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One Hundred
Tamils
of the 20th Century
K.Kailasapathy
[Nominated by Sachi Sri Kantha,
Japan]
Professor K.
Kailasapathy; Evaluated with his Peers
by
R.S.Perinbanayagam and
Sachi
Sri Kantha
Front Note by Sachi Sri Kantha,
24 December
2008
This year marks the 75th birth
anniversary of Tamil scholar Professor K.
Kailasapathy, the founding President of the then
Jaffna Campus, University of Sri Lanka. Born on
April 5, 1933, Kailasapathy admittedly had a
short life span and died on December 6, 1982. Due
to his political affiliations with the unpopular
Sirimavo Bandaranaike rule from 1970 to 1977 and
politicking for administrative positions,
Kailasapathy (while alive) had his pro- and
anti-constituencies among Tamils. That all
trend-setters in their chosen disciplines cater
to both the pro- and anti-constituencies is an
established fact. And Kailasapathy was no
exception. Some among the Tamil columnists/memoirists
recently have attempted to eclipse the damage
done by Kailasapathy in undermining the
practioners of traditional Tamil scholarship as
antiquated by exaggerating the merits of
Kailasapathy's scholarship. In political pole
climbing contests, Kailasapathy was also not
without blame. Kailasapathy's crass ingratitude
to one of his mentors Prof. S. Vithiananthan has
been placed on record four years ago by
physician-literratur C. Sivagnanasundaram
(Nandhi), who knew the principals somewhat
intimately. This document deserves translation
from Tamil.
I present below
two evaluations. The first (pro-Kailasapathy)
view was from Professor R.S. Perinbanayagam, then
at Hunter College of the City University of New
York. This item, appeared in the Lanka
Guardian of March 15, 1983. Shortly after
Kailasapathy's death, I met Professor
Perinbanayagam (son of Handy Perinbanayagam,
renowned Eelam educationist) at his New York
apartment. For a few hours, we exchanged
information on politics and literature of Sri
Lanka. As of now, this happened to be our one and
only meeting. I was not aware then that he was
intending to contribute this Prof. Kailasapathy
eulogy to the Lanka Guardian. The second
(anti-Kailasapathy) view was from me. After
reading Prof. Perinbanayagam eulogy, I wrote to
Profesor Perinbanayagam, expressing my dissent on
elevating Kailasapathy to the 'only genius'
status in Tamil studies. I don't remember that I
received any response from Prof. Perinbanayagam
for my letter. To remember Professor
Kailasapathy's deeds, I provide below both the
pro- and anti- Kailasapathy views of
evaluation.
Kailasapathy by R.S. Perinbanayagam
(Hunter College of the City University of New
York)[courtesy: Lanka Guardian, March 15,
1983, pp. 17-18]
A life so full of achievement as
Kailasapathy's was not without its critics. Once
when one of his critics made a particularly petty
observation I was moved to remark 'He is the only
genius we have in Tamil studies'. My friend
demurred at genius, but was willing to concede
'He thinks a lot, and reads a lot', about
Kailasapathy. It was not given to him to complete a full
span of life, but within the short time allotted
to him, he was not only a creative thinker and
writer, but had a unique capacity to inspire
others to write and create too. He was able to
revitalise the Tamil literary culture from the
moment he became editor of the Thinakaran,
though he was ably assisted in this task by
various gifted writers and critics.
However, the
vision of a progressive literative produced
locally by the native sons and daughters and free
from the silly romanticism and sentimentalism of
the Tamil writers of the popular Madras journals
and a critical sensibility to nourish it was his
alone. In his student days at Jaffna Hindu
College and Royal College, this vision began to
take shape and it was clear to him that the
emergence of a strong critical tradition was
essential for the vision to be given
reality.
He began to
train himself in the critical tradition of other
literary cultures besides his own and inspired
others to follow suit as well. In these tasks he
was much ahead of his contemporaries and perhaps
even of his teachers. When the opportunity came
his way to put these ideas into effect, he seized
it with alacrity. It was a bold venture in the
late fifties and early sixties for an editor of a
leading Colombo newspaper to publish work that
was decidedly leftist in orientation. But
boldness and the courage of his convictions were
never wanting in Kailasapathy and with this
gesture he launched forth a veritable literary
renaissance in Tamil writing in Sri
Lanka. It is not his administrative and cultural
leadership that will be remembered in the years
to come, however, considerable though his
achievements in this field were. Rather, it is
his own creative work that will be considered, in
many ways as pathfinding ones. His early interest
in the emergence of a critical tradition in Tamil
eventually lead him to write one of the first
books on literary criticism. I believe he also
taught a course on practical criticism for a long
time in both the Peradeniya and Jaffna
campuses.
