Features

Secularism, the Muslim body and the Sinhala-Buddhist polity

Published

4 years ago

2023/01/3

By Erandika de Silva

This short piece is based on an anecdote of a striking memory that I have of a particular classroom at the Faculty of Arts, University of Peradeniya. Every time I walk past this particular classroom, it triggers the same memory and it has still not weathered. In this piece, I look back on this memory self-critically, in an attempt to understand my own self and analyze my thought process at the time of this incident. About nine years ago, as I walked past this lecture room, as an undergraduate, I saw a young woman, understood to be a student, inside, wearing an abaya, standing, facing the two walls of the interior corner. It was an unusual sight and I was taken aback by it. So, I walked a few steps backwards, just to have another look. I saw the girl unrolling a mat and kneeling down to pray. In a flash, I wondered what would happen if a lecturer walked into that classroom for a lecture; would the lecturer wait for this girl to finish her prayers; would the young woman even notice the lecturer until her prayers are over; can people simply go and pray in a lecture room; is the university not a secular space? In retrospect, I view my reaction to this incident as part of a modern problem.

A question that never occurred to me, at that point, was whether I would be amused, let alone be equally amused, by an undergraduate who practises Buddhist rituals of worship on campus. In retrospect, I am certain that it was never the practice of religion that unsettled me, but rather the practice of Islamic worship – a religion that is non-Buddhist. Then, the problem, to me, was a non-Buddhist practicing religion on campus rather than a student performing religious worship on campus. In Hegelian terms, I would say that it is the master’s recognition of the bondsman – the subject who should not publicly practice religion. It was a matter of Islam-ing instead of Buddhist-ing. The question is why Islam-ing was a problem (to me) when Sinhala-Buddhist-ing was not seen as a problem in the same university space that I deemed “secular”. The fact of Muslim-ness (?) was something I was not ready to grapple with as a deluded “modern” rational individual.

I am seeking to contribute to some introspective and reconstructive intellectual labour that can (perhaps) unpack the image of the Islam-ing female student on campus. As I revisit this memory, I realize how gendered this memory is: It is gendered in the sense that if it were a male student, it would be the figuration of the terrorist whereas it is the irrational Other in the case of the female student. The problem is that the Sinhala-Buddhist body as the normative human being/self cannot exist without the degradation of what is not Sinhala-Buddhist.

I wondered why this Muslim student chose to worship in a lecture room and not in the university mosque. Does the supposedly secular space of the university provide an alternative form of cultural-political order that makes it a safe place for a student to pray in public, or is it the Muslim student’s resistance to the liminal status imposed on her in the normative cultural-political order of a Sinhala-Buddhist dominated university? The mosque on campus is too far from the Faculty of Arts and the prayer rooms in the Faculty could accommodate only about five people at a time. In my view, the praying student perhaps resisted the idea of worshipping in territories assigned to her by the limits of her religion and gender, but most importantly the normative cultural-political order of a Sinhala-Buddhist dominated university. She dictated her own terms of worship as she exercised what it is to be human. It is perhaps a form of what Sylvia Wynter calls “ontological sovereignty” that this woman exercises. She is aware of the problem of sovereignty and refashions herself to come out of degradation – degradation that arises by abiding by the cultural-political order of the Sinhala-Buddhist polity. Her praying in public could be a way of coming out of degradation arising out of all the literature, history and discourse that tell her to view herself as the irrational Other who prays in public, the female counterpart of the figuration of the terrorist. Apprehensive about the irrational female Other, I thought I was enlightened and rational for trying to connect with some pseudo-intellectual understanding of the world of “man”.

