Features

Two leaves and a bud: the history of Malaiyaham as pedagogy

Published

3 years ago

2024/01/2

Upali Newspaper Admin

Sri Lankan estate worker. Image courtesy UNHCR/C. P. Wijetunga

by Sivamohan Sumathy

And I wish to speak of a poet here. Kurinjith Thennavan is an auto-didact. He did not learn to become a writer in our schools or university. He is a worker. He was shut out of our free education mandate even as he and others like him were enabling it. He was not celebrated as a poet of Sri Lanka during his life time, and is little known outside of a small circle of the Tamil literati and political actors. In concluding with two of this poems (in translation), I offer a reading of our history that in its undoing can help us forge a shared vision of social and political emancipation.

In the year 2023, we celebrated 75 years of our independence as a country. As we broke ties with Britain, and its imperiality, we struggled to find our feet under the postcolonial sun. Much of our postcolonial history has been a history of deep-seated violence of the social structures, and the violence of the repressive state apparatus. The colonial haunts our present in debilitating ways, not the least in the neo colonial, neo liberal imperialism of the global north, renamed as globalization, masking the pernicious nature of investment capitalism and exploitation of the resources of the global south, including that of the labour.

Today, we are in the midst of an unprecedented economic slump that promises to get worse in 2024. We also witness to the steady erosion of the rights and welfare of the vast majority of the people, besieged by rising prices and dwindling social welfare programmes. Our economy has become increasingly fragile, heavily reliant on the labour of working-class women, whose rights are being steadily eroded.

The year 2023 saw another milestone, going far back into our colonial history. 200 years ago, in 1823, land was allocated for the first large scale coffee plantation in the hill country. This was followed by the steady migration of Tamil speaking workers from South India who came over as indentured labour to work first in the coffee plantations and then the tea plantations. The trickle of workers in the early years expanded to hundreds of thousands over decades. The industry boomed and came to define Ceylon, as a major producer and exporter of tea. But there is also the history of the worker and the community that needs to be reckoned with.

The history of the tea industry and the history of the estate worker and the community are deeply intertwined, and it is a history of place, displacements, and strife. The dis/placements the community undergoes in colonial times continues into postcoloniality. In a series of acts from 1948-49, roughly a million people of the upcountry plantation community and their relatives elsewhere were disenfranchised. The upcountry plantation people, today, widely named and self-named as Malaiyaha Tamils, became a large and concentrated workforce, earning, until the mid-1970s, 56% of the foreign exchange for the country, but toiling without rights. They were a people with a home, but without a state.

My entry into the question of Malaiyaham and education pivots on questions concerning a) how we understand our history, the twin history of 75 years of independence, and 200 years of the plantation industry, built on the labour of a disenfranchised community b) how we bring the two into a relationship that gives us certain answers toward educational endeavours and c) how through that endeavour we may initiate a discussion on our pedagogical practices, what our priorities in education could be, and how we face the challenges brought on by competing demands made on educational practices; on the one hand, the demands of the market place and injunctions guided by World Bank directives for instance and, on the other, the need for a transformative pedagogy.

Education and Malaiyaham

We may feel that there is nothing much to show for our 75-year-old history. Yet in the bleakness of these times, it is important to underscore two salutary developments in our civic lives that have come to play a significant role in the historical trajectories of the state: Free Education, and free healthcare provision. Yet, free education heralded as a cohesive and comprehensive state policy, empowering ordinary people and giving them a greater share in the social and political life of democracy was tragically denied to the Malaiyaha community. Even on independence, a version of the Rural Schools Ordinance of 1907, where the companies were required to provide primary level schooling through estate schools, continued to be the mechanism for this community. The Kannangara report of 1943 quite tellingly left them out of its nation building programme. Angela Little traces the lineage of the educational policy impacting the Malaiyaha people in her detailed work. According to her, the immediately preceding colonial period, from 1905-47 saw more dynamism in estate schooling than the first phase of reforms in independent Ceylon from 1947-1977. From the mid-1970s onwards, estate schools were taken over by the state system, and set the Malaiyaha community on the path toward integration. In the mid ’80s, moves were made to increase the number of Tamil medium teachers in the central hill areas, with the establishment of teacher training colleges and related initiatives.