This work is a
very erudite and sensitive one and is notable for
its capacity to intermarry the Tamil traditions
of critical inquiry with European ones. There is
no slavish imitation of the European tradition,
but nonetheless a clear understanding of the work
of the great George Lucasz is evident. This
breadth of perspective he was to bring to the
tasks of reviewing and criticism that he produced
too. Many writers were assessed by him in many of
his articles and books and though some were no
doubt hurt by his comments, they were rendered
with a full sense of responsibility. Both the
particular judgements that he brought to the work
as well as the general standards that he upheld
are likely to have a lasting impact.
The sense of an
inner discipline and a sureness of touch that one
finds in Kailasapathy's work comes from a
philosophical commitment that he made early in
life. Historical materialism has within it a
capacity to inspire unrealistic utopias and
convert itself into creeds and dogmas. More
significantly however it has generated a certain
attitude to society and social change, to rights
and obligations of society to its members, and
above all a freedom from cant and hypocrisy. In
many many parts of the world today, those who
have been totally or partially touched by this
philosophy of history and methods of analysis are
in the forefront both of literary criticism and
'culture criticism'. Kailasapathy's work too
derives a great deal of its strength and
disciplines from a commitment to historical
materialism. And it could be said that historical
and literary studies in South Asia were crying to
be rescued from the army of soothsayers and
hosanna-mongers by such a discipline and
commitment. He was committed to the modern spirit of
analytical examination of texts and to the
emergence of new forms in writing in Tamil, but
such a commitment was not achieved at the expense
of knowledge and study of the classical
tradition. His familiarity with ancient Tamil
texts was second to none but in analyzing them in
his many writings he was once again to bring not
only a very modern critical sensibility, but also
to demonstrate a skill at socio-historical
analysis that a normal historian could well
envy.
The careful
attention to the contemporary meaning of the
texts, the measured judgement of the available
evidence and an unwillingness to accept the
patriotic judgement of far too many commentators
in Tamil are all evident in his work. Literature
was not an epiphenomenon for Kailasapathy, not
certainly to be read closely for its textual
integrity and left there. Nor did he hope to
'save civilization' by hurting for imagery and
searching for telling metaphors. Literature was
an expression of the ethos of the society in
which it was created and the function of the
critic was to engage in ideological exposure as
well in judgement of literary quality.
While many of
his essays could be cited here, his Tamil Heroic
Poetry alone would suffice. It is ostensibly a
work in comparative literature. Kailasapathy
analyses certain ancient Tamil works here in
comparison to the European (Greek, Irish, Welsh)
bardic tradition and comes to a number of
noteworthy conclusions. In addition, he is able
to make a significant contribution to the
discovery of the socio-historical circumstances
under which these ancient Tamil writings were
undertaken.
The intimate
relationship between the kings of the Tamil land
and the major and minor poets of the time, the
economic and social contexts in which they
functioned and the particular occasions in which
poets wrote/sang their compositions are all
revealed here. One is able to obtain a complete
explanation of the poems themselves as well as
certain features within the poems by the
sociological circumstances that he describes. The
cultivated exaggerations of various kings in
ancient Tamil texts, their emergence as mythic
figures, it turns out, were both a prosodic
convention as well as the fulfillment of a
contractual responsibility between the poet as a
'hired hand' and his royal patron. One can even
go a step further and wonder whether the prosodic
conventions themselves could have arisen in
response to the sociological situation of the
poet itself.
The informed
and original analyses of ancient Tamil literary
culture demonstrated Kailasapathy's remarkable
sociological competence. It was natural that this
perspective and methodology should be used in
other work too. It was indeed so used in nearly
all his works, but two stand out in this regard,
in my opinion. One, Adiyum Mudiyum (Foot and
Head) is a fine philosophical/sociological
analysis of certain Tamil religious texts and
practices. The latter is a very instructive
example of his methodological sophistication. The
terms in the title refer to Root (Adi) and
Crown or Head (Mudi) and become a ruling
metaphor for the analyses of 'substructures' and
'superstructures'.
The root
metaphors, so to speak, are imaginatively related
to a famous Hindu myth where Vishnu and Brahma
contend to discover the ultimate root and crown
of Siva and conclude that Siva is both rootless
and crownless. He writes, 'The story of the
search for head and root, whether it is fully
believed or not, functions as a symbol in our
society's belief system. Various confusions and
shortcomings in our art and literature are the
result of a belief in the idea of search for feet
and heads.'
It is however
in his Valvum Valipadum (Social Life and Religion
among the Ancient Tamils) that one finds his most
original and thought provoking contribution to
the sociology of knowledge. In the preface to
this work he wrote 'I have tried to show that
literary ideas as well as literary forms and
techniques are outgrowths of given social forms.'
It is not only purely literary matters that
concerned him in this work, but the larger gamut
of religio-literary documents of the early
Tamils.
