Features

Decolonising SL universities

Published

5 years ago

2021/06/8

BY KAUSHALYA HERATH

Recent socio-political debates in Sri Lanka on higher education suggest that universities are being viewed as neo-liberal institutions set up to produce human capital for the market. State imperatives to produce employable graduates with the desired mix of knowledge, skills, and competencies to serve the (global) economy have translated to a growing marginalisation of the arts in favour of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes at universities. How come our universities have uncritically embraced this approach to higher education? Is there still potential to shift the vision of higher education to one that envisages universities as places of critical learning, that produce passionate thinkers, as well as contextually relevant knowledge, in the service of humanity?

Colonial knowledge systems

Movements to decolonize universities are spreading across both the global North and South. When it comes to the Global South, however, the education institutions, and structures that continue to date are a legacy of cultural colonisation under western imperialism. As Edward Said argues In Orientalism, what we know and understand about our histories and ourselves has been constructed through Western epistemologies and lenses. Post-development theorists, like Andre Gunder Frank and Arturo Escobar, further point out that the development process that created underdevelopment in so called third world countries, has also marginalised other ways of imagining those countries and their knowledge systems.

Our universities currently follow deductive approaches to producing knowledge. Our undergraduates are taught theories and models developed in the West with little regard to their relevance to the local setting. The gaps and epistemological power hierarchies we experience in our higher education institutions and in society at large when we bring these knowledge systems to practice, could be also due to such cultural irrelevances. As Nihal Perera discusses in Transforming Asian Cities, we try to understand Asian cities through theories developed to understand cities elsewhere. This is common in most disciplines whether in the humanities or natural sciences. We seem to be unable to free ourselves of the colonial knowledge apparatus that continue to inform and shape our educational institutions, including the universities.

Today, many degree programmes include practicums or internships to sensitise graduates to corporate work. While such training opportunities do enable students to obtain hands-on experience, and “learn by doing,” this should not permit industry/corporate actors to dictate what they expect of graduates or influence the curriculum. The requirements of the corporate sector are not limited to the knowledge and skills to perform the work but also include “soft skills” to fit the neoliberal workplace. Universities, once the executors of cultural colonisation, are being colonised by the corporate sector, where the university must produce an employee to match the corporate culture.

Inciting passionate and critical thinking

Universities should be places where individuals who already have certain types of knowledge and sensibilities can come together to dialogue and build on their knowledge. Yet, this is not what is happening in most universities today. Most often it is assumed that undergraduates enter higher education institutions possessing zero knowledge on a subject. From this perspective, the sole purpose of a degree programme becomes support for students to stock up on knowledge. Overlooking or dismissing experiential knowledge as irrelevant is oppressive and even violent.

If we are to ignite passion in our undergraduates to explore and understand societal problems, we need to make pedagogical processes more relevant to their histories, experiences and aspirations. Developing vernacular epistemologies to read our own spaces and society is critical to developing grounded solutions to address societal problems. Critical pedagogies that employ bottom up or inductive approaches towards understanding local social processes are crucial, especially in the current moment when we are seeing devastation unfolding before our eyes with no foreseeable solutions in sight. Universities should develop mechanisms to understand and theorise local knowledge systems. How the universities can decolonize and indigenize knowledge production without going into the other extreme of nationalism is a bit tricky and will require dialogue and reflection.

Instilling in students the idea that they can collaborate in knowledge production processes, and be designers of their own theories and knowledge, is a responsibility universities hold.

The prevailing examination system at our universities values individual achievements over collective efforts. The closed book examination system and individual assessments reinforce and entrench individualistic ideals of achievement. Shifting towards collective approaches to knowledge production may create spaces that help undergraduates to grow into passionate and critical thinkers. While there are some informal systems and collective efforts led by students, it might be worthwhile to brainstorm how classrooms can adopt such methods, understanding that some of these may themselves be marginalising or violent.