Nevertheless, as scholars and activists have noted, estate schools continued to receive second class treatment. They continue to lack basic facilities. Outside of the central areas in the central province, many estate born children were compelled to study in Sinhala, often to their detriment. The twin features of citizenship or its absence thereof and economic disempowerment shape the nature of the community’s integration into the national apparatus of education. Until 2003, when universal franchise was extended to the people of ’Recent Indian Origin’ there was no avenue for them to gain admission to the university system and access the much-hallowed provision of free higher education. Today, education is considered the best bid for social mobility for the community. We see increasing numbers of the children of estate workers entering the universities. This is our history of free education.

English Breakfast Tea: toward a programme of transformative educational practice

A transformative educational practice needs to address the fundamental concerns of a large number of people who are being pushed out of education by the onslaught of neo liberal change. In advancing a position on how we may engage with these questions and concerns, I plot a path for a series of disruptive interventions in the discourse of our history. We may begin with the history of the Malaiyaham and its marginal status in our history and the history of tea, so pivotal to our economy and to the imagination of who we are as a country.

Here is a sketchy mapping. ‘English Breakfast Tea’ can be widely found in the global market place and blandly announces the beverage’s colonial provenance. Colonialism and capitalism, twin projects of global imperialism, are normalized here in its global routing on international flights, airports or conferences. Or it could be the branding of an exclusive elitism, as one witnesses in an intriguing advert of a few years back, adorning the highways of our travel in Sri Lanka: ‘Mlesna, Naturally the Best.’ This advert normalizes class and capital as exclusive and as natural. In the neo liberal climate of our higher educational institutes, we are being asked to set our sights on capitalist development. We are told, like the branding of Mlesna’s tea, capitalist production is normal, natural, and the most beneficial to us, the consumer, reader and a privileged few.

Two Leaves….

But there is nothing miraculous about tea nor is it natural. It is set deep in a bloody history of dispossession. In a deconstructive reading of this advert, an exercise I often set students in the classroom, we are confronted with the erasures embedded in the sign of tea as a miraculously natural consumer product. The erasure is that of the labour of the worker who toils and whose citizenship status is taken away from her. Shuttling between the celebration of tea as a sign of capitalist development and consumerism, and the disruption of that ideological understanding, I turn away from seeing tea as a consumer product, and instead, think of it as a sign of labour: the Kolunthu – two leaves and a bud. It is the sign of the producer and it speaks of the poet.

Dew

Dew drops

Are the sweat tears shed by

The earth’s young virgin body

Crushed by the Giant,

In Night’s violent embrace.

Revolution

The buds open,

flower, then,

fall to the ground,

from the tea bushes.

withered and burnt,

In vain.

Do we live our lives in vain?

No,

When the fat belly

Of Capital, bloated with

Sucking on our labour,

Is ripped

open,

We are born,

Blood-drenched

Blossoms.

(Sivamohan Sumathy is attached to the University of Peradeniya)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

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Features

New US sanctions on ICC, a fillip to worldwide political repression

Published

22 hours ago

2026/10/15

Thilina Walpola

The International Criminal Court in session. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s warning to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was stark: ‘Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.’ It followed US central administration accusations that the court was unfairly targeting Americans on the basis of trumped-up war crimes charges.

However, a new plethora of sanctions has been clamped on the ICC by the US, which in turn has spurred accusations by sections of the world that the latter has unleashed an ‘assault’ on the international legal order.

What some of the sanctions would mean for the ICC was outlined by Rubio: ‘We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us.’

The ICC has shown consistency of purpose over the years. Despite some operational constraints it has indicted a large number of political strongmen from around the world, accused of war crimes and other governance excesses that come under its purview. Two such recent figures are: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rather than enjoy a mere nominal presence in the world community, the ICC has proved its effectiveness by detaining and bringing to justice scores of VIP politicians and others of their ilk who have been found guilty of human rights abuses and kindred excesses that come within the terms of reference of the ICC.

Accordingly, the international justice system would be stymied considerably as a result of the ICC being dis-empowered, particularly financially. Needless to say, potential and real perpetrators of the species of crime coming under the jurisdiction of the ICC would stand to gain most from such anarchic tendencies. That is, political repression globally would be enabled to enjoy a new lease of life.

