'I am not talking about individual missionaries, but about missionarism. Religion, son, is not a matter of gods and worship; it's a whole way of life, a whole way of thinking. And that is why the suddhas are so keen to convert us to their way of thinking, to their religion.' He himself, confessed S.W., was a baptised Christian. His father had been converted in the mission school he went to. There was no other way he could get schooling. The old man paused. 'Now, why do you think that was, son? What happened to all the temple schools we had? Why do we have to give up the faith of our fathers in order to learn? And why do we have to learn in English and not in Sinhalese or Tamil?' S.W. leant forward, his shoulders hunched, waiting for an answer. Sahadevan took a deep breath. He had only a vague understanding of what S.W. was driving at. 'To get better jobs?' he stammered. 'To get into government service?' S.W.'s eyes flashed. 'Whose government, Saha? Not ours, is it? It is the suddha's government, the vellayan's as you say in Tamil, the white man's. And for whom? For the suddhas in England. And what for? Where do you think all our wealth goes? Certainly not to our labourers and peasants. And see what the suddhas have gone and done to our land.' There was a sadness in his voice. 'Once we were the granary of the East, now all we have to eat is tea, and rubber.' 'Yes, all right,' resisted Sahadevan, retreating into the safety of the history he had been taught at St Benedict's. 'But what about all the money we get from selling tea and rubber.' 'We, we, we,' the old man was nearly desperate with anger. He did not seem to be able to get through to the younger man. 'What 'we'? We produce the tea but we don't get the money from it. The suddhas do.' 'But they built the roads and railways, didn't they? Sahadevan made a last stand for St Benedict's and education. 'Yes, son, they did,' replied S.W. The anger had left him; he was not going to win Sahadevan over in a day. 'I am not saying that everything they did is bad,' he explained patiently. 'But we must ask ourselves why they did it, we cannot just believe what they say. They say they are bringing civilization to us, with roads and railways, when what they are really doing is transporting the wealth out of the country. I am not saying,' he went on, 'that railways are a bad thing; after all, I am a railwayman myself, but we would have come to it in our own time, at our own speed.' What they wanted, S.W. add more reflectively, was their land for growing food and their rivers for irrigation. Then they could think about railways and things. It wasn't the right time. Like a namban mango, they had got ripe before time. The rhythm was all wrong, they were no longer in tune with themselves.
A. Sivanandan