COLOMBO: Nearly five centuries later and the memories are still hard to erase. The day was November 15, 1505, when Dom Lourenco de Almeida arrived off the harbour of Colombo in nine ships quite by accident after being caught in a storm.
And that accident led to one and a half centuries of Portuguese rule that can only be characterized by cruelty, greed and intolerance. The missionary zeal to spread the Christian religion was obvious in every move of the Portuguese. The new conquerors marched with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other.
While Sri Lanka prepares next year to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese, a group of scholars, however, are on a mission to write their own version of history from the perspective of the colonized.
Like detectives going down the corridors of time, with clues and evidence spanning centuries, the band of around 30 people are pouring over ancient palm leaf manuscripts, scouring the museums of Western Europe, studying the details of paintings, checking out ancient tombstones and also digging for any clues from homes and temples. They are on a voyage of discovery.
"What is history?" asks Dr Susantha Goonatilake, a well- known Sri Lankan scholar. "History is written with a perspective and in the case of the Portuguese, like all other colonizers, the perspective is theirs," she tells IPS.
"What of our colonized people's, perspective?" she asks again. "Therefore, the documentation of the colonizers needs to be treated with circumspection." The Sri Lankan government has other motives with regard to the study.
"We will ask Portugal to admit to the atrocities committed in Sri Lanka and make a public apology, we will also seek reparation for loss of life and property during that time and get them to return the treasures spirited away from this land," Culture Minister Vijitha Herath told IPS.
The government is banking on the academic study unearthing enough evidence for it to seek compensation from Portugal. In 1658, the Dutch ended the Portuguese rule of Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon. After the Dutch, the country was under the British until 1948 - when Ceylon gained its independence.
During their occupation of Sri Lanka, the Portuguese fortified their power systematically by manipulating local kings. "A hundred and fifty-three years after the Portuguese first landed in Ceylon they were expelled from the country, leaving the gloomy word 'Failure' written large over all their actions," summed up Paul E. Pieris, the best known historian of this period.
"That however was not all, for they left the Sinhalese a broken race, with their ancient civilisation brought to the verge of ruin, and their scheme of life well-nigh destroyed," added Pieris.
There were claims that the Portuguese pilfered and plundered Sri Lanka's ancient Buddhist temples. However, he reveals that there is evidence the Portuguese destroyed 256 places of religious worship, both Buddhist and Hindu temples along the coastal belt.
Asked whether such an inquiry would stir up religious strife in a country that is already a simmering in a cauldron of religious intolerance, Herath says, "It will help us to accept what has happened and move ahead to the future...it will put history in its right perspective." "We also need to be careful so that it doesn't stoke the fires of religious extremism," cautions the minister. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
