Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s Mission for Social Change

By Jim Sykes


Dharmasiri Bandaranayake



“I suppose not the LTTE but the government has declared 2008 as a ‘year of war’. What can we do to stop the war during a ‘year of war’? It is the main problem I am facing right now. If the war could be stopped by war itself, then it is a job for the military. However, as artists of this country, we believe the only way to assert the value of the lives of the people of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities is not the firearm, but art.” - Dharmasiri Bandaranayake

In Colombo in 2004, I met a female Tamil dance teacher who had been heavily involved in organizing ‘concerts for peace’ in the 1990’s. These events brought together Sinhala and Tamil musicians and dancers; each performed a solo concert, followed by a finale in which all performed together. Naively, I asked the woman if the concerts had ‘worked’. Her reply was chilling in its obviousness: “Do we have peace?”

This response deeply affected me. Why did the concerts not ‘work’? Is it even possible for them to do so? What sort of social change can we reasonably expect from the arts? Do the arts function solely as an expression (or, at best, as publicity for) a platform for social change and tolerance, while the ‘real’ change occurs elsewhere (through, say, political processes)? I left the woman’s house dejected. I had spent much of my academic career investing in the arts as a causal nexus between formations of ethnic identities, national and cultural histories, and personal transformations, and it now seemed I had been overstating the case.

As I thought more about her comments, however, I was struck by what I saw as a structural ‘problem’ with the concerts for peace. I came to see that placing a Tamil musician next to a Sinhala musician only exacerbates the differences between them, by forcing a comparison between what comes to appear as two different musical systems. For at these concerts, Tamil musicians played classical, South Indian-derived ‘Carnatic’ music, while Sinhala musicians played Kandyan drumming, dancing, and singing: the styles of rhythm in these genres do not match up, the melodic phrasing is radically different from one another, and Kandyan drummers tend to stand while Carnatic musicians sit down. After such thoughts I decided perhaps the only good that could come out of such an exercise is that it could teach people to learn about and accept cultural ‘difference’. But are Sinhalese and Tamils really that different?

The article that follows is an interview with renowned actor, director, and playwright Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, founder of the Trikone Arts Centre. In the year 2000, Dharmasiri staged a Sinhala version of Euripides’ anti-war play, Trojan Women. In response, extremists bombed and burnt down the house of the principal actress, Anoja Weerasinghe; his music director Rukantha Gunathilaka and his wife were physically assaulted, with gasoline poured on them in a mock execution. Both had to flea the country, and further productions of Trojan Women were cancelled. As Dharmasiri will detail in the interview below, it was in response to this violence that the Trikone Arts Centre was founded. Since the Centre’s inception, Anoja and Rukantha returned, and Trojan Women has been performed 59 times. The Centre has had many other accomplishments, as well: during the recent ceasefire, Dharmasiri became the first dramatist in thirty years to bring Sinhala drama to the Tamil-dominated North and East, and Tamil drama to Colombo and the Sinhala-dominated South. The Centre has put on multi-ethnic and anti-war films and arts festivals around the country. Their recent projects include translations of Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhala literatures into each other’s languages, and the creation of the first archive dedicated solely to the Sri Lankan Tamil arts. This is not work without consequences: Dharmasiri has received numerous death threats, and he has had to leave the country on three occasions. Every time I go to their office I am struck by how much talk there is of the need to copy and send much of these materials elsewhere, in the event that their office gets raided by the police.

Despite the obvious importance of all the above activities, what I appreciate most about Dharmasiri Bandaranayake – and, I think, what makes his work so effective – is that he has quite a different answer to the question posed above, ‘Are Sinhalese and Tamils really that different?’ At the heart of Trikone’s work for the last seven years is an attempt to show that Sinhala and Tamil music dramas – in particular, the Sinhala genre nadagam and the Tamil kooththu – both come from southern India, and are essentially the same genre in different languages. Besides joint nadagam-kooththu workshops, Trikone has filmed documentaries aimed at detailing this mixed cultural history and presenting it to a wide audience. The films have been shown in India, Germany, and all over Sri Lanka, to an assortment of villagers, artists and intellectuals, school children, and even to the LTTE at a cultural festival in Trincomalee. These activities are interventions that strive to construct a public narrative of a shared cultural history.

