Features

Sri Lanka under British rule : Neither Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft

Published

3 years ago

2023/03/24

By Uditha Devapriya

Since at least Marx and Malinowski, anthropologists have been fascinated by, and focused on, the links between “primitive-tribal” and “modern-secular” societies. I use these terms with a pinch of salt – hence the asterisks – for the simple reason that no society can be said to fit one case or the other. In its initial phase the social sciences did, admittedly, distinguish between the two, and took the teleological position that the one would lead to another: hence Ferdinand Tönnies’s idea of a progression from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Such progressions were depicted as long, eventual, but inevitable, and were accepted widely at a time when Europe, the harbinger of industrialisation and colonialism, had consolidated its position as the main, if not sole, locomotive of world history.

I have pointed out earlier, in this column, that Europe’s encounters with the non-West – Africa and Asia, basically – did not spur the kind of transition from tribalism to modernity which the most benighted missionary and colonial official had publicly advocated. This was no less true in India than it was in Sri Lanka. To give a simple and much used example, upon their annexation of Kandy, the colonial government did not do away with the caste-based duty system, and corvee labour, at once. Unlike scholars and romantics who envisioned a supposedly nobler role for the colonising West, the administrators and officials working on the ground saw the need to retain precapitalist, and thus primitive, social relations, in order to legitimise their rule over the newly acquired territories.

One discerns an intriguing, if fundamental, disconnect or contradiction here, between the supposed aims and the actual, lived experience of colonial rule. If the objective of colonial rule was indeed to transform the societies they had acquired by force and compulsion, then the relationship between the coloniser and colonised had to go beyond the position of mere dependence which colonised territories were subjected to. We know, however, that this was never the case. India, for instance, accounted for a quarter of the world’s industrial production, and British rule smothered its textile sector in the interests of ensuring a market for British textile exports. What this reveals is that, regardless of what scholars at the time may have believed, the West was primarily interested in sabotaging the national industries of the non-West, rather than in transforming their societies.

It was the destruction of these industries, as well as official patronage of precapitalist social relations, especially in regions like Kandy, that hindered the long progression from tribalism to modernity which the likes of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Henry Maine advocated. The latter were, strictly speaking, not propagandists or mouthpieces for colonialism: it would be wrong to consider them so on the basis of their Western and European background alone. But they were products of their time, and in their time the Western view of non-Western countries gradually being subsumed by colonialism and then developing into capitalist and modernist societies was more or less accepted. Even Marx, in his initial despatches on India, pondered whether British colonialism would beneficially impact that country’s historical and economic trajectory. Of course, Marx later changed his position, proving himself an exception.

In any case, these processes ran their course more discernibly, and thoroughly, in Sri Lanka than they did in India, where, perhaps because of its size or its plurality, colonial rule did not, and could not, destroy its industrial base or pre-empt the formation of an industrial (and somewhat anti-imperialist) bourgeoisie. In Sri Lanka, by contrast, British rule managed successfully to hinder the progression from feudalism to capitalism, thereby preventing it from achieving a transition from “tribalism” to “modernity.”

Since I have reflected on these concerns in my recent essay on Maduwanwela Dissawe and the temples of the South, I will limit my analysis here to another area where colonial rule had an undeniably distinct, and paradoxical, impact on local society.

Education had long been viewed, even by the Portuguese, and more prominently by the Dutch, as a useful instrument for the consolidation of colonial power. The Dutch, through their network of parish schools, were interested more in eradicating Portuguese power – with little to no effect, as the enduring popularity of Catholicism, even today, illustrates – than in educating local elites. The latter objective formed the cornerstone of British policy on education, particularly after the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms of 1833.

The British government was itself not in one mind over education, and it was hardly in agreement with missionary enclaves who were interested more in converting locals to their specific brand or denomination. But by and large, a sort of tacit understanding developed between the two that these schools would inculcate Western values, and educate a class of locals who could staff the civil administrative service.