The social sciences and humanities must necessarily play a role in this huge undertaking. However, as discussed previously in this column, the arts are increasingly being discredited and delegitimized at multiple levels. While the hierarchy between the natural sciences and the arts is pushing students to select STEM streams, this means that young people often select subject streams without passion or a sense of purpose.

Education for work?

After the Advanced Level exams every year, I receive calls from numerous young people hoping to enter a state university from different parts of the country. A common question, whether from district firsts or those with marginal marks, is “which degree programme will get me a job quickly?” Often the question is not even about what kinds of jobs they will get after their degree, but rather how soon they will get a job and how much it will pay. The passion to do something other than pursuing materialistic ideals of individual ‘success’ seems to have got lost somewhere along the way in the process of being educated.

The separation of passion and employment is also a form of divide and rule. Your contribution to the economy in terms of work must remain separate from your passion and other interests, which you are expected to pursue when you are no longer working for the neoliberal market. The separation of work and passion, like the separation of work and vacation, is happening through forms of coloniality.

As much as arts and humanities education are disdained in Sri Lanka for producing “unemployable” graduates, STEM education is also narrowing down to a technical orientation to produce graduates who can fit into the capitalist economy. While higher education as a whole is losing its humanity as well as philosophical touch, this power struggle is also leading to increasing compartmentalisation of STEM and arts education.

The multidisciplinary approach in STEM degree programmes is withering away to only accommodate more technical modules that will enable specialisation in specific tasks, but not enable critical intellectual readings of larger contexts. For example, this year, the BSc (Hons) in Town and Country Planning programme at the University of Moratuwa has changed the entrance criteria for new applicants. Earlier, students who fulfilled the required cut-off mark from any stream could enter, but now applications are entertained only from students from the natural sciences. The decision to restrict a multidisciplinary degree programme to students who took natural sciences subjects at the Advanced levels speaks to the hierarchical understanding of natural sciences and humanities, and the increasing compartmentalisation of degree programmes more broadly.

In a time when multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and/or transdisciplinarity are being promoted worldwide, our higher education institutions are applying more and more restrictions and compartmentalising programmes to be free of the social sciences and humanities. The Moratuwa example is just one example among many; recent curriculum changes in STEM programmes in state universities display a similar trend. Adopting “employability” as a benchmark, and marketing degree programmes on this basis, could be a key driver of developing arts-free technical curriculums in STEM education.

In conclusion, colonisation of the university system is ongoing with various pressures to conform to utilitarian approaches that seek to create employees for the global economy. To decolonise the universities, and create critical thinkers and passionate scholars, it is imperative that we make university curricula more relevant to the sensibilities and experiences of our undergraduates and indigenize knowledge production processes. The social sciences and humanities would necessarily play a major role in this undertaking.

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

(The writers is PhD student, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK)

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Features

The hard challenge of clinching a political settlement in the Middle East

Published

17 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Bruised hearts: Displaced Palestinian civilians in the Gaza.(Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Despite some sections of the Trump administration persisting with the view that the possibility could not be entirely ruled out of there being a diplomatic solution to the current US-Iran hostilities in West Asia, the skeptic could not be blamed for thinking otherwise. The intensity, scale and frequency of the tit-for-tat strikes by the antagonists over the past few days against selected military targets and civilian infrastructure in particular in West Asia make the adoption of this stance excusable.

The continuing hostilities render the mentioning of the MOU signed between the warring parties in mid-June a laughable matter. While it could very well be that the foes are wishing privately for a cessation of hostilities before long, what seems to be uppermost on their minds right now is to negotiate with each other from a position of strength. This strategy compels them to incapacitate each other militarily to the extent possible, lest they have to concede too much to each other during negotiations. Hence the stepped-up hostilities.

However, even on the question of there being a negotiated political settlement in the West Asian theatre in the longer term, the skeptic could come to be seen as scoring over the optimist. Developments on the ground account for this.

At the time of writing Israel’s Netanyahu government is going ahead in fairly care-free fashion with the establishment of more Jewish settlements in the Gaza and the West Bank, and it’s all happening under the apparently complacent gaze of the US. In fact, some quarters estimate that Israel is in control of some 65% of the Gaza Strip. Ethnic cleansing, that is, is being drastically stepped-up.

