Traditional knowledge; the unexplored goldmine for economic independence

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 hydraulic civilisation (which is not taught in our engineering colleges because the Western system we follow has not mastered it)

Our clay industry has potential beyond kitchen utensils and is unexplored 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. 

By Surya Vishwa

Traditional knowledge is the heartbeat of a nation; especially ancient civilisations such as Sri Lanka. The economic significance of this multi-dimensional knowledge is buried in ignorance and even now in this current dollar crunch, there is pitiably no national discourse on it.

 We still think it is ‘normal’ for Lankan students to queue up in hordes to get education in foreign lands which has cost the nation billions of rupees in 73 years of so-called independence, without ever realising the knowledge that we have lost forever. After we received independence from the British, we have failed to set up an education system that will revive the gamut of traditional knowledge that we have had. If we had appreciated what was ours, we could have had foreign students arriving here instead of the other way around. 

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 and although there is zero State support for the conserving of indigenous plants/seeds, there are few individuals taking it upon themselves to do so

Although we are sending our students abroad year in and year out it is to receive an education that has little connection with our country. This is why we have many educated persons but no national wellbeing. Our ancestors did not have foreign university degrees but they created a country that was economically sustainable by using all existing national resources. We have been destroying all of our resources. 

The arguments made here is not to decry Western knowledge but rather to point out that we have not added it into our existing knowledge tradition as a parallel equal partner to our indigenous base but rather let it have a monopoly in every dimension. Thus, from agriculture/caring of the soil to engineering and medical science, we have lost our traditional knowledge and to date we remain oblivious to how much this has cost us in the money of our taxpayer. 

To reiterate once again; us being foreigners in our own land and alien to our own heritage endowed intangible cultural knowledge imparted to us in our rich pre-colonial knowledge system has cost us economically. Drastically so. 

Nations such as ours, which has been under the yoke of colonisation, neo colonisation and current economic as well as war/peace linked imperialism, find that reviving our traditional knowledge in present times is more challenging than it ever was. The main reason is that our policymakers are far removed from the policy priorities of the ancestors who ruled this country. Possibly even if our ancient kings were to rise from the grave and teach our current leaders of the relevance of our indigenous knowledge, they still may think it is inferior.

Traditional knowledge encompasses a vast realm of facets and cuts across the material and the immaterial but both of which is inter-connected. These realms fall under Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and its economic importance is not realised because it seemingly appears to be out of the parameters of finance. 

Yet the economic stability of a nation depends on such knowledge. Young nations such as those in the West that we term as prosperous who had no such inherited knowledge, with their commitment to developing Western science had to a large extent borrowed the gamut of non- Western expertise they gathered from other cultures during the pre-renaissance time period. 

Today with former Western colonies such as Sri Lanka becoming more and more ‘non-local’ and forever looking for Western or non-Lankan ‘expertise,’ from anything from water resource management, food preserving technology, soil nutritionising, medical science and even national unity – to name a few vital areas for a stable survival, there is absolutely no intellectually heartfelt understanding on the need to revive the concept of traditional knowledge and heritage in practical terms for mainstream development of the nation. 

Every aspect mentioned above has economic consequences. Some of the above criteria fall under Intangible aspects of cultural heritage and an area not mentioned above but is a direct component of ICH encompasses religious or spiritual traditions, customs or beliefs that have indirect link to a national wellbeing and cuts across to materialistic terms by contributing to areas such as tourism. Buddhist and Hindu nations such as Bhutan, Thailand, Korea, India and Nepal respectively have used this spiritual inheritance from their ancestors to best advantage to position the country globally in many areas. 

Another category linked to the spiritual base of the nation is the Deshiya Chikitsa (Sinhala Wedakama) traditional medicine system and Ayurveda connected to the ancient sages and monks who had mastered the universe-based knowledge that has been found by the early researchers of Western science to be accurately parallel with modern science. The current plans of trying to use this knowledge into the post-COVID tourism revival of Sri Lanka will have credibility only when we show that we have saved money for the nation by using this knowledge for the preservation of the wellbeing of our own citizens with locally available expertise when we need it most.