The body of this praying woman is marked off as the “Muslim body” due to her religious attire and her practicing of religion in a public space that is deemed secular, at least, in principle. Her body becomes a problem in the dialectic of “us” and “them” that marks her off as the Other. She is located within a political community and a set of social relations in which she is always already known in the negative. It is because her identity is structured from the gaze of the modern wo/man that shapes the Muslim body through the reiteration of negative stereotypes. In this case, her identity is structured through my Sinhala-Buddhist gaze that recognizes and desires the subordination of the Muslim body. I assume the role of “man” by showing allegiance to the world of “men” who believe in the European construct of the rational. She is the praying “irrational” Other who needs to be subordinated for the triumph of the “secular”. In the larger world, I am as irrational an Other as she is due to my racialized, ethnicized and gendered body. Yet, as the “secular” and the “rational” are constructs that are used for the subordination of the racial Other in any given context, the praying Muslim girl is now the irrational female Other. A question worth asking is whether modern biopolitics capitalizes on secularization to promote one kind of secularism or the kind of secularism endorsed by the majority. For instance, in the context of the University of Peradeniya, it is a secularism endorsed by the Sinhala-Buddhist polity: a secularism that remembers it is secular only when its Sinhala-Buddhist foundation is threatened.

Practising religion in public becomes a problem as the norm is secularity. Is the practice of religion and culture the anomaly then? As democracy upholds the principles of representative government, majoritarian politics produces dangerous effects on the populace of nation states. Majoritarianism irons out differences and pushes the minorities to the periphery leaving them with little to no room for participation in society. Aspects of culture such as religion, customs and traditions, and language became increasingly problematic and created tensions in modernity as secularity became the point of orientation.

In the Sri Lankan context, the “Muslim body” creates a disconcertion in the Sinhala-Buddhist polity. The “global war on terror” and the Muslim overpopulation myth are two reasons for this. In the recent past, Sri Lanka was on a rampage for instituting ‘one country, one law’ on the pretext of maintaining civic and political order. Yet, it is clearly a matter of majoritarianism and majoritarian politics attempting at lobbying to institute a law that is advantageous to the Sinhala Buddhist polity by eliminating other forms of religious and legal systems of the non-Sinhala-Buddhists. It adopts the grand narrative of secularity, rationality and the Euro-American idea of progress as a way forward. Yet, rather than progress, it is an illusion of progress and civilization promoted through the idea of the universalism of occidental rationality and secularity. Unquestioningly adopting this myopic Euro-American idea of secularizing Sri Lanka does not guarantee progress but further establishes a backwater producing relations of domination and subordination thereby marginalizing non-Sinhala-Buddhist groups.

As much as secularization is oppressive, so is any compulsion to be what may be seen as religious and other cultural impositions and curtailment. Today, as I write as a teacher who is constantly worried about the rights and freedoms of my students, I would like to end this short piece with these thoughts: To pray or not to pray is not the question; to pray or not to pray is a right of my students, and of everyone. Rather the question is on what terms are we going to battle domination, imposition, curtailment and the question of the Other. This is where we need to begin. We need to begin from the position where we approach the question of identity as a political question, and not as a cultural question. This inquiry I hope can happen in our university spaces.

(Erandika de Silva is attached to the Department of Linguistics and English at the University of Jaffna.)

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

‘There are no private universities in Sri Lanka’ – some considerations for higher education reform

Published

16 hours ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Academics involved in education policy like to say that there is no such thing as a private university in Sri Lanka. The only ‘universities’ in the country are state universities; anything else offering degrees is a private higher education institution (HEI). This position is technically accurate. Yet, in the discourse and imagination of the public, private universities are very real – people teach in them, students register in them, families pay fees, and such degree holders enter job markets in Sri Lanka and outside.

For decades, activists concerned for public higher education have ignored or resisted looking at private HEIs, as if such scrutiny would taint them. Others have worked in both types of institutions, carrying practices from each to the other. The apex body governing state universities, the UGC, has, meanwhile, ignored the concept of conflict of interest and appointed individuals in private higher education in committees and leadership positions. It is unsurprising then that some of the ideologies informing private higher education appear in reform agendas in the state sector.

This is a good time then to consider the varying types of private HEIs around us, and to take a look at some of the issues within them in the hope that higher education reform agendas will include private, as well as state higher education.

What is a ‘private university’?

First, some clarifications. In the public imaginary, a ‘private university’ is typically an institution that provides a foreign or local degree for which the student makes a payment. But this broad classification encompasses a host of diverse institutions and types of degrees which I detail below.