The first British officials to set foot in Kandy – among them, John Davy – were demonstrably surprised at the state of education there. Products of elite public schools and universities themselves, they were astonished by how much of a widespread institution education had become in the highlands, administered by the pansalas and limited to the male population. In Britain at the time, education had become the preserve of the old aristocracy and an emerging bourgeoisie. It was this model, based fundamentally on filtration theory – or the entrenchment of a minority, to the exclusion of the masses – which British officials sought to enforce in the island. By contrast, missionary bodies were interested in taking their gospel as far as possible, even preaching it in the vernacular. Yet even though they were in conflict with the government’s more utilitarian approach to education, over the years they conformed to that approach while pursuing their own objectives.

For obvious and logical reasons, the institutions of a colonial society – the superstructure, to borrow Marxist terminology – acutely reflect, or appropriate, that society’s economic base. In Sri Lanka, colonialism had transformed if not transmogrified precapitalist social relations without fundamentally challenging them: hence the government’s decision to retain rather than overhaul caste and rajakariya, and hence its decision to co-opt rather than eradicate the Kandyan aristocracy. Within such a setup, a transition from tribalism to modernity was simply not possible, particularly after the grafting of a plantation economy which reduced the peasantry to a position of dependence while undercutting them through the import of cheap, indentured, and perpetually exploited labour from South India.

It goes without saying that this setup was well reflected in the schools and other educational institutions that the colonial State established in the mid-19th century. How so? First and foremost, these schools reaffirmed the colonial State’s advocacy, and enforcement, of elite filtration, or education for a minority as opposed to the masses. In areas like Kandy, the State did not interfere when missionary bodies set up schools, because it provided them with the opportunity to educate the children of native elites and European planters. The colonial State itself did not own the kind of “superior” schools that missionary bodies did: it had the Colombo Academy, but that was in Colombo. Elsewhere, as far as the aims of the State and missionary enclaves went, laissez-faire ruled the day. Individual governors may have held views that were antithetical to the aims of these enclaves, but again, such rifts were temporary, and were in any case resolved by succeeding governors.

Secondly, the curriculum of these schools was, in comparison to the needs of a society that had yet not industrialised, hardly modern or progressive. The students of these institutions not only learnt the literature, history, and culture of a society far removed from them, their very education distanced them from the society to which they had been born. This had the dual effect of distancing themselves from their roots while failing to root them in the society of the “mother country”, or the metropole. James d’Alwis’s memoirs, in which he recounts the pressure to conform and uproot himself that he experienced at the Colombo Academy, illustrate this dilemma well. Many years later, Ralph Pieris could recount his childhood at the Academy – by then renamed Royal College – in just about the same terms. I quote him in full, simply because it sheds light on what these schools stood for.

“The Ceylon schools supported an authoritarian regime in the classroom where the rod was not spared, idealised ‘manly’ sports such as boxing and rugger, while a disciplined military apprenticeship was provided by the cadet battalion. Many adults have hankering fixation on school life, the joys of cricket; and masochistic adoration or the father-figures of teachers. even if they were responsible for sadistic and humiliating physical chastisement… All too frequently I have witnessed the tragicomic spectacle of elderly men leading a hollow existence, pitiful spectators of sports they can no longer actively participate in, who have rejoiced only in the transient marvel of their physical strength, [to] discover in later life that their range has become restricted and their interests few.”

Ralph Pieris, Sociology as a Calling: A Desultory Memoir

Modern Sri Lanka Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1988, pp 1-33

Pieris’s observation leads me to my third point, which is that the elitism engendered and perpetuated by these institutions continued long after colonial rule, and in fact continues today. There are, of course, important differences between colonial and post-colonial society. The right to vote, and free education, emancipated the masses from the fields or “avocations” to which the colonial State had restricted them. These developments were not wholeheartedly accepted by the elite of the day: in criticising the Central School System, for instance, a member of the Colombo upper class remarked that the new schools would never be as good as the elite ones. Yet such reforms had in themselves been necessitated by the right to vote, and could not be prevented or pre-empted. Despite the machinations of the English-speaking bourgeoisie – which either accepted these reforms or chose to migrate from the country – free education became well established, even in the schools which they had attended, and to which many of them continued sending their sons.