The argument for cultural similarity is far stronger, I think, than the message of tolerance presented by the concerts for peace. It seems to me to be an argument that turns both ‘essentialism’ and ‘anti-essentialism’ on their heads. Rather than argue that Sinhalese and Tamils are essentially different, or that there is no such thing as identity at all, Dharmasiri argues for an essential similarity between Sinhalese and Tamils. While one could surely ‘disprove’ such a claim through the marshaling of facts that catalogue difference – Carnatic versus Kandyan musical traditions come to mind – Dharmasiri offers us a rhetorical gesture, one that shows that we could just as easily catalogue similarity as difference. It is these commitments to comparative history, cultural similarity, and cultural recognition for all human beings that, I argue, make Trikone’s activities ‘work’. If they ruffle the feathers of extremists of all kinds, it is, I think, because this rhetorical gesture of similarity proves the tenets of ethnonationalism wrong in a far more powerful way than any bomb, gun, concert, or, perhaps, even a protest march ever can. I guess he has revived my belief in the arts as a force for producing social change.

I sat down with Dharmasiri in his office in Colombo and asked him a few questions about his life and the history of the Trikone Arts Centre.

(Translated from the Sinhala by Vasantha Wakkumbura)
Jim: What is the Trikone Art Centre’s mission and how long has the organization been running?

Dharmasiri: We considered starting the Trikone Arts Centre in 2000. The year 2000 is significant because it is the year that I produced my fifth drama. It was the Sinhalese translation of Euripides's Trojan Women. My aim was to find out how a work of art can reduce the massive human annihilation caused by a continuous war.

We identified the drama as an 'anti war drama'. Also, at the time I produced this drama, dramatists of many other countries had produced it as well, recognizing it as an 'anti war drama'. This was the motivating factor in producing my drama.

After the production of this drama, I planned to stage it in the war torn areas, i.e. the North and East, as well as for the Sinhala-speaking people in the South. I, along with the drama troupe, traveled to Jaffna, Vauniya, Batticaloa and Trincomalee, and performed Trojan Women for Tamil audiences. Because it is difficult for the Tamil people to understand the drama in Sinhalese, I distributed a translated Tamil version of the synopsis to the audiences.

The drama received a warm response from the Tamil people. It had been 30 years since a Sinhala dramatist traveling with his drama troupe had performed in the Northeast for the Tamil people. The ceasefire agreement signed in 2001 was very beneficial for carrying out this activity.

It was along with the drama Trojan Women that the Trikone Arts Centre was founded.

Though we used the name 'Trikone Arts Centre' to carry out various activities, we did not at first have any plan to function as an organization. On the 24th of October 2005, we started our centre in Nugegoda. I must also say that what created the background for setting up the Trikone Arts Centre was the works of art that we created between 2000 and 2005. Another important thing is that the intention to start cooperating with Tamil artists and to develop a serious collaboration also contributed to starting and developing the Trikone Arts Centre.

Jim: Tell me a little bit about your career in acting and directing. How did you become interested in drama?

Dharmasiri: I started my involvement with drama in my school days. From 1969, I was acting in stage dramas. After that, I got the opportunity to act in many films as a cinema actor. However in 1976, my career as a professional actor switched over to the role of a director producing the drama Ekadhipathi [Dictator]. After that, I produced 4 dramas; in 1985 Makarashaya the Sinhalese version of Yewgini Schwartz's The Dragon; in 1988 Dhawala Bheeshana the Sinhalese version of Jean Paul Sartre's The Men Without Shadows; in 1994 Yakshagamanaya the Sinhalese version of Bertolt Brecht's Resistible Rise of Arturo; and in 2000 Trojan Kanthavo the Sinhalese version of Euripides's Trojan Women.

Parallel to that, in 1979, I also started my career as a film director, producing Hansa Vilak [Swan Lake]. In 1983, I directed my second film Thunveni Yamaya [The Third Period]. In 1985, I created my next film Suddilage Kathawa [The Story of Suddis] based on the novel by Simon Navagaththegama. In 1997 I directed two films Bava Duka and Bava Karma.

After starting the Trikone Arts Centre I wanted to develop a serious collaboration with the Tamil community, due to the circumstances of the war.

As we started working in our new centre, I began taking Sinhala works of art, not only mine but also those of other Sinhala artists, to places like Jaffna, Vauniya, Batticaloa and Trincomalee in the North and East. I took internationally awarded Sinhala films to these places and held film festivals as organized by the 'Trikone Arts Centre'.

These activities attracted massive attention from artists. The circumstances created by the ceasefire agreement were a potential factor that contributed to developing our artistic cultural activities.