The Non-State Higher Education Division (NSHE) of the Ministry of Education has recognised 295 degrees by 32 institutions. Most of these are private companies and include a handful of established, well-known private HEIs that are ‘university like’. The degrees are local degrees conferred by the institutions accredited by the NSHE Division. While private HEIs conferring local degrees must be accredited by the NSHE Division, there appears to be no legal consequence for not doing so. In addition, there are several permutations of the private degree that miss the net of this Division and the Standing Committee on Accreditation and Quality Assurance (SCAQA) that assists this Division.

For one, degrees conferred by foreign universities offered, via these same private HEIs, are not vetted by the NSHE Division. Secondly, there is a growing plethora of private HEIs which have either no physical presence locally or only a dubious presence. The University Grants Commission has notified the public, through their website, that foreign universities listed in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook and the World Higher Education Database are recognised, but refrained from giving any other details – which degrees? Offered by what modes? These details are not known. Some of the foreign universities in the lists may be legitimate entities in their own land but the degrees conferred locally, in their name, may not adhere to curriculum or teaching specifications of the NSHE Division or the UGC.

Another troubling phenomenon is the ‘top up degree’, which appears to work on the same principle as that of a pre-paid mobile connection: if I have a Diploma or an HND of a sort, I am eligible to complete a course of study which provides me with a degree, usually from a foreign university. The idea that someone who does not initially qualify for a degree programme should be able to work their way towards one is a progressive notion. This is the concept that open and distance learning (ODL) was based on initially, but which is now sadly exploited. ODL models are expected to provide opportunity for learning for those who may be excluded from traditional learning institutions. In Sri Lanka, however, we have seen ODL become a marketplace offering easy to obtain, for-fee qualifications by institutions with little commitment to superior teaching and learning.

Finally, a perusal of the many types of private HEIs and their varied degrees bring to mind another question – how should the private degrees, provided by state institutions (that are not educational institutions), be regulated? Who should do so?

All of these create a host of problems for the public – for hopeful students and parents and trusting employers. For the higher education sector, recruitment of academic staff, too, has become difficult due to this plethora of ambiguous higher education qualifications, as I discussed in a previous Kuppi article (‘Recruiting academics to state universities’).

Some issues in private HEIs – a bellwether for change in state universities

In this second part of this article, I will discuss some aspects of work in private HEIs – albeit the more established institutions – given that such issues may appear in reform agendas in future.

Across state universities, all permanent staff of a specific category are paid according to the same criteria. The picture is not so clear when it comes to private HEIs since they are different entities legally, typically companies. Private HEIs have salary scales and financial incentives that are different to each other. The more established private HEIs reportedly have attractive renumeration packages, possibly a reason for academics of state universities migrating eagerly to such institutions during sabbatical years and on retirement. This may not of course be the case with other less established, or improperly registered HEIs of which we know little. Academic staff of these more accepted private HEIs seem to value the high financial remuneration they receive (in comparison to state universities) as something that makes their work rewarding.

Attractive remuneration is important to sustain the good life and is at times seen as the institution’s way of encouraging good work. Yet, this has implications for the future of the institution: to continue to deliver on promised financial packages, institutions must continue to have large profit margins. One strategy has been to enroll multiple cohorts of students per year, even up to three or four intakes per year. This can result in exploitative work conditions, since staff must cater to all these cohorts in that same year. If there is inadequate staff, employees are further burdened. On the other hand, if there is a sudden drop in enrolments (degrees can go out of fashion) unexpected layoffs occur. Similar to other sectors that employ short-term contract staff – including state universities – in private HEIs, too, individual teachers, who are on short term contracts that need regular renewal, can feel pressured to work under difficult or exploitative conditions.

At the same time, even in the more established private HEIs, work norms differ from those of state universities in that they include promotional work that keeps the institution’s name in the eye of the public. The Marketing (or similarly named) unit comes up in conversations as one of the most important departments. It appears to weigh in on decision-making related to the number of staff, the amount of re-sits per exams, and other pedagogically important matters. This is a worrying example of how financial rationales interfere with pedagogically or academically sound processes, resulting in problematic results in the classroom. On the plus side, junior colleagues, who had experience in both state and private HEIs, also felt that they faced less harassment in private HEIs – primarily due to the private HEIs ability to take swift action in reported cases of harassment. This is a real indictment on state institutions and their reluctance to address chronic issues of harassment in our universities.