In my essay on the Royal College Hostel, published last August, I noted that independence brought about a transfer of power from the legatees of British power to an indigenous class. In elite schools, I added, this transfer was not so much from the upper echelons to the lower classes as it was from an elite to an upward aspiring petty bourgeoisie, or intermediate elite. Such transformations did not fundamentally put to question, much less challenge, the elitist structures that had been implanted in these establishments by the British government. This is why Pieris’s memoirs paint an accurate picture of these institutions, not just from his time but also from ours: Pieris’s description of past pupils’ “hankering fixation on school life, the joys of cricket” and of “elderly men leading a hollow existence, pitiful spectators or sports they can no longer actively participate in”, to give one example, is amply visible at the many matches, parades, and functions organised by these schools today.

All this goes back to my original point, that British rule did not liberate colonial societies, like ours, from our tribalist past. A careful examination of the institutions which were set up by colonial officials here, during that period, should make that much clear. The transition from colonial to post-colonial society has not really challenged the status quo. If at all, it has only substituted the domination of one social class for that of another: the petty bourgeoisie, for the Anglicised colonial elite. Against such a backdrop, it behoves us to ask what exactly must be done to ensure, not merely the eradication of colonial-precapitalist remnants in these institutions, but the eventual progression, in our country, from the colonial-tribalist setup to which it continues to be tethered, 75 years after independence, to a truly modern, secular, and progressive society. Such a transformation requires a radical shift in our perceptions of education, governance, and political reform. Yet it is needed, especially at a time when mass anger against the elite class has reached fever pitch.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.

All News Advertisement

Features

Putting people back into ‘development’ – a challenge for South

Published

23 hours ago

2026/05/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

In need of swift empowerment; working people of Sri Lanka.

Should Sri Lanka consider an 18th IMF programme? Some academicians exploring Sri Lanka’s development prospects in depth are raising this issue. It is yet to emerge as a hot topic among policy and decision-making circles in this country but common sense would sooner rather than later dictate that it be taken up for discussion by the wider public and a decision arrived at.

The issue of an 18th IMF programme was raised with some urgency locally by none other than Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja,Visiting Senior Fellow, ODI Global London, one of whose presentations, made at the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, was highlighted in this column last week, May 7th. An IMF programme is far from the ideal way out for a bankrupt country such as Sri Lanka but a policy of economic pragmatism would indicate that there is no other way out for Sri Lanka. Such a programme is the proverbial ‘Bird in the hand’ for Sri Lanka and it may be compelled to avail of it to get itself out of the morass of economic failures it is bogged down in currently.

While local economic growth possibilities are far from encouraging at present, such prospects globally are far from bright as well. Some of the more thought-provoking data in the latter regard were disclosed by Dr. Wignaraja. For example, ‘The IMF’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook projects global growth slowing to 3.1 percent in 2026; with downside risks dominating: prolonged conflict, geopolitical fragmentation, renewed trade tensions, bearing down hardest on emergent and developing economies.’

However, as is known, an ‘IMF bailout’ is fraught with huge risks for the people of a developing country. ‘The Silver Bullet’ brings hardships for the people usually and they would be required by their governments to increasingly ‘tighten their belts’ and brace for perhaps indefinite material hardships and discontent. For Sri Lanka, the cost of living is unsettlingly high and 20 percent of the population is languishing below the poverty line of $ 3.65 per day.

