Carl Muller's Trilogy and the Burghers of Sri Lanka

Author(s): Charles P. Sarvan

Source: World Literature Today, Summer, 1997, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 527-532
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40152829

REFERENCES
:Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40152829?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
.facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to World Literature Today

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Carl Muller's Trilogy and the Burghers of Sri Lanka

Fare thee well . . .

Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here ...
I'll shape my old course in a country new.
- Shakespeare, King Lear, 1.2.179-86

By CHARLES P. SARVAN Carl Muller's trilogy militia came the settlers- a new race of people who
consists of The jam worked their way into the country's canvas. . . . The
Fruit Tree (1993; brew was further spiced by other foreign types
hereafter JFT), Yakada Yaka (1994; YY), and Once [French, Germans, Scandinavians, and others] who
Upon a Tender Time (1995; OUTT). These three drifted in" (JFT, 26-27). Under the British, the
novels, based on the von Bloss family, give us in- majority of Burghers served in the clerical services,
sights into the Burghers of Sri Lanka. The works are the transport and communication services, and in
description and defense, a celebration and a valedic- various technical departments (McGilvray, 243).
tion. Muller, like Toni Morrison (see 1993), is con- Most Burghers are fair-skinned, have Western
scious of re-presenting his people in fiction. The in- names, wear Western clothes, and speak English,
tention here is to read the novels as cultural texts in but some of these characteristics could also apply to
the light of New Historicism's awareness that histo- the Sinhalese (the majority race) and Tamils. For ex-
ryis not merely some stable and passive background ample, where language is concerned, under British
against which "sublime" literary texts are fore- rule and in the decade immediately after indepen-
grounded and, second, with a consciousness that dence (1948), the medium of instruction in schools
there is no whale, that we live in a world without was English. It was also the language of administra-
tion and justice, and functioned as a link language
hiding places, irradiated by history (Rushdie,
between the different ethnic groups. Thus, to many
99-100).
Edward Said has ironically wondered whether the Sinhalese and Tamils from Colombo and other
urban centers, English was their first language, not
Palestinians, not having uncontested territory, living
in refugee camps or dispersed around the planet, necessarily as the language first acquired but in the
can claim to be known as a people. Similarly, sense that it was the language in which they func-
Muller wonders who are these "Burghers"? The tioned, the language in which they thought, and the
simple answer he provides is that they are the "de- language in which they were best able to express
themselves. Some Sinhalese and Tamils had Euro-
scendants of the Dutch and Portuguese and other
Western types" (YY, 11), today comprising less pean names, often as an outward mark of conversion
to Christianity, the religion (despite its origin) being
than .07 percent of the population. The Portuguese
seen as a Western faith introduced through conquest
made contact with Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then
and associated with the West.
known) in 1505 and gradually began to take control
of the island, beginning with the more easily con- What, therefore, finally made the Burghers a
community was their desire and determination to be
quered coastal areas. Most of the early Portuguese seen as Burghers, their consciousness of forming a
settlers were either exiles or criminals whose prison
distinct group. It was a state of mind and feeling:
sentence had been commuted to military service in
they were Burghers because they thought of them-
the East (McGilvray, 237). "After 150 years of Por-
selves as being Burghers, and they perpetuated this
tuguese domination the Dutch moved in for another
identity by contracting marriages within the group.
150-year spell [1656-1802], after which the British Edward Said, in the work already cited, refers to be-
took over around 1815" (JFT, 26) and ruled until
havior which is repeated in order to make it Pales-
independence in 1948: "And in the wake of the tinian behavior, and thus we have a people part of
whose attempt to maintain a distinct existence is
Charles Sarvan was born in Sri Lanka but emigrated to Britain through repetition (170). Both the attitudes under-
many years ago. Currently a professor in the Department of En- pinning this insistence of the Burghers on a separate
glish at the University of Bahrain, he is the author of such Sri Eurasian ethnicity and their consequences were of
"
Lanka-related publications as With theBegging Bowl: The Poli- significance, as we shall see. Even dark-skinned
tics of Poverty" (in WLT, Summer 1989), the short story "Ap-
Burghers, those in whom "the very essence of
pointment with Rajiv Gandhi" (in Colombo's Daily News), and a
forthcoming Toronto Review article on Romesh Gunesekera's Burgherness" did not visually manifest itself, took
Reef. pride in their European ancestry (OUTT, 21).

