Have you heard about the Yaka Anti-Defamation League (YADL)?

Some twenty years ago, an academic by the name of Bruce Kapferer, who had done some fieldwork in Sri Lanka during or soon after the bheeshayana (the UNP-JVP Period of Terror, 1988-89), mentioned in passing that the word ‘Yaka’ was used for ‘the lowest form of beings’.  This was during a lecture at Harvard University.  If memory serves, Nur Yalman, another Anthropologist, raised questions of ontology and Kapferer, to my mind, side-stepped and not very deftly either. 

‘Yaka’ is a misunderstood term.  It has multiple meanings.  It refers to a collective and a history, a way of life and a disavowal, is a vilifying term and one embraced with pride.  My friend Hemantha from Pelmadulla, for example, whenever we meet each other (which is not very often) is wont to exclaim ‘Yako!’ Spontaneously.  And then he would say ‘mama hari neda?’ (Am I correct, am I not?).  I remember a conversation we had on the subject of yakas.

Neither of us had purchased the story of Aryan colonization.  We both felt we were more ‘Yak’ than anything else.  We felt that it was the Yak-element, more than anything else, that gives Sinhala Buddhist civilization its character and resilience, not to mention a largeness of heart to embrace difference and even invader (in whatever garb) in ways that few societies have or do.  And that goes back to the Lankavathara Sutta, the civilized treatment of Sita by Ravana (as opposed to the crude way Rama’s brother Lakshman treated Ravana’s sister), the way Kuveni treated Vijaya as opposed to how Vijaya treated her, the encounter with Arahat Mahinda, the respect accorded to Elara, and the entire set of interactions with the Europeans.  

Did I hear someone say ‘myths and legends’?  Well, there are myths that are presented as fact and facts that are mythologized through selective and creative vilification.  That’s a different debate and if anyone wants to get into it, we can talk about a lot of things that are faith-based but recounted as really-happened facts. 

There is ‘Sihala’ or ‘Siv-hela’ or ‘the 4 helas’, namely Yaksha, Naga, Raksha and Deva.  Ceylon, in this sense (a corruption of ‘Sinhale’ after ‘Sivhela’) is the more appropriate named-name for the island and its people.  There are enough and more ‘Yaka’ stories and if history is also written in folk story and folk song, then it is not inappropriate for my friend Hemantha to greet me as ‘Yako!’ and for me to respond likewise, just as it is strange and uneducated of Bruce Kapferer to offer the kinds of readings as he has. 

In any event, the whole Yak business has got totally out of hand with the ‘Grease Yaka’ phenomenon.  So much so that it now appears that the Yakas have got really upset.  A few days ago I received a Press Release, authored by the YADL (Yaka Anti-Defamation League), headquarted, appropriately, in Ritigala.

YADL Press Release
In this minute of arrant tumult in the heavens below, hell above, and earth betwixt, it has come to our notice that Yakas have of recent been inculpated in a spate of physical and metaphysical phenomena aka kolama across our island nation.

We must assume it surely be a typographical error, misspoken perhaps for Greasy Yankees or other yuck, long known to slip in and out of air, ear and eye space, indulging in such preemptive hysteria of one moment psy-ops the next sycophancy.

Yaka, long the revered ancestors of the people of this isle, have underscored its basic rhythms and techniques of work and war and words, helping build great channels and configurations, defeating sundry imperialist invasions, esp. post-1505, and cussing the rest of them.

It is only in recent times, since the polar-reversing events of 1815 to be precise, that Yakas became Deities, and Demons became Yaka.

We hope the korporate media and their dizzy drones will desist from further kalumny that can only evoke righteous requital, let alone ginijala, selesma, bhuta and vevulum aka fire, migraine, fleeting madness and a trembling.

We are not a minority. We are the world.

We seek not equal opportunity, cos we are not all equally opportunist.
Signed by: Visvakarma, Riri, Nonchi Akka, Kalu, Suniyam, Lenchini & Jasaya, Gara, Mahason & 18 others on behalf of the Yaka Anti-Defamation League (YADL).

I don’t think you’ve heard the last from the Yakas.  And I think that’s a good thing.

[Courtesy, Daily News, September 17, 2011]