High drama at the fall of the 8th wicket for S. Thomas’ at the 1956 Royal-Thomian at the Colombo Oval. Thiru Kandiah, a bowler and tail-ender walked to the middle to join an anxious Ronnie Reid, chasing Royal’s Norman Seibel’s 151 not out 1936 record. Kandiah had to ensure Reid’s survival at the wicket. In [...]
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High drama at the fall of the 8th wicket for S. Thomas’ at the 1956 Royal-Thomian at the Colombo Oval. Thiru Kandiah, a bowler and tail-ender walked to the middle to join an anxious Ronnie Reid, chasing Royal’s Norman Seibel’s 151 not out 1936 record. Kandiah had to ensure Reid’s survival at the wicket.
In a determined display of the legendary Thomian grit, Kandiah defied the Royal bowling attack, and hung on with Reid – a partnership of 52 runs for the 9th wicket, in which Kandiah scored only five runs. When Reid was almost on the threshold of making history, Kandiah sacrificed his wicket to turn back and be run out instead of Reid.
A grateful Reid escorted Kandiah to the ropes and watched him walk back to the Thomian dressing room, receiving a standing ovation from the crowds. Reid went on to break Seibel’s record, scoring 158 not out.
S.Thomas’ First XI Cricket Team 1956 with Warden de Saram:Thiru Kandiah standing - third from the right: Seated first from right is Ronnie Reid and seated second from left is Michael Tissera who went on to captain Ceylon in 1964
That was the hallmark of the man in the long innings of his life.
Thirulogendran Kandiah went on to become Professor of English at the University of Peradeniya. When the call of duty sounded, he answered clear for language and country.
Of Tamil, Sinhala and Scottish descent, he had a natural interest in all three languages of newly independent Ceylon, as a part of his own inheritance. He handled language fearlessly, in a country embroiled in linguistic and ethnic conflict. When the great scorer came to write against his name in faraway Australia, on October 10, he was just a week away from reaching 89.
When he entered the Department of English at the then University of Ceylon later in 1956, English had been officially dethroned, with Sinhala as the official language of the country. With it the“ambiguous” reasonable use of Tamil, had raised anxiety rather than creating an assurance about its future, and that of its people.
But in the little niche that was the University in the Kandyan highlands, the English and Classics Department at Peradeniya stood tall as the only full university department of English and Classics, east of the Suez and west of Seoul. Kandiah was a student of that famous English Department of Ceylon, of Professors Ludowyke, Passe and De Souza.
During his schooling at S.Thomas’ in Mount Lavinia with his brother, they grew up under the influence of Canon R.S. De Saram (Warden), Dick Hensman, L.A.H. Arndt, F.J. Senaratne, V.P. Cooke, C.R. Wise and Rev. Bowyer-Yin, a Chaplain from King’s College of the University of Cambridge. Kandiah spoke fondly of these teachers as having had a profound impact on him.
At Peradeniya, as the Senior Treasurer of the Western Music Society and the Ceylon University Dramatic Society, Professor Thiru Kandiah played a long innings in some of the most adverse years, when the best of universal culture and learning was under siege at Sri Lankan universities in the name “ethno-religious nationalism” and “leftist ideologies”.
They were to be the best years of his intellectual awakening.
With a PhD in linguistics (investigating “The syntax of the verb in Ceylon Tamil”) from the University of London, he embarked into the depths of the Westernized, Christianised, English-speaking psyche which had evolved within four and a half centuries of Western colonization. He explored the ethno-linguistic make-up of an elite class, to which he belonged, which had been created at the height of empire by the British, “to be like us in language, and attitude, only different in the colour of their skin”.
Among Kandiah’s main interests were sociolinguistics, new varieties of English, ideology in the postcolonial context in linguistics, new literatures in English, and the teaching of English as a second language.
Despite the waves of ethno-linguistic rhetoric and the torrents of Marxist-Leninist disruptions at Peradeniya, his belief in his Peradeniya was steadfast.
His sense of belonging in his university had many exciting facets.
He was conscious of what he had in common with the very builder of the university, architect Shirley De Alwis, who revitalised every aspect of traditional Kandyan Sinhalese and Anuradhapura classical architecture in that grand edifice.
He was conscious of what he had in common with the finest product of the university in the 20th century, Ediriweera Sarachchandra, a Professor of Sinhala who gave brave and beautiful expression to Sinhala, creating a modern Sinhala theatre with his epoch-making Maname and Sinhabahu and defined the standards of the Sri Lankan novel in English.
He was conscious that these men had also come to Peradeniya, having being raised at S.Thomas’ like two of his other colleagues, another Professor of English Kamal de Abrew, and the Professor of Classics Merlin Peiris.