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
528 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

Robert Knox, an Englishman captured in 1660 Burghers. Muller is a Burgher who continues to live
and detained in Ceylon foralmost twenty years, in Sri Lanka, and his work claims to attest to the re-
wrote a book immediately after his escape (Knox, silience of the Burghers, their affirmation of life,and
1681). In it he records that when the Dutch con- their tenacity. They are like the jam fruittree:
quered Colombo from the Portuguese, the King of strong, "never-dying," and "always in bloom,
Kandy (the central hill region) offered protection to earthy" (JFT, 20). The Jam Fruit Tree is dedicated
the defeated Portuguese, and many went to him with to "all the Burghers in Sri Lanka and in their adopt-
their wives, children, and servants and were very fa- ed countries the world over" (210) and ends with an
vorably treated. As the Portuguese and Dutch invitation to them to visit the narrator. However,
evolved to become "Burghers" under British imperi- Muller's re-presentation is contradictory, ultimately
alism, this pattern of privilege and favor continued. confirming rather than confuting stereotypes, and
The British could not very well rely on the Sinhalese one must read him alert to aporia and slippage.
and Tamils whom they had conquered and now Christopher Rezel argues that The Jam Fruit Tree is
ruled, and the Burghers, though regarded as inferior, a novel and should not be read as a "sociological
had European blood (however diluted) and could be study" (1996), but this view seems to deny that
made complicit. Further, the Burghers were Chris- novels arise from, and reflect, a culture, sometimes
tians on a predominantly Buddhist (in imperialist celebrating but more often scrutinizing it. In
eyes, "pagan") island. It is not surprising then that Muller's trilogy, asides and casual passing com-
the Burghers found favor with the British (JFT, 27). ments are more revelatory and significant than con-
But favor is too strong a word, and usefulness scious, deliberate statements. (Muller himself says
would be more correct: the British made use of the that, in his fiction, he sails close to fact [JFT, 149].)
Burghers on the middle and lower rungs of adminis- Noni Przybylski, working with Yasmine Gooneratne
tration and bureaucracy. Having European blood at Macquarie University in Australia, reads The Jam
and being essentially urban dwellers, the Burghers Fruit Tree as an introduction to the Burgher com-
tended to see the Sinhalese and Tamils as inferior munity (1996). The question of "reaching conclu-
godayas> rustics (Roberts, 12). Christopher Rezel, a sions and making judgements about a real commu-
journalist and writer and himself a Burgher, ac- nity on the basis of fictional works" is an interesting
knowledged to me in conversation (Bahrain, June one, but this is not the place to go into it. Some of
1996) that most of his relations, privately and in my thoughts on the subject can be found in my arti-
conversation among themselves, had expressed dis- cle (1991a) from which the above quotation is
regard for the Sinhalese and Tamils: European im- taken. (See also Sarvan, 1991b.)
perialism both led to, and justified itself by, an utter If the Empire writes back in English, erstwhile
contempt for the conquered natives, and many Calibans now have the confidence, as narrators, to
Burghers absorbed a degree of this attitude. Howev- use the language as it actually functions. And so in
er, the Burghers themselves were kept at a long and these novels we have structures such as "Come [let's]
rigid arm's length by the British. Imperial society go," "take and go," "Who that other fellow?," "With-
was marked by exclusiveness, and its members kept out knowing what, how to tell?," and "Must put
to themselves, aloof from others, including the [wear] a tie" interspersed with Sinhala expressions
Burghers (Roberts, 132). One early and very frank such as aiyO) anney, chee, patiya, chicey, apoi, and
expression of British opinion can be found in sothiya. Yet English is the first, and only, language of
Robert Percival's description (1803) of the descen- the characters in these novels, and, given the insepa-
dants of Europeans settled in Ceylon: they "adopt rable connection between language and thought, the
the customs and listless habits" of the natives (136); rudimentary nature of their control of the language
spend their time in lounging, drinking, and in pay- becomes a pointer to more than a linguistic limita-
ing visits; they make no effort to increase their tion. When Sonnaboy, the central character in The
knowledge or to excel "by exertion" (137); their Jam Fruit Tree and Yakada Yaka, wishes to write love
children are neglected and the minds of their letters, he turns to cheap magazines, picking out
women totally uncultivated (138). As the narrator in cliches, some of which he does not understand (JFT,
Muller's work observes, imperial Britain feltsuperi- 96). By way of contrast, Michael Ondaatje, in Run-
or even to other "European tribes" (to use Caryl ning in theFamily (1993), describes those Burghers,
Phillips's phrase) such as the Germans and Italians, very few in number, who moved at very high levels of
and the Burghers, almost all of whom had some society and spoke Standard English.
non-European blood in them, had no chance what- In a Ceylon under colonialism, "Europeanness"
soever of being socially recognized, let alone includ- (above all, a lighter pigmentation) bestowed certain
ed, by the British (OUTT, 25). advantages, and past status and privileges made the
Burghers keep to their group even after indepen-
With the preceding as introduction and back- dence: habits of thought and feeling were difficult to
ground, I move to Muller's re-presentation of the alter, though circumstances had changed. Thus in