Accordingly, in terms of the power relations of West Asia, the world is almost back to the status quo of the late forties of the last century when the state of Israel was established and the Palestinians were reduced to a microscopic minority in the land they came to inhabit. Therefore, even the impartial observer would be compelled to ask: ‘Will a negotiated peace be ever possible in the Middle East?’

The humanist in the observer would prefer to answer this question in the affirmative and it is indeed the ideal stance to adopt considering the staggering human and material costs of the conflict. But the way ahead to peace could be expected to be highly hazardous and arduous. Among other odds, it would also prove an uphill endeavour to win minds and hearts.

The US’ Trump administration would need to be counted out in this pursuit. This is on account of the fact that it has been far too wayward in its management of West Asian affairs in particular over the past couple of years. Given its unpredictable character it is a matter for conjecture whether it could be counted on to live up to its commitments.

Moreover, Israel could be expected to ‘go it alone’ in the Middle East regardless of whether US help is coming or otherwise. It has indicated as much in recent times and Israel could be doubted on this score only at the doubter’s peril. Because time and again Israel has demonstrated that it could steadfastly defend its interests even single-handedly in the Middle East. History bears this out.

However, a durable alliance with the US would stand Israel in good stead. On the matter of military and intelligence assistance, for example, the US’s help proved invaluable for Israel in the past and going forward this is bound to be so as well. Moreover, it is unlikely that the Trump administration would give up on Israel, considering that a strong Israel is crucial for the furtherance of the US’ strategic and economic interests in West Asia.

But whether the above factors would have a considerable bearing on the question of working out a durable solution to the West Asian tangle is an entirely different matter. Israel, as in the case of the Palestinian enclaves, is acutely security conscious and would need to satisfy itself fully that it could live in a security environment that would guarantee its complete safety, going forward.

The Middle East is badly in need of another peace effort on the lines of the Oslo Accords of the mid-nineties that brought the key actors together and helped hammer out a solution that addressed some of their notable concerns. To be sure, that process did not prove to be the ideal answer to the tangle, but it yielded some respite to the region and drove home that one-time sworn foes could indeed negotiate with a degree of success. The West Bank authority, although falling short of fulfilling some key Palestinian aspirations, is testimony that a degree of success is possible if the intent is right.

Given the current realities of West Asia, peace-making is bound to be an uphill challenge. The violence faced in recent times by the Palestinian community, in particular, has been nothing less than mind-numbing. Merciless has been the violence visited on them by the Israeli side. In such circumstances, durable peace in the region could smack of an idealist’s dream.

Nevertheless, there needs to be urgently, a meeting of minds over the divides. The US would need to be counted out as an honest broker in bringing the sides together but the rest of the West would do well to step up to the challenge.

In this exercise the onus would be on the world’s democracies to take the initiative and doggedly stay the course. An acceptable combination would be the EU and the UN. Given their credentials, the main sides in West Asia ought to find them the least controversial.

Even if the relevant institutional and political arrangements could be shored up to take a reconciliation process forward, winning hearts and minds for the peace drive would prove a grueling challenge. Over the past few years in particular tens of thousands of hearts and minds on both sides of the divide have been bruised badly in the runaway murderous violence that has come to define the Middle East.

These badly scarred personalities would need to experience healing without much delay. It is therefore a multi-faceted challenge that is at hand. Since wide-ranging expertise would be needed in the healing process, people’s participation in peace-making, ranging over the divides, would need to be made a durable reality. It will be a time for enthroning humanity and ensuring the rejection of all forms of violence and coercion.

Features

Amazing Thailand …right here in Colombo

Published

17 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

For many Sri Lankans, Thailand is the go-to holiday — beaches, temples, food, and that famous warm hospitality.

In fact, I’ve been to Amazing Thailand 24 times myself, and was honoured with the Friends of Thailand International Media Award by the Tourism Authority of Thailand for promoting Thai tourism.