These statistics should help put the spotlight on the people of a country, who are theoretically the subjects and beneficiaries of development, and one of the main reasons, in so far as democracies are concerned, for the existence of governments. Placing people at the centre of the development process is urgently needed in the global South and shifting the focus to other considerations would be tantamount to governments dabbling in misplaced priorities.

Technocrats are needed for the propelling of economic growth but a Southern country’s main approach to development cannot be entirely technocratic in nature. The well being of the people and how it is affected by such growth strategies need to be prime focuses in discussions on development. Accordingly, discourses on how poverty alleviation could be facilitated need urgent initiation and perpetuation. There is no getting away from people’s empowerment.

In the South over the decades, the above themes have been, more or less, allowed to lapse in discussions on development. With economic liberalization and ‘market economics’ being allowed to eclipse development, correctly understood, people’s well being could be said to have been downplayed by Southern governments.

The development issues of Southern publics could be also said to have been compounded over the years as a result of the hemisphere lacking a single and effective ‘voice’ that could consistently and forcefully take up its questions with the global powers and institutions that matter. That is, the South lacks an all-embracing, umbrella organization that could bring together and muster the collective will of the South and work towards the realization of its best interests.

This columnist has time and again brought up the need for concerned Southern sections to explore the potential within the now virtually moribund Non-Aligned Movement to reactivate itself and fill the above lacuna in the South’s organizational and mobilization capability. In its heyday NAM not only possessed this institutional capability but had ample ‘voice power’ in the form of its founding fathers, with Jawaharlal Nehru of India, for example, proving a power to reckon with in this regard. The lack of such leaders at present needs to be factored in as well as accounting for the South’s lack of power and presence in the deliberative forums of the world that have a bearing on the hemisphere’s well being.

The Executive Director of the RCSS, Ambassador (Retd) Ravinatha Aryasinha, articulated some interesting thoughts on the above and related questions at a forum a couple of months back. Speaking at the launching of the book authored by Prof. Gamini Keerewella titled, ‘Reimagining International Relations from a Global South Perspective’, at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, Colombo, Amb. Aryasinha said, among other things: ‘Historically, there is a precedent that has been realized by the Non-Aligned group of countries – unfortunately, rather than being reformed and modified at the end of the Cold War, it has been tossed away.’

The inability of the nominally existent NAM to come out of its state of veritable paralysis and voice and act in the name of the South in the current international crises lends credence to the view that the organization has allowed itself to be ‘tossed away.’ The challenge before NAM is to prove that it is by no means a spent force.

As indicted, NAM needs vibrant voices that could advocate value-based advancement for the global South. Moral principles need to triumph over Realpolitik. Such transformative changes could come to pass if there is a fresh meeting of enlightened minds within the South. Pakistan by offering to mediate in the ongoing conflict between the US and Iran, for instance, proved that there are still states within the South that could look beyond narrow self-interest and work towards some collective goals. Hopefully, Pakistan’s example will be emulated.

Along with Pakistan some Gulf states have shown willingness to work towards a de-escalation of the present hostilities in West Asia. This could be a beginning for the undertaking of more ambitious, collective projects by the South that have as their goals political solutions to current international crises. These developments prove that the South is not bereft of visionary thinking that could lay the basis for a measure of world peace. That is, there are grounds to be hopeful.

NAM needs to see it as its responsibility to make good use of these hopeful signs to bring the South together once again and work towards the realization of its founding principles, such as initiating value-based international politics and laying the basis for the collective economic betterment of Southern people.

Features

Artificial Intelligence in Academia: Menace or Tool?

Published

23 hours ago

2026/05/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

(The author is on X as @sasmester)

I have often been told by university colleagues how soulless and dangerous ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) is to academia and humanity. They lament that students no longer read anything as they can now get various AI programmes to summarise what is recommended which is mostly in the English language to Sinhala or Tamil or get easier versions in English itself. They get their assignments and even dissertations fully or partially written by AI. And I am led to believe that universities do not have reliable detection software to assess plagiarism and academic fraud that have been committed using AI beyond the software freely available on the internet with their own limitations. This is due to financial restrictions in these institutions. Even these common malpractices have been done mostly with the aid of free AI programmes which are readily available, which means cheating in this sense is free and mostly safe. For teachers, this is a ‘menace’ in the same way ‘copying’ once was. But its implications are far worse.