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SARVAN 529

Muller's trilogy most marriages are within the sponsibility for the present state of affairs in their re-
Burgher community, such that when a Sinhalese spective countries. To keep blaming history is all
wishes to marry Anna, a Burgher, the reaction of too easy and evasive. But the consequences of hun-
the latter's father is one of incomprehension and dreds of years of colonial rule are long abiding, and
shock: but "you are- you are Sinhalese!" (JFT, in the Burghers of Sri Lanka one sees some of the
35). Even "swarthy" Burghers (JFT, 38) married persisting effects of Western rule. The main source
within the community. When a Sinhalese does of Ceylon's wealth was the plantations (particularly
marry a Burgher and the two unhappy but resigned tea) which were managed by the British and worked
families meet to "celebrate" the wedding (JFT, by grossly exploited Indian labor. The Burghers had
51-62), there is much constraint, curiosity, and em- no part in the rural, peasant economy, and, though
barrassment, as ifthe two groups are total foreigners living in urban centers, neither were they part of the
to each other rather than people who have lived on growing work force. The implication of the last is
the same small island for centuries. that there was little of an interethnic working-class
The Burghers, as depicted in the trilogy, lead a solidarity: don't visit the harbor, for it is full of
"madcap, merry lifestyle" (YY, 114). They have a sweaty "coolies" toiling away (JFT, 19). In eco-
fairly good income, but are always short of cash. nomic terms, the Burghers inhabited a marginal re-
Theirs is a "supremely careless attitude," one of gion, and their contribution was to help keep the
"eat, drink and be merry and to Hades with tomor- colonial administration oiled and moving smoothly,
row" (YY, 115). Muller's style, vigorous and like the steam locomotives which feature so promi-
bawdy, matches the life-style he celebrates. Incestu- nently in Muller's trilogy.
ous relations between brothers and sisters, uncles The lack of economic power and dynamism can
seducing and almost raping young nephews are de- be linked to the question of language- here, En-
scribed with salacious, amoral casualness. (The bib- glish. Frantz Fanon says that the colonized are ele-
lical "laying on of hands" and "come unto me" ac- vated in proportion to their adoption of the "moth-
quire different meanings, the former referring to er" country's language, and that to have a language
extramarital hands wandering up a skirt, the latter is to possess the world expressed and implied by
taking on homosexual connotations.) that language. However, colonial education in Cey-
Where international politics is concerned, the de- lon, as in other imperial territories, aimed at pro-
feat of Nazism, the first atom bomb in human histo- ducing functionaries to serve the imperial structure,
ry,and the rise of "the Cold War" between the So- and very few of the "natives" were able to go abroad
viet Union and the West all remained marginal to for tertiary education. Further, British education
their lives, interests, and knowledge. The Burghers "made every student in the island more familiar
were essentially apolitical. Where Ceylon itself was with the glory of being British than of what Ceylon
concerned, they were "distressed" by independence held for him or her" (JFT, 172). Colonialism closed
and the departure of the British (OUTT, 193), for off to the Burghers a knowledge of Sinhala (the lan-
their wish was that colonial rule would continue in-
guage) and Sinhalese culture while, at the same
definitely. Still, Muller paradoxically insists that the time, denying them the best of Western culture in
Burghers knew how to belong, that they had "ac- terms of its science, philosophy, and the arts. The
cepted, centuries ago, that Sri Lanka was their land
[as well]" and were "as native as the most strident
Sinhala native" (JFT, 137). There was no going
back for the Burghers; they would never be outcasts
(YY, 229). And yet the Burghers had cast them-
selves out by staying within their group, ignoring
rather than mastering the Sinhala language, reject-
ing Sinhalese culture. So it is that, contradictorily,
and despite assertions about being "native," the
characters in the trilogy, unaware of implications,
see the Sinhalese as the "true people" (JTF, 27) to
whom the country belongs. The implication is that
the Burghers themselves, despite the centuries, are
outsiders, that Ceylon is not their true home-
though it is the only home they have ever known.
The discourse is contradictory: in Althusserian
terms, a problematic which needs to be probed.
One cannot forever keep blaming the colonial
past, and the exhortation is that, in good existential
fashion, formerly colonized peoples should take re- Carl Muller

