Not Quite an Epitaph for Cat's Eye
--Malathi de Alwis

The last Cat's Eye column appeared in the Wednesday Midweek Review of the Island, a Sri Lankan English daily, on August 13th 2003. This of course does not mean that we have seen the end of it because this column, like its namesake, has had several lives. It had a previous life in the Lanka Guardian, during the mid-1980s, for a couple of years, then was revived in 1995 and had a relatively longer, sometimes sporadic, life of eight years in the Island as well as shorter spans (in translation) in the alternative Sinhala weekly, Ravaya and the mainstream Tamil newspaper, Thinakural. There has been some recent discussion of reviving the column yet again hence this being not quite an epitaph for it but rather an opportune moment to reflect on its production, dissemination and impact.

The Cat's Eye column, which appeared weekly, was written by a rather fluid and dispersed collective of women and some men who were committed towards providing a feminist analysis and critique of local, regional and global current events and issues. The column did not merely voice opinions but also sought to educate the reading public on a variety of issues that spanned from constitutions to cricket, films to fatwahs, with carefully researched documentation. The multiple locations and perspectives of these columnists who spanned many disciplines, ethnicities and religions also contributed towards producing nuanced and varied commentaries that defied pigeon-holing. The blurb at the back of the edited collection of Cat's Eye columns, published in 2000, aptly captures the draw of this column: "Since its first appearance the column has never failed to provoke thought and debate, while being at various times critical, controversial, entertaining, irritating, funny, informative and celebratory." The column's name, Cat's Eye, was chosen in order to subvert the derogatory epithet of 'cat' that is often used against women. The column thus returned the patriarchal gaze with a wink!
What made this column unique was that unlike other regular columns published in the Sri Lankan press, and I am told, in many other parts of the world as well, Cat's Eye was written anonymously and collectively, in the true spirit of feminist cooperation (the coordination of such a complicated exercise and the observance of the weekly deadline over such a long span of time was solely due to the dedication and commitment of one feminist who however insists on remaining anonymous). Meetings to discuss what should be the focus or theme for the next week's column, provided a wonderful opportunity for a group of very busy people to stop a minute and take stock of events, to share ideas, renew friendships or embark on new ones. The anonymity of the column allowed us to be more daring and innovative but most importantly, enabled us to be less egotistical and possessive about our productions and to share both praise and opprobrium collectively.

Not surprisingly, it was the very anonymity of the column which particularly frustrated and annoyed several of the column's detractors (and there were as many as there were fans!) who were denied the pleasure of shooting personalized barbs at individual writers --an unfortunate practice of criticism embraced by many Sri Lankans. One letter to the editor of the Island accused these "caterwauling", "denationalized feminists" of using a "literary pseudonym 'Cat's Eye' to camouflage their identity" in order to air their "distorted views" on Sinhala Buddhism and militarism, in a "respected journal" such as the Island (Prema Weerasinghe, Island, 28 March 2001). A more polite gentleman having many a bone to pick with us addressed us as "that many-headed lady, Ms Catseye" (Ranga Wickremasinghe, Island, 22 December 1999) while yet others sought to insist that they were 'in the know' regarding who was really behind Cat's Eye: "Cat's Eye and I have many mutual acquaintances and I am sure she knows…" (C.A. Chandraprema, Island, June 7 2000) or "with or without pseudo or real names it is not difficult to identify the authoress of the column…who happens to be a Tamil racist" (Nalin de Silva, Island, June 24 1998). However, it was only H.L.D. Mahindapala, a former journalist now residing in Melbourne, who was presumptuous enough to actually name an individual and accuse her of being "anti-Sinhala Buddhist" and "one of the leading 'Cats'" promoting "hysterical feminitva fundamentalism" (H.L.D. Mahindapala, Island, February 3 1999).

Cat's Eye's polite rejoinder to Mr Mahindapala, in a subsequent column linking hate/sexist speech with sexual violence and also insisting that the column was authored by different people each week, only provoked him to further anti-feminist, pro-Sinhala vituperations coupled with crude, sexualizing innuendos and personalized invectives with even the Editor of the Island (who we accused of failing to exercise responsible editorial control) joining the fray crowing that "in the battle of the sexes, feminist activists should be able to take as much as they give" (Island, February 10 1999).

It is interesting that while Cat's Eye criticized all forms of nationalisms and religious fundamentalisms, those who took greatest umbrage were those protesting our critique of Sinhala nationalism and Buddhist hegemony. For this, we were variously labeled, 'unpatriotic', 'hysterical', 'racist', 'prissy', 'westernized' and 'bourgeois' and our calls for a politically negotiated solution to the civil war dubbed 'pro-LTTE'. Such criticisms are very similar to those that were made against Sri Lankan feminists (even by leftists), in the 1980s. As I noted regarding that context too, the backlash against feminists and attempts to de-legitimize them by sexualizing, personalizing and labeling them to be western, anti-culture, anti-religion etc., is intimately tied to the articulation of nationalism in South Asia (de Alwis 2002).

However, what tended to be even more insidious than such attempts to de-legitimize and excoriate the authors of Cat's Eye was the subtle subversion of the editorial staff of the Island in repeatedly delaying to publish our columns several weeks running, in 2003. While this is my personal reading of one of the central reasons for the slow death of Cat's Eye (which may not be shared by others in the collective), I do know that similar tactics were mobilized against another columnist perceived to be too sympathetic of the LTTE and ultimately asked not to contribute to the Island any longer. Such a reading also raises the question of whether one should try to publish and thus support the circulation of less chauvinistic newspapers or whether one should insist on continuing to publish in racist newspapers as it reaches the kind of audience which most needs to hear and heed our critiques. This is the ongoing debate in the collective as we consider reviving Cat's Eye.

References cited

de Alwis, Malathi. 2002. "Critical costs: Negotiating feminism 'at home'" in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal 3(3), December 2002.

de Alwis, Malathi. (ed). 2000. Cat's Eye: A Feminist Gaze on Current Issues. Colombo: Cat's Eye Publications.

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Malathy de Alwis is a Senior Research Fellow at ICES, Colombo, Sri Lanka

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