?
That day I was deeply ashamed of my mother.
Now, whenever I remember, I am ashamed of my shame.”
Such was the love of
that man for humanity and what that must account to be. Need I say more?
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