Fw: WHICH HISTORY IS TAUGHT IN SRI LANKA SCHOOLS
Sinnathurai Srivas
The history debate: Which history?
By Tisaranee Gunasekara Financial Times 6 August 2025
“The story you tell
eventually, as a professional historian, is not just what you find in the
documents. It is not just the facts. It has a lot to do with your moral
positions, your ideological orientation, the time in which you write, and your
personality. They are all factors that influence the story you finally tell.”
Ilan
Pappé (History is relevant: The Israeli New History and its legacy)
If
our future is to be different from that bloody past, one obvious starting point
is how that past is interpreted and narrated
It took almost four
decades and tens of thousands of deaths for Sri Lanka to adopt a language
policy matching national and international realities. Sinhala and Tamil are
official languages, English the link language. There’s political and societal
consensus that the Sinhala Only policy of 1956, which relegated Tamil to
secondary status and turned English into the preserve of a privileged few, was
a pivotal error.
Only a miniscule minority on the Sinhala-Buddhist extremist fringe oppose this
broad consensus. Yet it is their version of history that is being taught to
Lankan students as History in the Grade 11 textbook.
Take the section
dealing with the Government of SWRD Bandaranaike, titled 1956 Election and the
Social Change: “It is believed that a social revolution was made by that
government because several new forces were rallied round Mr Bandaranaike to
follow a policy of valuing the native language, religion, and culture… Even
after obtaining independence, English language held a special position and it
became problematic for the vernacular scholars. Because of that, those who
rallied round the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna had already accepted Sinhala naming
(sic) as the state language as a policy (sic)… During his administration, the
policy that valued the nationality (sic) and the attempt to solve the unsolved
problems of the general public were significant landmarks”
(https://govdoc.lk/view?id=7119&fid=6417fc32c433c – emphasis mine).
In this version of history, native (desheeya in the original Sinhala text) is a
synonym for Sinhala; native language is Sinhala, native religion is Buddhism,
and native culture is Sinhala-Buddhist culture. Vernacular (swabhasha) is also
Sinhala, so is nationality (desheeyatvaya). Since Sinhala is the only native
language, Sinhala Only was the right policy. Tamil, like English, is non-native
and thus deserving of secondary status or none.
In 1956, another path had been possible: making Sinhala and Tamil official languages
and keeping English as an essential link language. That path would have created
generations of trilingual Lankans able to understand and engage with each other
and the world. After all, linguistic parity was accepted by all major political
parties and leaders, including SWRD Bandaranaike and his SLFP, until 1953.
Sinhala Only was bitterly opposed not just by the Tamils but also by the left.
The most prescient warning about the future awaiting us along this path of
linguistic discrimination was made by Dr. Colvin R. de Silva during the 1956
parliamentary debate on Official Language (Sinhala Only) Bill. “Do we want an
independent Ceylon or two bleeding halves of Ceylon…? One language, two
nations; two languages, one nation.”
None of this feature in the history taught to Grade 11 students. Instead, they
are told that vernacular scholars wanted Sinhala Only; SWRD Bandaranaike
enacted it. End of story. There was no opposition to Sinhala Only, no demand
for language parity, no Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact, no 1958 riots, no
language issue let alone an ethnic problem.
This conflation of Sinhala-Buddhist with national (desheeya) in the Grade 11
history textbook is not incidental or accidental; it is the framework within
which history is interpreted and narrated. Take, for example, this section:
“Because of the establishment of Buddhist schools and pirivenas, a religious
younger generation that understood the value of culture emerged. Among those
youths, there were true sons of the motherland and a group of national writers
who highlighted the greatness of indigenous culture. Leaders like Anagarika
Dharmapala, Walisinghe Harischandra, Piyadasa Sirisena, and John de Silva…used
different types of media to arouse patriotism and nationalism among the natives.
As a result…a movement to kindle patriotism among the natives emerged…” (ibid).