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
530 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

inadequate mastery of English by the characters in al cultures are capable of,for she was unkindly and
Muller's novels shows that their elevation (as used persistently rejected by her Tamil in-laws.)
by Fanon above) was minimal. Because they had
[The bride and members of the family] were fol-
only a secondary education, and enjoyed no access lowed by the temple musicians playing the marriage
to better linguistic models, their English was heavily ragas on their nadhesweram [wind instrument]. It was
influenced by the vocabulary and syntactic structures in the nature of an announcement, this herald of musi-
of the very language they looked down upon: Sin- cians with their pure white [cloth] and caste marks,
hala. To return once more to Fanon's insights, the their gold chains and the arrogant tiltof their silver
Burghers did not fully "possess" either the language trumpets.
Inside the hall everything was ready forthe ceremo-
(English) or, therefore, the world expressed and im-
ny. The manaverai [ceremonial wedding platform] was
plied by that language, though they fondly thought like a miniature bed chamber with velvet cushions of
otherwise: "Our mother tongue is English, no? Who
emerald, violet, saffron yellow. Tiny jasmine buds, still
is talking Sinhala in our homes?" (YY, 228). white and fresh, were threaded in a loosely woven cur-
With the handover of power imminent, the peo- tain, sweet smelling. . . . [The bride's] feet and hands
ple of Ceylon saw that there would be opportunities were delicately painted with henna in the traditional
at the higher levels, and parents became ambitious bride patterns. The musicians settled themselves on the
over their children's future success: "The great Sin- carpets in a corner and lifted their trumpets in the air.
hala urge had begun. Sinhalese children flocked the The drums thudded. (23-24)
halls of Academia and wrestled with the niceties of Elsewhere in this work, Arasanayagam writes of a
the English tongue" (YY, 113) The narrator is con- rural culture seemingly at harmony with all nature
descending, mocking their pronunciation: "isstory" and all creation, another world, a distant country
for"story," "cloke" for "clock," and so on. Yet all (151). The narrator of Muller's trilogy says that the
too soon a Sinhalese uses the word altercation, and
Burghers were not materialistic, that they "never
the Burgher locomotive driver does not know its
really claimed the wealth of the country" (OUTT,
meaning: "You're a Burgher and you don't know 153) - meaning that there were no Burgher bankers,
English?" (YY, 217). The narrator may invent de- traders, and gem merchants. But in nonmaterial
risory names such as "Mr Gonpala" (meaning a terms too, they did not tap into such "wealth" as
foolish person [YY, 185]), but as the British leave, it there was in the native culture. Indeed, there is a
is the Gonpalas who inherit the vacant places. Why
contempt (based on ignorance rather than knowl-
were the Burghers not ready to occupy these posts?
edge) for Sinhalese and Tamil culture, imbibed
More pertinently, why did they lack the desire? from and reflecting Western imperial attitudes: and
The Burghers in ethnic, political, and cultural "these are the buggers who are getting indepen-
terms occupied not so much a homeland as a nebu- dence," says a Burgher derisively (YY, 212). To a
lous borderland; they were a liminal people, neither Burgher police officer, Buddhist processions are
there nor here, fully at home only within their creat-
nothing but a "cacophony," "idiots who blew on
ed Burgherhood. Theirs was an attempt at exclusivi- conch shells," and assembled "yokels" (YY,
ty,but an exclusivity at the fringes rather than at the 141-42). He has no hesitation in silencing those
center: they were ex-centric and, as portrayed in sounds, replacing them with popular Western songs
Muller's trilogy, also eccentric in the common use from his gramophone. It is the temporary triumph
of the word. As stated, they were excluded by the of the foreign over the native- and collective mem-
British, and thought that reading romances and ory is terribly long.
singing popular English songs meant one was Euro- Returning to Burgher recklessness and lack of
peanized, not perceiving that the best of Western ambition, to suggest that these features can be at-
civilization had been denied them. Nor, given the tributed to unreliable ancestors (OUTT, 24-25) is
snobbery associated with a lighter pigmentation, inadequate. One looks not to hereditary but to soci-
would they turn to Sinhalese or Tamil culture. ological factors. The narrator warns against synec-
Where "native" culture is concerned, Jean Arasana- dochic assumptions, but the fact that only a minori-
yagam's heavily autobiographical novel The Outsider ty did not follow the general pattern still leaves
(1993) provides an interesting insight, because questions unanswered: "This does not mean that all
Arasanayagam, one of Sri Lanka's best-known En- Burghers were remarkably . . . unambitious . . . and
glish-language poets, is a Burgher (nee Solomons) given without reserve to booze, large families and
who has been married for many years to a Sri the principle that tomorrow never comes" (JFT, 97;
Lankan Tamil. In her description of ceremony and emphasis added). The bewildered twelve-year old in
ritual (Yeatsian echoes) we have an outsider inside, Once Upon a Tender Time is unable to explain to the
conscious of and contrasting what she observes with irate and puzzled school headmaster why he neither
the Western life-style adopted by the Burghers. studies nor behaves himself. There are wider forces
(Aware too of the rigidity and unkindness tradition- operating on his life which the boy does not com-

