Dear Mr. President, paddy farmers must be honored and given the highest recognition in the society
Posted on December 25th, 2019
Kudaligamage Geethanjana
Rajapakses, Geopolitics, ‘Eurocentric Developmentalism,’ and the western hegemony (Part 23)
ගරු ජනාධිපති තුමනි, අනාගතයේ යම් දිනෙක, මඩ සෝදාගත් අපගේ ගොවි තරුණයෙකුට ඩෙනිමකින් සැරසී, කුඹුරේ සිට කෙලින්ම ක්‍රිකට් පිටියට ගොස්, අප ජාතික ක්‍රිකට් කණ්ඩායමේ සාමාජිකයෙකු ලෙස එංගලන්තයට එරෙහිව ටෙස්ට් තරඟයක් ක්‍රීඩා කිරීමට තරම්වූ පිළිගැනීමක් මෙරට ජන සමාජය තුල කුඹුරු ගොවිතැනට හිමිවූදා, අප සාර්ථක කෘෂිකාර්මික ප්‍රතිපත්තියක් ඇති කිරීම සඳහා අවශ්‍ය සමාජ–සංස්කෘතික පසුබිමක් බිහි කර ඇතැයි සතුටු විය හැක.”
Dear Mr. President, the day when our young paddy farmer who cleaned himself off of mud and dressed in a denim jeans, and go directly from the paddy field to the cricket field as a member of our national cricket team to play a test match against England team, that would be the day we can happily confirm that we have been successful in creating appropriate socio-cultural background for socially sustainable agriculture in Sri Lanka.”
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The colonialism and its pet dogs Kolombians who maintained apartheid and segregated social conditions in Sri Lanka had used their brainwashing mechanism of colonial education to marginalize and continuously mock villagers and paddy farmers for so long, so the newer generations firmly have determined never to go into agriculture, especially into paddy farming. The young generation of the village Sri Lanka has said it aloud, GOODBYE!!!”
It seems iPhone and mamoty are not mutually complementary tools for our young generation. But computers along cannot feed a nation. Cold and belittling social condition toward people who occupy in agriculture is a unique issue in Sri Lanka uncommon in other parts in the world. This condition of social demeaning toward farmers is not common in Latin America or in Europe. Like any other profession, agriculture also gets its fair share of the labor force in every generation in those countries. So then what went wrong in Sri Lanka to have a different situation? Why is our young generation going away from agriculture? I personally knew some village fathers who firmly determined that they would never let their children go through the bitter experiences of marginalization that they had gone through as paddy farmers in the society. Every parent in the village sending their child into higher education in our universities intended to disconnect their child from the agrarian culture that they inherited for generations. They want to see a full stop. Therefore we must understand that one of the major challenges of paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka is a social issue that has created a severe labor shortage.
President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa rightfully avowed to the nation that his administration will put maximum effort to develop our agricultural economy to make us self sufficient in food production. Yes, it is a clever strategy considering our agriculture friendly rich soil and climatic conditions. All other negative conditions that had weakened the agricultural economy could be fixed, and all the problems could be resolved but one; the unappreciative social condition toward paddy cultivation needs to be addressed as our first priority if we truly need to resolve this issue.
The shortage of young labor has been felt in the agricultural sector for quite some time, especially for paddy farming. It is expected that Sri Lanka may have to import foreign labor for paddy farming within the next ten to twenty years; if paddy farming happened to exist at all in Sri Lanka without vanishing with no trace by that time.
Among many reasons, there is a very special political reason behind paddy cultivation for us to protect and preserve our agriculture especially paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka at any cost. As I have explained in the previous article, paddy cultivation is anthropological evidence of national heritage; a civilizational act. Paddy cultivation was the main dynamism that shaped the Sri Lankan culture into a unique culture among other cultures in Asia. Buddhism had assimilated into Sri Lankan culture only later on. Etymological studies of paddy farming culture prove that the activity was here in Sri Lanka for many millenniums beyond our knowledge of the history of the island; especially its related language and the Sinhala terminology it used are as old as the history of the paddy plant in Sri Lanka.
The Sinhala words used in the culture of paddy cultivation are the oldest words that are still in use in the Sinhala language. Since we haven’t found these words anywhere else, the ancientness or primordial character of the words used in paddy cultivation alone proves that Sinhalese people were living in this island and built their civilization for a long time from time immemorial. In addition to the language used in paddy cultivation related activities, the ethics, rituals, belief systems, folk arts, folklore, and folksongs are some of the indisputable attestations that prove that Sinhalese were inhabiting this land way before Buddhism introduced into the island nation.
It is the strong bondage between paddy cultivation and its related belief system that has left a splendid cultural heritage for the future generations of our nation. The reservoir, the stupa, the village and the Buddhist temple (වැවයි, දාගැබයි, ගමයි, පන්සලයි) is the moto and the slogan of Sri Lankan culture after Buddhism was introduced. They are the well-established edifying element of our cultural identity. The day paddy cultivation ends in the island will mark the day of the end of the distinctiveness of Sri Lankan culture. Thus the uniqueness of Sri Lankan culture will end. The oldest occupation of the Sinhalese will vanish. The magnificent ancient irrigation system will die without a valid purpose. The glorious past of the Sinhalese people will be a subject for the sixth-grade essays. Without this solid anthropological evidence to prove the authenticity of the information, the fighting against the global intellectual agenda of separatism will be ever more difficult. It will go very well with the separatist project because archaeological evidence is the enemy of separatism. In the end, the phrase ‘Sri Lankan civilization’ will be added to the list of lost civilizations and cultures of the world.