Yet, while we hear much about problems in state universities, we hardly hear of problems that staff in private HEIs face. One rationale for a lack of public expressions by staff is that expressions of discontent might lead to trouble given the importance of reputation for private HEIs. The worry about reputational damage is a growing concern in state universities, too, as evidenced by social media policies and internal conversations on reputational damage, consequent to negative publicity. Institutional worries of reputational damage are harmful in the long run since these impact not only freedom of expression by student and staff, but also research that is possible in and about the education sector.

Some thoughts at the end…

A close look at the private higher education sector is important given its strong presence in the country. Impending reform needs to regulate this diverse array of higher education offerings in the private sector, as well as the state institutions that offer privately-funded options of higher education (a topic for a separate Kuppi on its own). It is time we carefully considered how to build a whole system of higher education out of this broken mess.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

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

Features

Ready for solo spotlight

Published

16 hours ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Nish Peiris: Excited about future plans

Singer Nish Peiris is set to take the next big step in her music journey.

The talented vocalist, who has been seen and heard in the scene here for a short while, and was also featured with the now-defunct band, Inner Vision, has announced that she will be fully committing to her solo career, after completing her degree this year.

“I’m finishing my degree this year, and after that I’ll be fully committing to my solo music career,” Nish told The Island.

“I’ve already got a few tours lined up for next year, so I’m really excited for what’s ahead.”

Fans, no doubt, will remember Nish for her smooth voice and stage presence, and the good news is that she is now ready to chart her own path and bring new music to audiences at home and abroad.

With tours already planned for 2027, the year 2026 promises to be an exciting year for the young artiste as she steps into the spotlight on her own.

We wish Nish every success in this new chapter!

Features

Exclusive musical evening for Sri Lankans in Toronto

Published

16 hours ago

2026/07/21

Thilina Walpola

Toronto Ceymphony Live Band, with Sri Lankans doing the needful

While Sri Lankan music lovers, in Dubai, are eagerly looking forward to being a part of the action on Saturday, 25th July, with Rajiv Sebastian in the limelight, Sri Lankans, in Toronto, Canada, are equally excited and are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Sri Lanka’s famous singer/entertainer Sohan Weerasinghe.

Having done the needful with The X-Periments, the legendary performer has now embarked on an exciting new chapter – a solo career – and Toronto, Canada, will see him do the needful, on Friday, 31st July, 2026, from 8.00 pm to 12.00 am, at the Angus Glen Golf Club.

Sohan Weerasinghe: In Canada, and ready to do the needful on 31st July

Reports indicate that it’s a ‘sold out’ event – naturally with Sohan in the spotlight.

Gamini Hemalal: Creating all the excitement for Sri Lankans in Toronto

Having built his reputation through years of unforgettable performances, and hits that became part of our musical fabric, Sohan is ready to bring his own vision, sound, and stories directly to the audience, in Toronto, Canada, backed by the phenomenal Toronto Ceymphony Live Band.

Says Gamini Hemalal, who has been instrumental in reviving the Sri Lankan entertainment scene, in that part of the world:

“The countdown begins for the most exclusive musical event of the summer! Join us for a premium night of incredible music, elite hospitality, and a lavish buffet as the legendary Sohan Weerasinghe takes the stage live in Toronto!

“This is a high-end event, designed for those who appreciate exceptional entertainment and great food.”

Gamini, who is also a member of the Toronto Ceymphony Live Band, mentioned that it’s going to be an intimate musical evening with the celebrated Sohan Weerasinghe.

From packed auditoriums to intimate shows, Sohan continues to prove why he remains one of Sri Lanka’s most beloved entertainers.

For decades, Sohan Weerasinghe has been a household name in Sri Lankan entertainment.

Known for his captivating smooth voice and charismatic stage presence, Canada will experience it all on Friday, 31st July.

Next on the list of events, Gamini Hemal is working on, is Halloween night and he says “what we plan to do will be very interesting and unique … with a surprise guest star, as well!”