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S ARYAN 531

prehend and cannot explain. Similarly, the reasons divinely selected, many Sinhalese tend to see them-
adduced in the trilogy are inadequate, and we must selves as chosen to safeguard their race, to protect
move beyond what the narrator provides. and perpetuate the Buddhist religion and Sinhala,
The Burghers largely kept out of politics: under the last a language spoken only within Sri Lanka (as
British rule, there was no democracy, no possibility Afrikaans exists only in South Africa). Such a self-
of political participation. After independence, and perception on the part of a group can lead, on the
given their very small number, they could not form one hand, to feelings of racial and religious superi-
political parties and contest elections on a Burgher ority (reaching irrational depths in serious claims
-
platform. The alternative attempting to join the that the Sinhalese are the descendants of either gods
Sinhalese and making common cause with them- or extraterrestrials [Sunday Leader, 1996]) and, on
would spell the loss of a distinctive (European- the other, to an insecurity, resulting in an over-
linked) identity. So the Burghers, created by politi- whelming racial and religious majority having the
cal history and becoming its victims, unable to go it fears and anxieties usually entertained by small mi-
alone yet unwilling to join and merge, remained nority groups. The perpetuation of race, religion,
apolitical. (Ondaatje's Running in theFamily was and language is perceived as a sacred, and overrid-
firstpublished in 1982, after the bloody Marxist ing, obligation.
"Insurgency" and on the eve of the 1983 anti-Tamil The proximity of India, and the history of Indian
pogrom, and though itmay be argued that the work invasions in centuries past, do not help to assuage
is a family saga, the complete absence of political anxieties and fears- or the irrationality and intoler-
consciousness is striking.) "The Burghers were too ance these two emotions often spawn. History, as
engrossed with their madcap, merry lifestyles to Hobsbawm notes, becomes "the raw material for
worry about who . . . steered the ship of State," we nationalist or ethnic or fundamentalist ideologies, as
read in Yakada Yaka (114). "It remains a fact that poppies are the raw material for heroin addiction"
no Burgher has entered the political arena in the is- (Chambers and Curti, 65). History, rather than
land to this date. When they found the Sinhala- being educative and constructive in the best and
Buddhist nationalism beginning to get on their broadest sense, becomes destructive: a narrow, in-
nerves they quit and migrated." tense perpetuator of animosities and hatreds. How-
The assertion that no Burgher entered politics is ever, Sinhalese-Buddhist militancy must be seen in
not strictly accurate. There were a few exceptions, the light of a denigration which lasted not decades
among them Pieter Keunaman, leader of the Com- but centuries, beginning in the sixteenth century
munist Party and minister of housing in 1970. But with the coming of Western, Christian imperialism
he is another instance of an exception proving the and its assumptions and contempt. Current emo-
general tendency. Created by Western invasion and tions and attitudes are the result of a drive to self-
by economic and cultural domination, the Burghers preservation through dominance and a desire to rec-
finally fell victim to "nationalist" political and reli- tify, and compensate for,long years of exclusion and
gious forces. "It took just eight years, eight years insult. A Harvard professor of anthropology, Stanley
after Independence, for the cosy world of Sri Tambiah, argues that the "betrayal" of Buddhism
Lanka's Burghers to collapse" (OUTT, 219), to be during colonialism contributed to the rise of "politi-
swept away by the forces of a "new nationalism," cal Buddhism," to a Buddhist fundamentalism