But given the global investments made over AI, it cannot be wished away despite the enormous negative impact its use has on the environment, particularly due to its massive demand for energy. So, AI is with us to stay, and it has a considerable role to play in human civilisation even though like most innovations and inventions, this too carries its own burden of negativity. In this context, instead of demonising AI and lamenting its replacement of human agency and ingenuity, one needs to think seriously about how to deal with and engage with it reflectively and pragmatically as there is much it can offer if people are intelligent enough to make rational and sensible choices.

When I am making these observations, I am restricting myself to a handful of practices involving only writing both in university-based examination processes and in the fields of creative writing.

My initial introduction to AI was through the Research Methods class I used to teach in New Delhi. In 2022, this class was supposed to go to Dharmshala in Uttar Pradesh for fieldwork training, and we needed to write a funding proposal quickly. One of the students in the class, already familiar with ChatGPT introduced by OpenAI as a free programme in 2022, did the proposal with its help before the two-hour class was over. I edited it soon after and sent it off to the university administration for funding which we received. That stint of field work was completed in five days and was the most detailed work undertaken as a training programme up to that time in the university which had considerable output ranging from a documentary film to a detailed ethnography based on the findings.

While the technical details, the format of the proposal and its basic writing were done by AI due to the time constraints the class faced, its fine-tuning was done by me and a few students. AI could not then and even now cannot undertake that level of specificity without close human intervention. But the film, the ethnography and the actual process of research had nothing to do with AI. It was the result of human labour, thinking, planning and at times creativity and ingenuity. This was an early example of how AI could coexist in an academic environment if its technical usefulness was clearly understood and potential for excesses was also understood. But this was a time, easily accessible AI was just emerging, and we did not know much about it. But I was fortunate enough to have intelligent students in my class who gave me a crash course into this kind of AI use, which I followed up with my own reading and experimentation later on. As a result, I am keener now to see how it can be used for the betterment of academic practice rather than taking an uncritically demonising position, which I know will not lead anywhere.

But how is this possible? The lamentations of my colleagues about the abuse of AI in academic practice is not unfounded. It is a serious threat that remains mostly unaddressed not only in our country but almost everywhere else in the world too. This is mostly because the advancements of AI even in day-to-day free usage have far exceeded any thoughts for actionable codes of ethics to ensure its practice is sensible and ethical. At the same time, I cannot see why a student should not use AI to correct his spelling and grammar in assignments. I also cannot see why a student cannot seek AI’s help to secure research material from secondary sources available online which I have been doing for years. For instance, the originals of specific books and rare manuscripts might not be available in any repositories in our part of the world. In such situations, what AI might find us is all we have access to in a world where we are restricted in our mobility due to semi-racist visa regimes of failed empires and former superpowers as well as our own lack of ability to travel due to our own unenviable economic conditions. But unfortunately, the materials we need are often only available in research centers and libraries in those nations.

Similarly, when it comes to academic prose, it makes no sense now to take years to translate works from multiple languages to Sinhala and Tamil. This has always been a time-consuming, cumbersome and expensive process. Non-availability of Sinhala and English translations of core originals in languages such as English, French, German and so on has been a long-term problem for our country. But this can now be done well – at least from English to our languages – quite quickly and with a very low margin for error by using specific AI programmes which are meant to do precisely this. What this means is a quick expansion of knowledge in local languages which would have ordinarily taken years to achieve or might not have been possible at all. But still, this needs significant human intervention and time towards perfection. However, I do not think AI-based translations work as well for fiction and poetry or creative works more generally. But the ability for AI to emulate nuance and feeling in language is fast emerging. These are two clear examples of improving technical abilities in research and writing in which AI can be of help.