For this, intellectuals trained in the Western tradition must do adequate research on the scores of Lankan traditional medicine experts who have fully eliminated the COVID virus from the body in less than three days; some of these weda mahattayas include Kalutarage Sampath of Panadara, Amila Sanjeewa of Gampaha, D. Hettiarachchi of Ganemulla and Sinhala Wedakam researcher and practitioner L. Embuldeniya of Matale, Ukwella. Thus, to think of promoting our national medical expertise for tourism, while not proving its efficacy for our own national wellbeing when we had the best global chance ever according in recent history, would be a lukewarm surface-based attempt. 

It is up to us to shape a staunch framework innovatively for ourselves as a nation using every area for preserving the integrity of the country by using traditional expertise. If the current policymakers have failed in this for 73 years, then we have to create a new set of leaders who will resurrect this knowledge from the depths that we have buried it.

A country known for traditional farming and indigenous rice, we are today importing rice. A country that had cows every street corner in every village is now addicted to powdered milk that we assume to be ‘real’ milk. A country which used clay as a construction option has been trained to think of clay as symbols of poverty

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 hydraulic civilisation (which is not taught in our engineering colleges because the Western system we follow has not mastered it). A starker example of economic loss, would be through us being today ignorant of our agrarian heritage-based technology on how we worked with the vicissitudes of nature by not going against it as modern science does. This has us, an ancient agrarian civilisation that mastered water resource and soil resource management having to 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 kind on the Lankan market). For your peace of mind do not think of the tonnes of chemicals in it. Just think of the 300 varieties of traditional potatoes of this 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? Ask any place selling onions where they are from. You will get 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 and although there is zero State support for the conserving of indigenous plants/seeds, there are few individuals taking it upon themselves to do so.

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 where our dollars went, so slowly and gradually for 73 years. A country known for traditional farming and indigenous rice, we are today importing rice. A country that had cows every street corner in every village is now addicted to powdered milk that we assume to be ‘real’ milk. A country which used clay as a construction option has been trained to think of clay as symbols of poverty. 

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 labelled culture. 

The current Lankan education structure does nothing for creating a youthful workforce that knows, respects and has a vision for saving money for the nation by putting into practice the policies of the ancient leaders of the land; policies which need a gamut of knowledge that is still relevant as described above. To term this know-how as primitive is what the colonial experience did very well to instil in our minds while being to date uneducated on how we had mastered how to make rocks akin to clay for carving purposes and how water fronts were created on solid rock (Sigiriya). 

And on the agrarian front, we a country that had ancestors who could probably teach the world on the thousands of ways to heal the soil and make it bear fruit abundantly have been busting our money burdened under the chemical fertiliser myth. But by trying to in few weeks overturn the chemical fertiliser malady of 72 years we have further entrenched in the public the false view that chemical fertiliser is compulsory for our soil. The reality is that all the vegetable seeds that we grow are imported and created to need fertiliser and this includes paddy as well. The soil has been taught to be chemical dependent. Thus, a policy decision to revise this overnight could spell nothing but disaster, as we have seen and further and completely alienate our brainwashed farmers from the reality that we do not need chemicals if we treat our soil right, the way ancestrally done in Sri Lanka.

Agriculture in Sri Lanka is today a discipline taught entirely in the Western science-based tradition alone and many foreign sponsorships are available for students to study this subject abroad. Thus, a nation that was a unique agrarian civilisation has been brought to its knees by its own people who has destroyed hundreds of its sturdy indigenous plant varieties, especially rice, often being advised by ‘experts’ that these are ‘weeds.’ 

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. Our clay industry has potential beyond kitchen utensils and is unexplored 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 this, such efforts are done under difficult conditions. Our cotton manufacturing is under explored. We have sunlight throughout the year and do not have a national policy for using this natural resource for our energy conservation. 

At least now when we seem to be in one of the worst situations the country has ever seen; let us rethink our economy in everyday decisions when it comes to the use of our traditional knowledge. Even though it is not appreciated by policymakers, if citizens realise its worth and make small changes in their own lives pertaining to it, we could propel this country out of its misery.