When Sarachchandra’s nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature was written by a Professor of Sinhala K.N.O. Dharmadasa and a Professor of English Thiru Kandiah at Peradeniya, it was to become a moment of truth for both men. Such was the virtual total Western bias of the Nobel committee, they did not even care to respond.
Thiru Kandiah went on to his life work, and his major work in linguistics included “Kaduva: () – Power and the English Language Weapon in Sri Lanka”, which examined how English in Sri Lanka functions as a symbol and instrument of social power, often described metaphorically as a “sword” (kaduva) used to divide elites from non elites. Kandiah used the metaphor to examine how English in Sri Lanka became a weapon of social power and privilege.
His central arguments included social privilege: Proficiency in English gave people access to prestigious employment, education and positions of authority. He examined class divisions: those who had access to English could gain advantages over people who did not, particularly those educated in Sinhala or Tamil.
Another aspect of inquiry was Colonial Legacy: the privileged position of how English continued to influence Sri Lankan society after independence, and Language and Power: English was not merely a means of communication; it could also function as an instrument of social exclusion and inequality.
Kandiah’s work offered a way of understanding the relationship between language, class and power in postcolonial Sri Lanka. The metaphor of the kaduva captures a paradox: English can be a weapon that reinforces privilege, but acquiring English can also empower people who were previously excluded. He also explored postcolonial language power dynamics in other countries to place in context, his studies on the place of English in Sri Lanka.
Some of us who were his students in the 1980’s during the ethnic riots of 1983, to the run-up to the 1988/89 uprising which eventually led to universities being closed for many years, witnessed his stature as a teacher in its finest sense. At a time when it was being argued “liberation first, education second”, he stood his ground, and taught us to stand ours.
University education and student life had to continue as best as possible, in the life of the nation. The arts had a role in moulding the lives of young adults as undergraduates. The university theatre, as a forum of intellectual dialogue and the development of the aesthetic senses of students, had to go on.
His home at Peradeniya which was home to us, was in a most picturesque setting on the campus. A unique single house next to a perennial stream which flowed under a stone bridge, and overlooked the Faculty of Arts, the Senate and the Library that towered above them, it had been traditionally occupied by the Professor of English.
When Universities were constantly closing in the 1980’s, the English and Classics Department and the DramSoc never closed. When the faculty doors were forced to be closed, the lamps of learning were lit in the homes of our professors. However, “misunderstood” we may have been, as a “minority fraternity” we asserted to the best of our ability, that no one ideology only can prevail. At the University at Peradeniya, it is inscribed in stone, unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip in 1954, that it was a place “To Be More Open Than Usual”.
Kandiah’s greater value as a teacher was in opening himself to a free dialogue with his students. He was a deeply committed socialist, but one who was not willing to go along with the hypocrisy of self-seeking opportunists hiding behind a wall of assorted leftist ideologies. His emotional make-up was that of a Protestant Christian, but he was not willing to go along with the insincere walls of dogma of institutionalised religion. All this was a deeply involving experience for his students.
The Ceylon University Dramatic Society (DramSoc), the oldest student society of a Sri Lankan university in 1983 staged Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding in Sinhala, and in 1984 William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, both in Peradeniya and Colombo.
Those were some of the most memorable days for us. The wives of Professors Dharmadasa and Kandiah, Sumangalika Dharmadasa and Indranee (nee Kannangara), along with Professor Hemamali Gunasingha who translated Blood Wedding into Sinhala, as a Professor in the US, were in the cast. The latter’s husband, another giant in the Sinhala scene, Professor Siri Gunasingha, did our make-up. Pundit Amaradeva performed at the Dharmadasas’ home for us, and Professor Sarachchandra visited to discuss his English novels. Professor Ashley Halpe of the English Department and his wife Bridget supported the productions with their expertise in theatre production and music.
What we did not realise was that those were the “last days” and an “end of an era”. Soon the political killings were to infiltrate the campuses, which were indefinitely closed for many years. Many academics, the Kandiahs among them, were beginning to question their futures and the prospects for their children, in a nation that was falling apart.
A major area of his other interests in the post-1983 July riots which distressed him deeply, was the role of the media. He argued and examined how the media can influence and intensify ethnic conflict rather than simply report events neutrally.
Many years later when I was working as a reporter in Colombo, I met Professor Kandiah at his brother’s memorial service at the STC chapel in Mount Lavinia. His brother, a medical doctor had passed away in England. This chapel was a place where he and his brother had a sense of belonging.
Before he and his wife Indranee migrated to Australia, he called me. “There is something that I cannot throw away before I go, I want you to have it,” he said and gave me his faded S.Thomas’ First Eleven colours blazer and cap of 1956, from our old school.
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