by Malinda Seneviratne
Pradeep Jeganathan once told me, "there is no such thing as history". Gananath Obeyasekera said, "there is nothing called history, there are only ‘myth models’." They were both refuting the popular myth that history is a faithful and objective record of the past. They are both right. And wrong. I believe that history is something that is live and that it lives as much in the present and the future as in the past. The correct definition of "history" is "version", but objective or otherwise, versions refer to socially relevant and politically potent things, and these translate into "facts" we have to deal with whether we like it or not. A pertinent and topical example would be the notion of "traditional Tamil homelands", clearly a "version" of history and a myth model of the most pernicious kind. This version is "relevant" politically, not least of all because it is spoken about in the language of terror. In short the associated historiography is alive and therefore politically relevant, historically and otherwise.

This is not an essay on historiography, but rather a commentary on a certain aversion to the discipline. In this sense this is a political commentary, I agree. However, my engagement here is with two textual readings on Jayantha Chandrasiri’s film, Agnidahaya, currently being screened in several cinemas in the country; one by Gamini Akmeemana appearing in the Daily Mirror ("Mastering the intricate art of film making") and the other, brief, but as much an invitation to debate, by R. Wickramasinghe in the Sunday Times ("Step out of history").

Both are engaging reviews of the film and both conclude to a greater or lesser degree that it is unsatisfactory. Akmeemana has a litany of complaints regarding Chandrasiri’s handling of what he believes is the "central plot" of the story. For him, the central theme is "the power of the irrational over reason, or magic versus the mind". Chandrasiri advertises the film thus: "vairaya aadarayata vada ganakamai" (love is thicker than hatred), we should not forget.

For me, although rationality and the intricacies of the psychological factors are issues that are woven into the story, their centrality is unclear. Chandrasiri does not attempt to "establish the magic" (or the authenticity of the gurunnanse’s magical powers). He does not move within a framework that takes "rationality" as a virtue, nor does he seem to believe that people are one-dimensional and necessarily consistent in their engagements, not ideologically, not in terms of being loyal or in cosmological belief. People are ambiguous, frail and gullible, but this does not forbid them to be at times unambiguous in the pursuit of pleasure or single-minded in political resolve. I believe that Akmeemana has failed to understand that cinema has gone beyond that idyllic and indeed romantic age of clinical characters and clear-cut story lines and plots.

Akmeemana believes that Chandrasiri is playing into what he claims is a "Sinhala (middle class?) nationalism" that is nostalgic for "the mythical and pastoral". For me there is nothing mythical about the film. On the other hand, I don’t believe that people in the 21st century are as "skeptical" as Akmeemana believes they are. I shall not dwell on what the story is about beyond the fact that I believe it is an "our" story of the 21st century for the its depiction of the ways in which the political unfolds and for creating a mirror that allows us to take a look at our humanity, with all its flaws, framed in a cultural ethos that those who rant against history are intent on destroying. I’ve elaborated on these points in a review of the film which was published in December. Having said that, I submit that Akmeemana’s reading, although clearly at odds with mine, is nevertheless far more exhaustive in its treatment of detail.

Wickramasinghe’s postulates are brief, as I said, but the complaints are more ideological, both with respect to Chandrasiri’s choices of period and depiction, as well as the very idea of examining the past. He does not seem to be very interested in the film itself, as least not as much as Akmeemana is. He is upset about Chandrasiri "doing history". The title of the review, "Step out of history" might be said to have said it all, but Wickramasinghe does get specific: "When a very small sector (1664) of history is chosen for a film, there’s not very much one could do with it, unless a large budget is sought in depicting huge sets and accompanying hundreds of personnel to go with them as was done with Ben Hur and Cleopatra."

I do not understand this obsession with the year 1664. This film is not about that year. It forms only a backdrop, a setting, a launching pad if you will, to talk about pertinent human things, some of which are not periodisible. Also, why should "history" be about the grand event and the interplay of grand personalities? The past is full of historically significant events and personalities that are not even footnoted in historical narrative. The point is that regardless of earth shattering events, ordinary people still have lives that are lived through these events and, in many ways, in spite of them.

These, however, are the least of Wickramasinghe’s objections. He claims, "Chandrasiri is obsessed with history...it is time he emerges out of this cacoon and looks towards other vistas in cinema," and urges Chandrasiri to "come out of this fixation on history." I believe, as Chandrasiri probably does, that there is much to gather from the past that can help us engage with the present better and, as important, allow us to imagine a better and realistic future. Chandrasiri draws from history, but it hardly obsessed with it. Moreover, in a context where the erasure of history is the key instrument of all the forces intent on destroying us as a people, I believe there is some virtue in dwelling at length on the past.

A simple example would suffice to validate this position. Recently the Social Scientists Association came up with a collection of essays titled "Hybrid Identities". The effort, mimicked by Sucharitha Gamlath on Sirasa TV recently, is to argue that there is no such thing as a Sinhala identity. Regardless of the truth or otherwise of this proposition, the relevant politics is this: there is no questioning of the validity of pure Tamil identity claims (there is in fact an affirming of the same) and those who make such claims are not only armed but have perpetrated and still are perpetrating horrendous atrocities aimed at destroying Sinhala Buddhists.

It is not only anti-intellectual to demand that history or the past be "left alone" or be abandoned, it is politically suspect and indeed is laden with ideological predilection towards the pernicious stand "one ethnicity, one vote" embedded in multi-ethnic, multi-religious characterisations of our society.

This is not a film review, it is a reading of the politics that are evident in film reviews and a commentary of the ideologies that prompt these. About history, about the film about Chandrasiri and his (and other people’s) "obsession" with history, I can do no better, then, than translate a poem written by Monica Ruwanpathirana about Chandrasiri and Agnidahaya:

I too am possessed by this greed you have

for the padlocked trunk of history,

brother.

I am joyful

watching you tunnel your way

into the buried mounds of history,

brother.

I watch

as you with a three battery torch

walk along those tunnels,

brother.

And I wish you strength,

brother,

strength to break through these layers of earth

without lacerating your hands

and without bringing down the mountains.