A detailing of the types of crime coming under the purview of the ICC provides an idea of what it would cost the international community if the ICC’s operations are gravely hampered. They are mainly: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.

That is, the part of the world to be worst affected would be the global South, since the latter is awash with the mentioned crimes. Needless to say, a chronically-disaffected South will sooner rather than later undermine the well being of the world dangerously. The world is already being put through these paces.

At the time of writing, ‘illegal migrants’ from the South, for example, are aggravating many a Western economy’s woes, besides creating for them acute law and order issues. The fact that these migrants’ presence goes on to become a virtual test of the migrant receiving states’ ability to forge domestic social inclusion in the face of jingoistic protests by mainly white supremacist groups is evidence of the latter. As is known, the US, to take just one example, has been up against this crisis for quite a while.

Accordingly, it will be in the best interests of the West if ‘illegal’ migrant arrivals on their shores are stemmed. If the socio-political and economic problems assailing the South are effectively managed through North-South collaborative, ‘trouble-shooting’ efforts the causes leading to ‘illegal’ migration and connected issues could be resolved at source as it were. For, it is the aggravation of the South’s material questions that lays the basis for the emergence of repressive and anti-democratic regimes in the hemisphere.

Until such time that the aforementioned issues in North-South relations are visited afresh and addressed urgently, a vibrantly functioning ICC would be needed. For, the latter would prove a deterrent to Southern political and military strongmen, highly prone to power abuse and like excesses, from coming into being in the wake of the South’s chronic material woes and the wars and conflicts that result from them.

It stands to reason then that the US would be acting in its own interests by enabling the ICC to perpetuate its mandate without hindrance. For a crop of issues that impinges negatively on internal law and order would be defused.

Meanwhile, there needs to be a meeting of minds among the rest of the West to put back in place a North-South dialogue process aimed at reducing some of the economic pressures that are weighing on the South.

Since economics usually drives politics it will be in the interests of the world community to scrutinizingly re-visit North-South issues of the past and put in place economic relief packages for Southern publics that would enable them to tide over their material hardships rather than permit the latter to aggravate into social disaffection and eventually armed militancy. It is the latter juncture that paves the way for the emergence of authoritarian rulers in the South who then go on to be a blight on their publics.

Accordingly, the Southern-based global development thinking of the past that envisaged a more equitable world economic order needs to be seen as an urgent need. That is, NAM’s international development paradigms need to be resuscitated to the extent possible.

It is unlikely that rightist governments of the West, such as the current Republican administration in the US, would find these projects feasible, but democratic states of Europe, led by perhaps the UK, are likely to think otherwise. For it would not be beneficial for the democratic world to be having on their hands repressive governments in the South who would be gravitating towards the major military and economic actors of the South, such as Iran and North Korea, who tend to be in constant power struggles with the West.

However, until such time that the mentioned, pro-people initiatives are given serious thought the ICC would need to be enabled by the international community to be in place comfortably and carry on with its mandate of bringing repressive rulers to book. Besides the ICC should pave the way for the peoples of the developing world to enjoy some substantial respite from the political repression and even terror which tend to be their lot.

Meanwhile, the wars of West Asia are relentlessly aggravating the economic hardships of people everywhere, driving the point home to enlightened sections that there is no alternative to peacemaking. A challenge is to convert the US under President Trump to this line of thinking.

Features

Clear, soft and shine-free skin

Published

22 hours ago

2026/10/15

Thilina Walpola

This week, I give you five simple, time-tested homemade remedies that help reduce the appearance of blemishes, control excess shine and leave your skin feeling softer and smoother.

The Honey and Lemon Brightening Dab:

For stubborn blemish marks, this is a classic. Mix one teaspoon of pure bee honey with three to four drops of fresh lemon juice. Apply gently, only on the affected spots, and leave for 10 minutes before rinsing with lukewarm water. While honey soothes and softens, lemon helps to brighten naturally. Use twice a week in the evening.

Besan and Rose Water Oil-Control Pack:

An ideal remedy to combat shine, especially on the T-zone. Take two teaspoons of besan (gram flour) and mix with sufficient rose water to form a smooth paste. Add a pinch of turmeric for its antiseptic goodness. Apply evenly, keep for 15 minutes and wash off. It absorbs excess oil without over-drying, leaving a beautiful matte finish.