The good news I have for you today is that you don’t even need a passport to get a taste of Amazing Thailand.

The Royal Thai Embassy, in Colombo, is bringing a vibrant slice of Thailand, to the city of Colombo, with Thai Festival 2026 — a cultural experience like never before.

Whether you are an avid enthusiast of Thai culture, a total novice, or simply just interested in exploring foreign cultures, Thai Festival 2026 is going to be the perfect opportunity for you to get more than just a glimpse into one of the most celebrated cultural heritages in South East Asia. And ENTRANCE IS FREE.

The festival will be held on the 1st and 2nd of August, 2026, at Siam Nivasa, 43, C.W.W. Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 7, and the East Parking Area, of the Colombo Municipal Council, from 11:00am to 5:00pm.

Both days will be full of live entertainment, and dispersed throughout with Thai cultural displays, including exhilarating traditional dance performances and breathtaking Muay Thai demonstrations.

Exploring art and craft specific to Thailand, tasting irresistible authentic Thai cuisine, and playing arcade games, are just a few more fun-filled events available for visitors at the festival premises.

An array of Thai products will also be available for purchase.

While at the festival, you will find Sri Lankan Alumni from Thai universities sharing their experiences with you and willing to answer any questions you might have, related to studying abroad in Thailand.

You can also register for the Muay Thai workshop that will be happening on the 7th and 8th of August, 2026, in Colombo.

Irresistible authentic Thai cuisine

Visitors can also stand a chance to win traditional Thai souvenirs, get exclusive photo opportunities, and, the big one — to enter the raffle draw, at the end of each day, for the grand prize of an all-inclusive round trip to Thailand.

Be sure to avail yourself of this exceptional opportunity and add a cultural spin to your weekend.

To keep up with the latest updates on Thai Festival 2026, head over to the Thai Festival official social media pages.

The Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo official webpage:

https://colombo.thaiembassy.org

Official social media:

Facebook: @RTEColombo

Instagram: @thaiembassysrilanka

Thai Festival official social media:

Facebook: Thai Festival in Colombo

Instagram: @thaifestival_colombo

TikTok: @thaifestival.incolombo

Features

Thicker, stronger hair …

Published

17 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Hair fall, in this heat, can be so frustrating, and noticing a thin patch is even more worrying. The good news is … yes, with a little care and kitchen ingredients, you can nourish your scalp and support healthy regrowth.

Try these four easy home remedies … even our grandmothers trusted:

* Coconut Oil and Curry Leaves Tonic:

Warm 04 tablespoons of coconut oil, with a handful of curry leaves, till the leaves turn black. Cool, strain, and massage into scalp 02-03 times a week. Leave for 01 hour, or overnight.

Why:

Coconut oil deeply nourishes, while curry leaves help strengthen roots and add shine.

* Onion Juice for Spot Treatment:

With cotton, dab the juice of 01 small onion, directly on the thin/bald patches. Leave for 20-30 minutes, and then wash with a mild shampoo. Use twice a week.

Why:

Rich in sulfur, onion juice helps boost blood circulation to the scalp.

* Aloe Vera and Castor Oil Mask:

Mix 02 tablespoons of fresh aloe vera gel and 01 tablespoon castor oil and apply to the scalp, focusing on thinning areas. Leave for 45 minutes, and then rinse with cool water.

Why:

Aloe vera soothes the scalp, while castor oil coats hair to make it look thicker.

* Fenugreek and Curd Strengthening Pack:

You will need 02 tablespoons fenugreek seeds, soaked overnight, and 02 tablespoons plain curd.

Grind to a paste, apply to scalp for 30 minutes, and then wash.

Why:

Fenugreek strengthens strands and reduces breakage.

Extra Tips for Healthy Hair:

Avoid tight hairstyles that pull on the scalp.

Eat iron and protein rich foods: greens, dhal, eggs, fish.

Use lukewarm water, not hot.

Be gentle when brushing and drying.