Politics of Critical Discourse

When the (resident) Sri Lankan writer Nihal De Silva passed away, it was sad that few in India had heard of him let alone read the Gratiaen award winning book The Road from Elephant Pass. The few copies that did make their way outside the island nation were eagerly consumed, as supply was meagre. Writing from the University of Sussex, where she teaches courses on postcolonial and Indian fiction in English, Minoli Salgado’s recent book on Sri Lankan writing addresses this thriving cult of popular Sri Lankan fiction and criticism that shares a similar fate—published, distributed, discussed and critiqued among only the local residents. While this means that print capitalism is thriving it also signals a radical departure from Anderson’s formulations regarding the gelling of a national space, for Sri Lanka continues to be torn by construction(s) of nationalism—stories or no stories. It is almost like Haroun, in Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, railing at his father: ‘What is the use of stories that are not even true’.

Almost, because that is where Salgado begins her critical inquiry into the emergent Sri Lankan canon—a canon subject to the multiple fragmentations even in the very process of ‘becoming’.