The next step was to bring over artists from the North and East to the South and to start popularizing them there. With very much commitment, I brought the drama Ravanesan of Batticaloa over to Colombo and staged it. In addition, we staged the Jaffna Kooththu dance drama performances in Colombo and also held exhibitions in Colombo of paintings by many talented Northern and Eastern artists.

This practice created the possibility and the background for other artists to travel to the North and East to, for example, create short films and tele-dramas. So, other Sinhala artists of the south also traveled to these areas and attempted to expand the conditions created by me with regard to artistic cultural activity.

Actually, speaking about the war in these circumstances happens to be political. As an artist I recognize this political facet as follows: because the artist's contribution to society is of significant importance, my activities during the past years were very much beneficial in placing anti war ideology before the masses; also, amidst a continuous war, we have developed a close relationship and collaboration with Tamil artists where the bonds between us have not been broken because of the war.

Jim: It seems that Trikone had much success in fostering interaction between the Northeast and Southwest due to the ceasefire. Has Trikone’s mission changed, or become more difficult, due to the eradication of the ceasefire agreement?

Dharmasiri: Though a beneficial environment was created due to the ceasefire agreement, the possibility of attaining cultural harmony between peoples through artistic activity was never recognized by the governments then and now. Also, they pay hardly any attention to the cultural field. Their activities have been limited to conducting conferences 'in order to raise the awareness of the people'.

I am not a government, not an institution, nor a government department, but an individual. There is the state owned Sri Lanka Film Corporation and they should pay attention to develop cultural cooperation towards peace through the cinema. However, there was no such attention during that period in the field of cinema. We as artists endeavored on a personal level to achieve these developments.

Unfortunately, undermining all our endeavors and achievements in the sphere of artistic cultural cooperation with the Northern artists, the A9 road was closed, terminating access for the Southern artists to visit the Northern areas and vice versa.

In fact, we were forced to terminate our activities abruptly. It is now our greatest barrier.

Footage captured from my camera during my activities until 2005 was very useful in creating a discourse towards overcoming that barrier. I used the collected footage to raise the awareness of the Sri Lankan Sinhala community about the closing of the A9 road and also to assure them of the eminent cultural values of the Tamil community, evident in their drama and musical forms.

In the course of understanding and appreciating the artistic cultural values of Tamil society, I started creating a series of documentary films in 2005. I have now created 15 documentaries in the Sinhala, Tamil and English. All of these films have been screened in neighboring India, as well as Germany and England. I have received grateful appreciation for these films from Tamils living in these countries, who had left Sri Lanka due to the war. It was an energizing experience for them, in contrast to being constrained to speaking entirely of war. They were grateful to us for creating a space in which they could to talk about their culture with their children, who were born in those countries.

The other very important fact is that, I have repeatedly received various threats, including death treats, against all our activities in developing collaboration with Tamil artists and the Tamil community. These were carried out mainly in the form of letters, from within the Sinhalese society.

Jim: what projects is Trikone currently working on? What are your goals going forward?

Dharmasiri: Summing up all the above observations, the essential factor is addressing the masses through art and culture, to develop collaborations between the two communities, to make evident the value of our cultures, and to minimize the disputes between us. I believe it would be some kind of a solution to the conflict we are facing today.

I suppose not the LTTE but the government has declared 2008 as a ‘year of war’. What can we do to stop the war during a ‘year of war’? It is the main problem I am facing right now. If the war could be stopped by war itself, then it is a job for the military. However, as artists of this country, we believe the only way to assert the value of the lives of the people of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities is not the firearm, but art.

At this moment I am confronted with the question of war. Therefore, I am engaged in producing some very good dramas and also publications in Sinhalese on Tamil art and culture. As our first attempt, we hope to publish the works of A.J. Kanagaratnam, an intellectual who lived in Jaffna, in order to raise awareness in Sinhala society about him. Now, we are in the course of collecting all his works and translating them into Sinhala. Also during this year, we look forward to collecting fine poems of Tamil poets and translating them into Sinhala, to popularize them amongst Sinhala community.

The cultural collaboration programs we carried out in Jaffna, Vauniya, Batticaloa and Trincomalee in the year 2000 did not receive any form of threats from the LTTE. At one point, the LTTE invited two Sinhala dramas to be performed in one of its own cultural festivals held in Trincomalee in 2004. The first one was Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra's Maname, the second was Trojan Kanthavo produced by me.

Therefore, I believe the fact that an organization of war is beginning to pay attention to works of art, though disregarded in Sinhala society, is a very important phenomenon. This was a result of new aspirations for peace, born in the environment created by the 2000 peace talks and the resultant ceasefire agreement.