Here too, national, native, nationalism, and indigenous are coterminous with Sinhala-Buddhist. ‘The national writers’ hailed as ‘true sons of motherland’ were all Sinhala-Buddhists, and their ‘nationalism’ was more anti-minority than anti-British. Their patria was not a pluralist Lanka but a Sinhala-Buddhist land where minorities were not co-owners with inalienable rights but guests here on sufferance. The patriotism they sought to kindle was fidelity to that Sinhala-Buddhist land, its religion and culture. That exclusionary patriotism would be used by opportunistic politicians from SWRD Bandaranaike to the Rajapaksas, to our common peril.
Frogs in the well
‘Sinhala Only’ sowed
the first seeds of the long Eelam War. It also deprived many Sinhalese of an
opportunity of learning an international language, miring them in ignorance and
parochialism. This paucity of knowledge and narrowness of vision are evident in
the content and composition of the Grade 11 history textbook.
The textbook devotes considerable space to attempts by British rulers to
disseminate Christianity in Lanka. “Several foreign organisations that came to
Sri Lanka during the British reign started spreading Catholicism in the
country. They are called as (sic) missionary organisations.” This is followed
by a list of the missionary organisations.
The problem is that none of the missionary organisations so listed were
Catholic ones. All of them belonged to various Protestant denominations. None
of them spread Catholicism; they spread various types of Protestantism starting
with the Church of England version.
Two of the names on the list should have clued the writers, editors, and
overseers of the textbook to this vital mistake: Baptists and Wesleyans. Surely
the names would have indicated that these missionary societies were not
Catholic but Protestant?
Surely the writers, editors, and overseers of the textbook know enough history
to figure out that imperial Britain was not a Catholic country but a staunchly
Protestant one? After all, Catholics in Britain were legally discriminated
against (including being banned from serving in parliament) until the Catholic
Emancipation Act of 1829. Until 2013, British monarchs and their heirs were
barred from marrying Catholics. Even today, a Catholic cannot become king or
queen of UK.
So what made the compilers of Grade 11 history textbook conclude that the
British colonial rulers tried to spread Catholicism in Lanka? The equivalent
error would have been to say that Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka are spreading
Mahayana in the West.
The charitable
explanation for this ludicrous error is mistranslation. The original Sinhala
version uses the word kithunu; in the English version, kithunu has been turned
into Catholic. But, then, if the translator made a mistake, it should have been
noticed by the Commissioner General and other top officials of the Educational
Publications Department, the panel of editors, the panel of writers or the
language editor. Since none of them did, and the error has persisted through
three editions, the conclusion is inescapable – none of these ladies and
gentlemen know the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Don’t know
and don’t care to find out. Ignorance and parochialism. And they guide future
generations.
Such ignorance of the world can have practical consequences, often deadly ones.
In December 2003, Gangodawila Soma thero went to Russia without winter clothes
and died of cold. After being defeated by Muslim Congress leader MHM Ashraff in
their widely-watched TNL debate on Buddhism, Soma thero exchanged his
anti-Muslim campaign for an anti-Christian one. When he died in Russia, his
disciples called it murder and accused fundamentalist Christians of the crime.
The allegations reached such hysterical levels, a presidential commission was
appointed to investigate the death.
Had Lankans been a little more aware of the world, they might have known that
in Russia, the majority religion is the Russian Orthodox Church. Catholics
comprise only 0.1% of the population and non-Catholic Christians only 0.3%.
There are more Buddhists, Pagans, and Muslims in Russia than Christian
fundamentalists. If the Christian fundamentalists wanted to murder the monk,
they would have invited him to the US or some other country where they are
numerous and powerful and not Russia where they have neither numbers nor power.
Unfortunately, ignorance and parochialism ruled. Anti-Christian hysteria spread
like wildfire, fuelled in the main by Sihala Urumaya of Champaka
Ranawaka and Udaya Gammanpila. Two months after the death of Soma thero, at a
gathering of the Jathika Sangha Sammelanaya, Omalpe Sobhita thero identified
Tiger terrorism and missionary terrorism as the two main and coeval challenges
facing Sri Lanka. He also claimed that the LTTE was a Christian movement. A
series of attacks on churches followed. Since the mobs were unaware of the
vital difference between Catholicism and Protestantism and mainstream Protestant
churches and Charismatic churches, any church became fair game. For example,
one of the targets was the Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Pannipitya, a Catholic
church.
