From agriculture/caring of the soil to engineering and medical science, we have lost our traditional knowledge and we remain oblivious to how much this has cost us in the money of our tax payer.
Today, we are floundering in fear and doubt of not having medicines because we do not have Dollars to pay for it. What about our traditional medicine? We devalued it in the face of a pandemic that benefitted vaccine companies.
Basic common sense tells us that these companies would want the pandemic to continue because it is only then that they can make profit. History tells us that the Hela civilisation of ours was based on a solid health system based on indigenous medical science that this island was known for and where research into oral vaccines that connected the nerves in the tongue with the brain were common. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we had several Sri Lankan indigenous medical practitioners who researched into controlling the health hazard in locally conducive ways.
Sinhala Wedakam practitioner, indigenous scientist Laxman Embuldeniya is one such person. We lament that we do not have common drugs for headaches and other ailments as well as for serious illnesses. Would this lament be necessary if we had put 73 years of so-called independence to rational use by practising our heritage and upholding what is ours – i.e. a humanistic and ancient medical system that is on par with the evolving still infant Western science?
Medicinal heritage
Do we even realise that if we had conserved, strengthened and promoted the traditional medicinal heritage of this nation to the point that it was not ‘alternative’ medicine but the main core of national health that historically kept our nation alive through all kinds of epidemics and viruses, that we would not be slaves to a global industry earning from keeping people sick, an industry to which we contribute by offering our scarce Dollars.
To reiterate once again since we seem too dumb to recognise this; us being aliens to our intangible cultural knowledge imparted to us through our rich pre-colonial knowledge system has drastically cost us economically, cost us an arm and a leg and heart and kidneys and brains.
We have failed to set up an education system that will revive the gamut of indigenous, heritage based knowledge that we have had. If we had done so we could have had foreign students arriving here instead of the other way around and yes, this would have had Dollars coming into our banks and not the reverse.
Strangled by colonisation, neo-colonisation and economic as well as war/peace linked imperialism, nations such as ours find that reviving our traditional knowledge is more challenging than it ever was. The main reason is that our policy makers irrespective of party colours are far removed from the national priorities of the monarchs who ruled this country and made it a rich civilisation that amazed the world till we brought it down to this low level.
This is why we are not seeing in a single so-called protest, a tangible solution for the economic crisis. Even if our ancient kings were to rise from the grave to talk of the relevance of our indigenous knowledge in current economic policy making would this make a difference?
Economic cost
It would be interesting to collate the economic cost of us as a nation being ignorant of the technicalities of our ancient knowledge; for example, our ancient engineering and hydraulic civilisation (which is not taught in our engineering colleges because the Western system we follow has not mastered it).
One example of our ancient engineering is that we have today a railway hill country bridge built on the advice of a villager without using the climate threatening iron or steel or concrete, surviving when the other bridges built with iron and steel have been burdened by the wear and tear of the passage of time.
We, an ancient agrarian civilisation that mastered water resource and soil resource management spend exorbitant amounts of money contributing to the coffers of other countries and resort to gigantic levels of imports of diverse sorts to be able to provide the basic needs of our people. Think onions and potatoes (the global chemically fattened kind on the Sri Lankan market). Yet we have over 300 varieties of indigenous potatoes of the country with its countless natural medicinal properties. Why are these not encouraged to be grown as part of a State policy?
If this was done for 73 years, would not we have saved our Dollars? Have the governments over the years and the opposition parties ever considered this and the salient fact that our food industry is run by a mafia of middlemen who are unbridled profiteers of an industry shaped by them.
Vaccines
Ask any place selling onions where they are from. You will get a list of names of many countries except Sri Lanka. What happened to the hundreds of farmers and thousands of acres cultivating onions in areas famous for it, such as in the North of Sri Lanka? In a pandemic that basically attacks the immune system which the Western world knows only to counter through vaccines, we are following the West while sitting on the goldmine of our traditional food.