one that "ganged the Sinhalese together" (YY, which, in turn, is a betrayal of the Buddhist tenets of
114). And the emphasis here is on new, for this "detachment, compassion, tranquility, and non-vio-
force was different from the multiethnic nationalist lence." This Buddhism functions now "as a marker
movement (Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims) which of crowd and mob identity, as a rhetorical mobilizer
had agitated for independence from Britain. What of volatile masses, and as an instigator of violence"
emerged after independence was a Sinhalese (i.e., (92). "Sinhala Buddhist nationalism ... is so hege-
racial) Buddhist (religious) nationalism, one which monic that it has led to the inferiorization" of mi-
tended to subordinate, in the firstinstance, those norities (122), and the last includes the Burghers.
who were not Sinhalese and, second, those who Returning then to the Burghers and to their apo-
were non-Buddhists. (It can be said that, though a litical and carefree lives described in the trilogy, one
very small number of Sinhalese are Christians, Sri wonders whether they were not, after all, politically
Lankan Buddhists are almost all from the Sinhalese clairvoyant? It would appear they had a collective
ethnic group; there is a coinciding of race and reli- instinct which told them that, as a separate, identifi-
gion.) Michael Roberts sees a disposition among able group, they were doomed. If they had no ambi-
some Sinhalese to regard ethnic mixtures (such as tions, no thoughts of the future, was itbecause they
the Burghers) as inferior, and while Muller sees a knew there was no future for them as Burghers} Then
bloody-minded fanaticism in them (YY, 229), their gaiety would be seen as the expression of an
Roberts, in his study, describes a chosen-people unrecognized despair, even as under apartheid the
syndrome: as with the Jewish belief of having been dancing and high spirits of Africans often covered

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
532 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

and compensated for a grim reality. Richard Majors ethnic, multicultural nation celebrating plurality
and Janet Billson, in their study of African Ameri- (rather than the myth of racial and cultural purity
can males (1993), argue that being "cool" is a and superiority) becomes harder to realize. Carl
facade, a masking strategy which hides insecurity. Muller's novels are not only a testament to a once-
Because the Burghers could not make the sun stand vibrant community, as he intended the trilogy to be,
still, they made him run (as in Marvell's "To His but they also give readers an insight into the (distant
Coy Mistress"). Carl Muller, in a letter to me of 21 and immediate) history of Sri Lanka and draw at-
November 1996, writes that he is very busy with his tention to the predicament of a minority group, at
next novel because time is precious: "I have cancer. once foreign and native, estranging and estranged.
Life is a most dismal business. All I can do is laugh" Out of the blindness of the sea where those un-
(emphasis added). known
The Burghers were a people becalmed by history, Voyages began I was drawn through sea nets
neither European nor Sinhalese. The Western con- and flungamong the coffee berries and cinnamon,
nection during colonialism bestowed a certain status myskinisgreen with the verdigris of age
and some crumbs from the imperial table, and to re- myinsignia rubbed off the coin useful for
tain their few privileges, they had to perpetuate their neither barter nor trade,
separate "Burgherness." Long taught to adopt a Soon, the sail unfurled of thatghost ship
of myancesters will curl
condescending attitude toward the natives and na-
tive culture, they found it difficult to identify with round me and flip me over into thesea of darkness
where itisno longer important tohave roots.
them, and yet, in the long run, their continued exis-
tence seemed possible only through the death of a (Jean Arasanayagam, 1985)