The intellectual project of separatism in Sri Lanka is a global issue, largely controlled, fantasized and financed by global actors. Watch the following video.
However, agriculture won’t be economically sustainable until we create a social condition for paddy farming and agriculture to be socially sustainable in Sri Lanka. Paddy farming will be in decline until we change the social attitude that had been edified by Kolombians and their colonial education to think that agriculture is for backward masses and plantation is for the more sophisticated and worldly-wise people. (colonial hubris) It was Kolombians who invented the word ‘Kultoor’ (the corrupt version of ‘culture’) to denigrate the village-based agricultural people and their social structures in the village implying village peasantry is uncultured or culturally backward. Kolombians sneered and vilified rural cultural and social norms and named them as ‘Govi Chinthanaya.’ So the new president may have to do a lot of work educating masses countering this condition to create a new normal through social understanding to attract the younger generation into paddy cultivation. We must establish the idea that food production as equally respectable as the production of high-tech products. We must begin a large scale social awareness program.
It might be economically helpful for poverty-ridden agricultural families to receive free fertilizer. However, we wouldn’t be able to develop sustainable agriculture in Sri Lanka just by distributing free fertilizer to farmers alone. We must radically change the social attitude toward agriculture. It is the shortage of manpower that has created a situation to abandon paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka, especially in the suburbs. It is a fundamental condition that we have to change the colonial education that has created the negativity toward agriculture while glorifying plantation, even though both are different forms of agriculture. It was the Kolombians called the farmers contemptuously ‘Goiyas, Gorakayas, Gam-Kabarayas, Madakariyas and Ambuda Karayas forcing the new generation to abandon agriculture to get out of the humiliation of being farmers and to get into other professions. We must change this culture and its social outlook. We must create a new culture to respect agriculture as a noble profession. We need to give an appreciative stipend to active paddy farmers. Then only the new generation will embrace agriculture as their profession. We need a revolution in our social outlooks.
Is it a realistic target to envision a change in the social outlook? I think yes. We must start the new culture of ‘honoring agriculture’ in schools. We must have a national week of glorification of paddy farming at all levels. The media must be briefed and requested to support the agriculture promoting drive of the government.
Paddy cultivation is not just another business venture like any other business to determine its fate based on profitability. It is much more than that. It is the main element in the highest order of shaping up the heritage of Sri Lanka. It must be protected and preserved reverently and wholeheartedly like next to the tooth relic.
Is it possible to create this background when there is a very unreceptive denigrating social background created by Kolombian ideology against farmers in general and paddy farmers in particular? Yes, we can! Since the entire damage had been initiated by Kolombians and their despicable ideology, we must make the Kolombians undo and correct their mischiefs. We must address directly to the adherents of the Kolombian culture and its ideology. We must talk to the victims of this ideology; we must discuss in-person to the icons of the Kolombian culture such as leading cricket players, artists, English language announcers and actors, and actresses. We also can ask the help of Rev. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith since Christianity is also a part of the Kolombian cultural iconography. We must appeal these layers of society to help save paddy farming in our country.
We must inaugurate state festivals, marking major rituals of paddy cultivation such as Aluth Sahal Mangalyaya,” and Vap Magula.” Being an example to the nation in such events, our president and entire parliament can get into the paddy field and get fully muddied to show the rest of the country that paddy farming is a noble task EVEN FOR KINGS, but not a task as many thought for Mudakariyas, Gam-Kabarayas, Ambuda-Karayas or Gorakayas. It must be a week of festivities with all schools and university participation. Iconic cricketers former and current, liks of Muralidaran, and Malinga also can get into the paddy field and physically work in the field. Not just symbolically, but physically must work in the field to get the real feeling of this noble task.
Just visualize Kolombian iconic personalities like leading cricketers working in the paddy field and finishing the task of turning soil and fixing ‘Niyaras,’ by hand, fully muddied, for a few hours in front of television cameras once a year in this kind of festivals? What would be the message that would convey to the society at large, and particularly to the young generation of our country who have been discouraged by existing unfriendly social norms toward paddy farming?
One major reason why the young generation to go away from paddy farming is that its incompatibility with the modern lifestyle that youngsters aspired to affiliate with. We must understand that our young men wouldn’t wear a loincloth (Ambudey) and work in the paddy field. They wouldn’t get into mud due to soiling the skin. These are pretty simple problems to remedy. We can modernize paddy cultivation introducing machinery and also we can change our way of working in the paddy fields by introducing gumboots and farming gloves like in other countries such as Japan and countries in East Asia.
The day when our young farmer can clean the mud off of himself, and dressed in a sport jacket or a denim jeans and then go directly from the paddy field to the cricket field as a member of our national cricket team to play a test match against England team, then only we can tell that we have been successful in creating a background for sustainable agriculture in Sri Lanka.
අනාගතයේ යම් දිනෙක, අපගේ ගොවි තරුණයෙකුට මඩ සෝදාගෙන ඩෙනිමකින් සැරසී කුඹුරේ සිට කෙලින්ම ක්‍රිකට් පිටියට ගොස්, අප ජාතික ක්‍රිකට් කණ්ඩායමේ සාමාජිකයෙකු ලෙස එංගලන්තයට එරෙහිව ටෙස්ට් තරඟයක් ක්‍රීඩා කිරීමට තරම්වූ පිළිගැනීමක් මෙරට සමාජය තුල ගොවිතැනට හිමිවූදා, අප සාර්ථක කෘෂිකාර්මික ප්‍රතිපත්තියක් බිහි කර ඇතැයි සතුටු විය හැක.”