Where is the funny bone?

I do apologise to Mr. Don. R.Gunatilaka for causing such distress of mind (letter to the editor on 09 February 2008). But I would plead with him to re-consider what he writes.

He writes ‘… Mr. UA holds a funny opposite view that we were not able to expel the foreign invaders from the low country areas for over 300 years because of their superior military technology’. It is not a view whether funny or not that Sinhala kings were not able to expel foreign invaders from the low country for some three hundred years. All the bravery which Mr. Gunatilaka very rightly mentions could not chase them out. Then the ‘funny opposite view’ must be that superior technology permitted these invaders from Europe to occupy the lowlands for some 200 years and the whole country for another 150 years or so.

It is not at all clear what that view is in opposition to. What is the opposite view? That ‘…they (Sinhala Budhists) fought for nearly 300 years to prevent the whole country from falling into European invaders’? I never contested that proposition and except for minor details it is not contestable, in the present sate of knowledge. Then the funny bone must be ‘the superior technology’. I still cannot see what is funny in it, Mr. Gunatilaka’s help notwithstanding. It is a perfectly contestable hypothesis. All one has to do is to deny the validity of that statement with reasonable evidence and logical argument and I will be the first to abandon it. One attempt at stating the view that I am supposed to oppose is that the British took over Kande Uda Rata ‘after deceiving the Kandyan chieftains’. I cannot contest this as I do not know enough to do so but I will take Mr Guantilaka’s word for it. Some one who knows better might pick it up. That event apart, there are 300 years of occupation to explain. There were two rebellions of major proportions in 1818 and 1848 against the British occupation. When people rose against invaders in earlier times from what is now south India, the invaders were expelled, as the invaders had no technology, superior to what the Sinhala people possessed. The British crushed the rebellions with superior technology that went beyond military technology. Then the argument that superior technology prevailed against the most brave onslaughts by Sinhala kings and soldiers is not invalidated. Bravery is no substitute for superior technology. What is funny about all that?

Now can we have a laugh? No stress of mind, eh?