When I think about the first time they invited us to perform our dramas on their stages, they had already done their Pongul Thamil, which is mainly based on Eelam, but in 2004, they focused mostly on the Sinhala culture, which is why they invited Sinhala artists to come and stage dramas.

Jim: They focused on Sinhala culture? That’s really interesting. Why was it that they decided to focus on Sinhala culture at their cultural festival?

Dharmasiri: Yes. They knew that some elderly people belong to the LTTE, for example, the head of the cultural wing, Mr. Puduwai Ratinadurai, is an elderly person, and he knows our Sinhala masters. He admires our work. He mentioned all these names and they wanted to respect them on their stage.

Jim: That’s really good. Could that be taken as a sign of peace in a way, some sort of peace offering? It’s surprising, I haven’t heard of anything like that coming from the LTTE before.

Dharmasiri: Yes. I think. Actually, we…if you think about it, we are from the South, we went to Jaffna with seven films. Our pioneer masters, three films we screened at Jaffna University. They allowed us to do that kind of work.

Jim: Is it because they see that you’re fighting for equality and rights among Tamil and Sinhala people, just for equality in Sri Lanka, so therefore they don’t see you as an enemy? But you did have a negative response from the Sri Lankan government, right?

Dharmasiri: Not the government, but extremist groups were attacking me. After these activities, they began to call me a ‘Sinhala Tiger’. That is a very dangerous term, and this is a very dangerous society.

Jim: Were there newspaper articles written about you in the Sinhala press?

Dharmasiri: Yes. In 2004 there was a big conference in Colombo. So many Tamil artists came out. So many young people came, they called themselves the ‘Hiru Group’. They organized this Sinhala-Tamil arts festival in Colombo, and invited me to attend. Unfortunately, people suddenly came out of nowhere and attacked us, physical attacks. This was widely reported in the press.

Jim: Was anybody hurt?

Dharmasiri: No. These boys chased them out, and then the police showed up. But these kinds of things happen in Colombo. Most of these Tamil pioneer artists had come to Colombo for the seminar.

Jim: I’m glad that the police intervened on your side.

Dharmasiri: Yes. I think at that time Wickremesinghe was the prime minister. The peace process was going on. I think now in the present situation, that kind of help wouldn’t happen.

Jim: I want to ask you a couple of questions about the dance dramas, the Tamil kooththu and Sinhala nadagam. I know you’ve spent much of your career publicizing the similarities between these genres, and I’m wondering if (from a technical point of view) you can tell me the similarities.

Dharmasiri: I think the only difference between them is language. The rest is the same. Some drumbeats are in both, and some of the melodies are the same. If you’re talking about Maname, the play by Sarachchandra that was the pioneer play in Sinhala society, he was inspired by so many Tamil melodies.

Jim: I have a musician friend who performs nadagam and nurthi (an older form of popular music in Sri Lanka that developed out of the music of the Bombay Parsi Theatre in the 19th century). What was interesting to me is the way he performs them – with the harmonium – they sound very similar. I couldn’t tell the difference between them. How did this happen? Has there been a Sinhala form of the nadagam influenced by North Indian music? Does this create a perception of difference between the nadagam and kooththu?

Dharmasiri: Yeah, actually, nadagam was inspired by South Indian tradition, and nurthi by the Bombay Parsi Theatre, so they didn’t used to sound the same. In the Sinhala nadagam, they perform Jataka stories, to South Indian music. Maname was also Jataka stories. And so many nadagams are based on Buddhist concepts. The Tamil ones are based on their ancient epics, the Silappathikaram, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata.

Jim: How did the nadagam come from South India into Sri Lanka?

Dharmasiri: In one of our documentary films, Professor Sivathamby explains that the nadagam came from the coastal areas of South India to Jaffna, Mannar, and Negombo. It was transmitted by the Christians to the Sinhalese Buddhists. From the North it moved east into Batticaloa. One (Sinhala-language) book readers should look at is the monumental volume by M.H. Gunatilake on the nadagam. It details all of this history and shows the great interaction between Tamil and Sinhala artists in the nineteenth century, an interaction we are trying to revive now.


Notes on the Contributor: Jim Sykes is a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago, USA. His dissertation, tentatively called The Music of the Gift: Sound, Sociality, and a History of Violence in Sri Lanka, traces the interrelations between individuals, ethnicities, and religions in Sri Lanka, as these are revealed through music. He is currently a Fulbright-Hays Fellow and a Wenner-Gren Fellow for 2007-2008, and lives in Colombo.