In many ways it
is an exemplary analysis and if translated into
English will undoubtedly obtain a very favourable
response from the international sociological
community. In the first chapter he traced the
origins of the conceptions of god and religion
among the ancient inhabitants of southern India
with the aid of historical/archeological works
and Tamil religio-literary texts. This is
followed by chapters that very coherently
interlace historical and anthropological data
with the Tamil literary texts and tries to
illuminate the latter.
In all of his
work, Kailasapathy tries to rescue Tamil studies
from the mindless chauvinism and a historical
hagiography into which far too many Tamil
scholars had taken it. Not for him the
comfortable self-congratulations of the DMK
school of writers, or the easy essays in
Dravidianist hyperbole and political
partisanship; rather, in the words, he used to
dedicate one of his works to his former teachers,
Prof. K. Kanapathipillai, he continued in his
work 'the traditional culture of the East with
the methodology of the West' and found his
métier in it.
Prof. Kailasapathy Critiqued by Sachi Sri
Kantha, July 10, 1983
Dear Dr. Perinbanayagam,
Hope you won't be surprised to receive this
letter from me. Recently I had the opportunity to
read your article on Prof. Kailasapathy, which
appeared in the Lanka Guardian of March
15, 1983. Sometimes, I get these issues by
airmail, but sometimes they arrive in surface
mail; so only last week, I received the March
issues.
May I make some comments on your article?
It is a thought-provoking contribution and I
appreciate that you had sent it to Lanka
Guardian for publication. However,
(1) For me, it seems that your article
seems to be an eulogistic one; and what was
missing was that you haven't touched some of
the weak points of Kailasapathy's studies. By
omitting this aspect, I feel that you have not
done credit to the stamp of quality which
Kailas was trying to integrate into the Tamil
literature. What happened to the 'literary
criticism' aspect of
Kailas' works? Are they without any flaws? I
hope, certainly not. (2) I question your remark,
'He is the only genius, we have in Tamil
studies.' I personally feel that, it is more
applicable to Fr. Thaninayagam, who contributed
a lot of painstaking work for Tamil studies, on
aspects of his,
a) Organizational ability to
build up an International Tamil awareness.
And Kailas got international recognition only
after participation at the International
Conferences held in Kuala Lumpur, Madras and
Paris.[And, the role played by Kailas and his
co-workers in downgrading the Jaffna
Conference (1974) should not be overlooked.
And he, being a political appointee and an
appendage of Srimavo's government didn't do
good to maintain his integrity as a student
of Tamil studies at this particular
conference. I personally consider this as the
low-ebb of his career.]
b) Contribution to the
educational literature in Tamil.
c) Compilation of bibliographic
work on Tamil studies.
d) Editorial abilities to publish
a reputed, research journal 'Tamil
Culture' for a lengthy period.
May be, since he aligned himself with the
Federal Party in the mid 1950s, he may not be
agreeable to you as a pioneer of Tamil
research How could you miss the pioneering aspects
of Swami Vipulananda? What has Kailas produced,
comparable to Swami's 'Yaal Nool', which
todate stand as the only evaluative piece of
research work on Tamil music? And yo could
remember that Swami, had the scientific
background (with a B.Sc in physics), which none
of the other Tamil scholars have not
had.
Even the
diverse contributions of Vithiananthan, are quite
impressive not to be neglected. In terms of
versatility of scholarship, I feel that
contributions of Swami Vipulananda and
Vithiananthan score high points in the Tamil
studies, than the literary output of
Kailas.
It is a pity
that even scholars of repute, like Prof.
Indrapala have omitted to record the
contributions of Swami, in his chapter on Tamil
literature, in the 'History of Ceylon',
vol.3, edited by K.M. de Silva. He even doesn't
mention the name of Yaal Nool in his
essay. Shame on him! May be that these Tamil
scholars (Kailas included) have neglected the
music literature in Tamil completely, due to
their limited knowledge (or ignorance, if I put
it strongly!) in this art. I consider this as a
glaring piece of omission in the critical
analysis of Kailas too! Has Kailas done anything
comparable to the painstaking work of Vithi's
like collecting, compiling and editing the folk
music literature of Tamil peasants of
Ceylon?
If we consider
the traditional trichotomous classification of
Iyal [prose] , Isai [music] and
Nadagam [drama], I could see that
Vipulananda contributed to Iyal and
Isai aspects of Tamil literature. Vithi,
had contributed in all three aspects of Tamil
literature; while Kailas' works are limited only
to the Iyal aspects of Tamil
literature.
May I know your
comments on the views I've mentioned here? What
I'm contesting is your categorical statement,
"only genius". May be,
Kailas could be classified as one of the
trend-setters of Tamil studies, but not to be
elevated to the level of only
genius. With kind regards.
Yours
sincerely,
Sri Kantha P.S: I'm sending to you, under
separate cover, a copy of my book 'Tamil Isai
Theepam' which had recently been selected for
Sahitya Prize award (for research) for the year
1977, five years after its release!
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