This would take the crown for immunity boosting if the vaccine making companies that focus on synthetic option were to come here and do their research on the food based alternatives Sri Lanka has. Few countries could boast of this treasure diet but yet we are spending vast amounts of money on food imports.
Although we have killed our soil with chemicals for decades there are still locations where indigenous seed varieties and indigenous vegetables and yams/potatoes would be found in the country. State support is needed for the conserving of indigenous plants/seeds, and for boosting the attempts of a few persons taking it upon themselves to do the task that policy makers have ignored.
Agriculture in Sri Lanka is today a discipline taught entirely in the Western science based tradition alone. Many foreign sponsorships are available for students to study the subject abroad. Thus a nation that was a unique agrarian civilisation has been brought to its knees by its people who have destroyed hundreds of its sturdy indigenous plant varieties, especially rice, often being advised by ‘experts’ that these are ‘weeds.’
Modern day economics, once again formulated in this globalised framework has not yet bred an economist to do with traditional knowledge what Amartya Sen did with the concepts of happiness, freedom and wellbeing. If we had, we would have figured out how our Dollars slipped away for 73 years.
A country known for traditional farming and indigenous rice, we are today importing rice. A country that had cows in every street corner in every village is now addicted to importing substance that we hope to be ‘real’ milk.
Symbols of poverty
A country which used clay as a construction option has been trained to think of clay as symbols of poverty. A country which has sunlight bestowed on it all year around has spent seven decades neglecting the energy obtaining potential of this resource and the same goes for hydro electricity. Whenever some rural invention comes up, such as the one in which water was used as an energy resource to power a three wheeler, those who thrive by not allowing such inventions to surface get busy putting such efforts into oblivion.
The mistake we have made today is to link constructs such as heritage and traditional knowledge and all that is indigenous under a small box labeled culture.
Our traditional crafts, from brassware to our weaving based products are not even promoted widely in the local sphere, let alone exports. The practitioners of these crafts are now dead and gone and their children do not take to these vocations because of lack of market exposure.
We seem to have forever lost ancient technology such as the hand crafting of gems. Those who are trying desperately to revive these old methods to exploit it competitively in the international market cannot do so because there is little interest by those formally in charge of such subjects. Our banking sector is a write off in promoting and reviving indigenous industries.
Although one may think reviving this sector through awareness by providing trainings on the importance of traditional knowledge in the lending sector, one wonders if it would reap results because many of the trainers and those who are being trained would all be brain washed through this globalised education system that we have.
Our clay industry has potential beyond kitchen utensils but is unexplored and under estimated in revival for engineering to reverse the post colonial ills of seeing clay as symbols of ‘poverty’ and not for the major health promoting quality that it has for use in construction.
Our Batik industry is stifled under the cost of chemical dyes because we have not revived the natural dying tradition that we had historically. Although areas such as Jaffna are trying, such efforts are done under difficult conditions. Our cotton manufacturing is under explored.
Basic national knowledge
At least now when we seem to be in one of the worst situation the country has ever seen, let us re-think our economy in everyday decisions when it comes to the use of our traditional knowledge. Let us think and be aware how we have squandered our Dollars because we were ignorant of our basic national knowledge. Let us make small changes in our lives pertaining to learning about and resurrecting this link with our past so that we could propel this country out of its misery. Let us be the leaders our nation needs. Let us propel policy shifting through our actions and not mere protests.
Although it is certainly the right of any citizen to protest against any sitting government, all of us citizens should realise that if we are protesting, we should also contemplate deeply on what we have done within our lifetime to change the status quo.
After all, we, the citizens, are the true leaders of the nation. While we have the power of the vote we also have the power of leadership and action to influence policy makers who are our servants. If these servants have been deaf or dumb or blind for the past 74 years then we too are responsible. At least now, let us start a viable national discourse on the worth of what is indigenous and the relevance of it for our economy.