But looking for sources of information with help the help of AI or using it as a tool to undertake essential translations from one language to another is quite different from simply using it without ascertaining the accuracy of collected information, getting AI to do all your work without any reflection or without any hard work at all, including engaging AI to do the final product in a writing assignment — be that a term paper or a work of fiction. If one proceeds in this direction, as many unfortunately do nowadays, then, our ability to think and be creative as a species will become diminished over time and our sense of humanity itself will take a toll. This is what my colleagues worry about when they say AI is making younger generations soulless.

It is here that ethical practices on how to use AI responsibly without compromising our sense of humanity must play a central role. But these ethical practices must be formally written and taught, followed by viable programmes for detection and publication if unethical practices are followed. This needs to be the case particularly in teaching institutions as well as the broader domain of creative writing. After all, what is the fun in reading a novel or a collection of poetry written by AI?

It is time people began to think about what AI can do in their own fields without falling prey to its power and their own laziness. This brings to my mind Geoffrey Hinton’s words: “There is no chance of stopping AI’s development. But we need to ensure alignment; to ensure it is beneficial to us …” Similarly, as Yann LeCun observed, “AI is not just about replicating human intelligence; it’s about creating intelligent systems that can surpass human limitations.” In this sense, it is up to us to find our edge in creativity and common sense to find the most sensible way forward in using AI.

Features

Engelbert’s 90th birthday bash

Published

23 hours ago

2026/05/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

The legendary Engelbert Humperdinck, who is known for his hit songs such as ‘A Man Without Love’, ‘Release Me’, ‘Spanish Eyes’, ‘The Last Waltz’, ‘Am I That Easy To Forget’, ‘Ten Guitars’ and ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, turned 90 on 02 May, 2026, and there were some lovely Hollywood-related celebrations.

Before his birthday, Engelbert’s new single ‘I’ve Got You’ was released – on 23 April – and Engelbert had this to say: “‘I’ve Got You’ is especially close to my heart. It speaks to love, loyalty, and the quiet strength we find in one another”.

The main birthday event was held at The Starlight Cabaret, in Los Angeles, California, and Sri Lankan Raju Rasiah, now based in the States, and his wife Renuka, who are personal friends of Engelbert, were invited to participate in the celebrations, along with Ingrid Melicon – also a Sri Lankan, now domiciled in America.

The invitation said “An evening of music, memories and celebration. Let’s make it a night to remember!” And it certainly turned out to be a night never ever to be forgotten!

Invitees experienced a “magical entrance” with Engelbert’s name lighting up the screen and showing him performing his hit songs.

The invitees were also presented with a unique gift – a necklace with Engelbert’s face, engraved with the words “Remember, I Love You.”

Engelbert’s son, Bradley Dorsey, sang a tribute song ‘Only You’ for his dad, while Eddy Fisher’s daughters, Tricia and Joely, also got on stage to entertaining the distinguish gathering.

Engelbert didn’t perform but got on stage for the cutting of the birthday cake.

There was also a video compilation of birthday wishes from fellow celebrities, and the lineup included Gloria Gaynor, Micky Dolenz, Wayne Newton, Pat Boone, Lulu, Judy Collins, Deana Martin, Angélica María, Rupert Everett, Matt Goss, and more.

Birthday boy Engelbert Humperdinck

At 90, Engelbert is still performing. He’s on THE CELEBRATION TOUR for his 90th year, with over 50 international dates in 2026, including Australia, Germany, the US, and Canada. He’ll be at Massey Hall in, Toronto, on 06 October, 2026. He said: “The stage is my home… Canada has always been a highlight”.

He performed 60+ concerts, worldwide, in 2025, and says karaoke keeps his songs fresh: “Most of my songs are on karaoke because people love to sing them”.