Aloe Vera and Cucumber Ice Soother:

Blend fresh aloe vera gel with the juice of a grated cucumber and freeze the mixture in an ice tray. Each morning, wrap one cube in a soft muslin cloth and gently rub over a cleansed face for 30 seconds. It calms, tightens pores and imparts a baby-soft smoothness.

Oatmeal and Curd Gentle Polish:

Roughness and old blemish marks need gentle exfoliation. Combine one tablespoon of finely powdered oatmeal with one tablespoon of fresh curd (yoghurt). Massage very gently, in circular motions, for one minute, leave for five minutes and rinse. It removes dead cells and unveils softer, clearer skin.

Multani Mitti and Green Tea Magic Mask:

Brew some green tea and allow it to cool completely. Mix one and a half teaspoons of Multani Mitti (Fuller’s Earth) with the tea water to make a fine paste. Apply for 10 to 12 minutes – do not let it dry and crack completely – and wash off. It draws out impurities, fades blemishes and bestows a fresh, shine-free glow.

A Gentle Reminder:

As with any natural remedy, always do a patch test on your inner arm first. For those with oily or combination skin, avoid heavy coconut oil application and harsh scrubbing, as they tend to aggravate shine and blemishes.

Features

Compete, shine and be discovered at WCOPA 2027

Published

22 hours ago

2026/10/15

Thilina Walpola

Dream of performing on a world stage? Well, here is your unique, golden opportunity!

The World Championships of Performing Arts (WCOPA) — the one and only official “Talent Olympics” — is the world’s premier global platform for aspiring singers, dancers, actors, models, instrumentalists, etc., to compete, shine and be discovered!

And, yes, this world stage is open to YOU, Sri Lankans living in Sri Lanka and overseas!

Held annually in glittering Las Vegas, WCOPA brings together over 70 countries, all competing for Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals, just like the traditional Olympics.

Lakisha Bernard: Will represent Team Sri Lanka at WCOPA 2027

Outstanding performers vie for the coveted titles of Junior and Senior Grand Champion Performer of the World, with winners and standout participants awarded over $500,000 in scholarships, cash awards and prizes to catapult their education and careers!

Sri Lanka is already making waves! At WCOPA 2026, Natharie Wickramasinghe, representing Team Sri Lanka, made the nation proud by winning a Bronze Medal in the Ethnic/Folklore Dance category!

Lakisha: Accomplished freelance Model and Fashion Design graduate

Recruitment for this prestigious competition is handled through a system of scouts and licensed National Directors — and this is where our very own Chris Rajendra, now based in Las Vegas, and National Director for Team Sri Lanka, comes into the scene.

If you are a singer, dancer, actor, model, instrumentalist — if you have talent burning inside you — contact Chris Rajendra today for registration and, who knows, you may find yourself in Las Vegas, and proudly draped in the Sri Lankan flag, at WCOPA 2027!

The contact address is: Chris Rajendra, wcopa.nationaldirector.sl@gmail.com

or chris.rajendra@gmail.com

Meanwhile, a star is born for 2027, in the form of Lakisha Bernard who is all set to represent Team Sri Lanka at WCOPA 2027.

Originally hailing from the sun-drenched coastal city of Colombo and now carving out her creative career in Canada, 22-year-old Lakisha is stepping into the international spotlight.

This accomplished freelance Model and Fashion Design graduate has officially been appointed as the Team Sri Lanka Promoter for Canada as she prepares to represent Team Sri Lanka at WCOPA in Las Vegas.

Lakisha brings a unique blend of high-fashion sensibility, captivating camera presence and expert garment design to the Team.

Having built her career, from local college shoots to high-glamour concepts, Lakisha’s inspiring journey embodies the true spirit of cultural bridge-building and creative resilience, bringing immense pride and recognition to Sri Lanka on the global stage.

WCOPA 2027 will be held at the legendary Westgate Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, from 12th to 20th July – the very same iconic arena where the late, great Elvis Presley himself performed!

Your moment is now. Your stage is Las Vegas, so hurry and contact Chris Rajendra.