When ignorance is king, such lethal errors become the norm. The lessons taught
by history depends on what history is being taught.
Some of the errors in the Grade 11 history textbook are less dangerous but
equally revealing. The section on the setting up of Buddhist schools does not
mention a single girls’ school. The list of founders of Buddhist schools
contains Henry Steel Olcott but not Marie Musaeus Higgins, the founder of
Musaeus College. The list also changes the gender of Jeramias Dias from female
to male, possibly to fit in with the all-male nature of the list. Those
writing, editing, and overseeing the textbook didn’t know that Jeramias Dias
who set up Visakha Vidyalaya was not a Mr but a Mrs: Mrs Celestina Rodrigo
Dias, relict of Jeramias Dias, and the mother of Arthur V Dias known as kos
mama for his promotion of jak fruits. A simple internet search could have
prevented this embarrassing mistake, but why bother?
Maybe these unpardonable errors stem from the male-centric perspective of the
history textbook which claims, for example, that the leaders of Buddhist
renaissance wanted to “create countrymen who love their country by encouraging
them to value the indigenous culture…” Countrymen, not women. In this
worldview, girls’ schools and their founders are as unimportant as the
difference between Catholics and non-Catholic Christians or the rights of
Tamils and Muslims. Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist and male-centric, this is the
history that is being taught to students who will become voters and citizens in
a couple of years. With such a reinterpretation and depiction of the past, what
kind of future are we heading towards?
From history to future
In 1953, Unit 101
of the Israeli Defence Forces entered the Palestinian village of Qibya and
massacred more than 69 Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of them women and
children.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli-Jewish historian and philosopher, was appalled
by the carnage. “We have to ask ourselves where this youth of ours emerged
from; young people who have no mental inhibitions about committing this
atrocity?” he wrote (Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State). If the
occupation of Palestinian lands continues, he warned, Israeli Jews will turn
into Judeo-Nazis. The ongoing genocide in Gaza proves how prophetic he was.
The question he raised, about how such killers are formed, is a question that
some of the best Israeli-Jewish minds have grappled with over the years. The
consensus is education. Textbooks, how history is taught.
In 1922, 78% of people in Palestine were Palestinian Muslims and 9.5% were
Palestinian Christians. Jews constituted only 11% of the population. Even in
1942, 61% were Palestinian Muslims, 8% were Palestinian Christians and Jews
constituted only 30%. This was the country Zionists would forcibly take over in
1948 to create the state of Israel, reframing it as a land without people for a
people without a land.
This is the history Israeli-Jewish students are being taught, from the first
grade through university. As Israeli-Jewish historian Ilan Pappé states, during
the third year of his undergraduate studies, “I became aware of a kind of
contradiction in the way that history was taught. There was on the one hand the
sense that Palestine throughout the centuries was an empty place… And yet when
we arrived at the end of the BA and we came to the events of 1948, we were
taught that the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948 and that was how the
Palestinian refugee problem was created. And I remember asking one of my
professors, if these people left, who were they when the country was empty. His
answer was something about students who are troublemakers who should know
better” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuvUo3Ub1aY).
Palestinians as aliens who become enemies, non-humans who become sub-humans, a
wholly terroristic people where even babies are terror machines; teach that to
generation after generation, and genocide becomes not just possible, not just
acceptable, but even pleasurable.
We in Sri Lanka are living through the 42nd anniversary of Black July. Chenmani
mass grave continues to haunt us, the last resting place of so many Tamils,
from young student Krishanthi Kumarswami to the unknown child who owned the toy
found buried there. Since 1956, innumerable Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims have
been killed by Sinhala mobs, Lankan forces and the JVP, the LTTE and other
Tamil armed groups, the IPKF and Islamic fanatics. If our future is to be
different from that bloody past, one obvious starting point is how that past is
interpreted and narrated. A history textbook which validates Sinhala-Buddhist
supremacism and hails its many errors as achievement cannot but lead to a
future worse than the past.
So, teach history? Yes. Make it a compulsory subject for O Levels? Why not?
But another question must come first? Which history? History which glorifies
past errors and provide justification for their reproduction? Or history which
can lead us, someday perhaps, to a future less destructive, less bloody?
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