separate (Burgher) identity- in other words, University of Bahrain

through assimilation. The choice became one of ei-
ther emigration or assimilation, and "only a few re- Works cited
main to cling to a vanished past" (OUTT, 217). Arasanayagam, Jean. "A Colonial Inheritance" and Other Poems.
John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat describes the paisanos, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Ariya. 1985.
. The Outsider. Colombo. Voice of Women. 1993.
people who were a mixture of Spanish, Indian,
Chambers, Iain, and Lidia Curti. The Post-Colonial Question.
Mexican, and "assorted Caucasian bloods" (4), how London. Routledge. 1996.
they came into being, flourished, and then disinte- Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London. Paladin. 1973.
grated so completely that future generations will Knox, Robert. An Historical Relation of Ceylon. London. 1681.
doubt they ever existed. The term vanished used Republished in book form by the Ceylon Historical Journal,
above by Muller may be an echo of R. L. Spittel's 1:1-4, July 1956-April 1957.
Majors, Richard, and Janet Billson. Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of
Vanished Trails (1950), a book which describes the Black Manhood in America. New York. Touchstone. 1993.
lifeof the Veddas, hunters and gatherers living in the McGilvray, Dennis. "Dutch Burghers and Portuguese Mechan-
forest, the now almost extinct aboriginal inhabitants ics: Eurasian Ethnicity in Sri Lanka." Comparative Studies in
of Sri Lanka. (The work was widely read on the is- Society and History, 24:2 (April 1982), pp. 235-63.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark. New York. Vintage. 1993.
land and was a prescribed text in the English cur- Muller, Carl. The Jam Fruit Tree. New Delhi. Penguin. 1993.
riculum of secondary schools.) Muller, underneath . Yakada Yaka. New Delhi. Penguin. 1994.
his humor, portrays the passing away of another . Once Upon a Tender Time. New Delhi. Penguin. 1995.
"tribe" whose cavalier nonconformism had implicit- Ondaatje, Michael. Running in the Family. New York. Vintage.
1993.
ly challenged the values and preoccupations, if not Percival, Robert. An Account of the Island of Ceylon. London.
obsessions, of other ethnic groups; whose humor Baldwin. 1803.
and easygoing attitude was a contrast to, and cor- Phillips, Caryl. The European Tribe. London. Faber. 1987.
"
rective of,the racial and religious intensities of some Przybylski, Noni. The Jam Fruit Tree by Carl Muller." Unpub-
lished paper, 10 May 1996.
Sinhalese and Tamils, intensities which have caused
Rezel, Christopher. "The Jam Fruit Tree and Ceylonese English."
much destruction and pain. The Burghers were "an Weekend Express (Colombo), 6 April 1996.
example of agreeable living to the money-mad, pres- Roberts, Michael, et al. People Inbetween. Colombo. Sarvodaya.
1989.
tige-mad, scheming, conniving Sinhalese and
Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. London. Granta. 1992.
Tamils who deplored yet envied the Burghers'
Said, Edward. After the Last Sky. New York. Pantheon. 1985.
supremely careless attitude" (YY, 115). Though Sarvan, Charles. "The Writer as Historian." Toronto South Asian
often boisterous, their reputation was that of an es- Review, 10:1, 1991(a).
. "M. G. Vassanji's The Gunny Sack: A Reflection on His-
sentially peaceful folk, apolitical but free of the ha-
tory and the Novel." Modern Fiction Studies, 37:3, 1991(b).
treds which now sully the island. Finally, the opti-
Spittel, R. L. "Vanished Trails: The Last of the Veddas." Ox-
mism of the Burghers seems to have been justified: ford. 1950.
most of them have found homes in economically Steinbeck, John. The Short Novels of John Steinbeck. New York.
more developed, socially more stable, and politically Viking. 1953.
more peaceful countries such as Australia and Sunday Leader (Colombo), 28 July 1996.
Tambiah, Stanley J.Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and Vio-
Canada. The loss is to Sri Lanka in that, with their lence in Sri Lanka. Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1992.
exodus, the ideal (entertained by some) of a multi- Thanks to Professor John Hillis for technical assistance gladly given.

This content downloaded from

192.248.16.125 on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 08:26:32 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms