Features

The Aftermath of Empire – Reappraisal and Reconciliation – (Part 2)

Published

6 years ago

2021/03/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe*

Continued from last week

The author is an Honorary Professor at the University of Buckingham, UK, at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, and also at the National Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka.

He was a former Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, Staff Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, and former Professor at Cardiff University. He is a pioneer of the discipline of Astrobiology and the author of over 450 scientific papers and some 35 books.

Several generations of British historians, archaeologists and naturalists devoted their entire lives to tirelessly exploring the multiplicity of wonders of India. Studies of the subcontinent’s natural history, archaeology and anthropology are just a few scientific disciplines that enormously benefited from the imperial encounter. The introduction of greenhouses, zoological and botanic gardens to the Western world and much else came directly as a result of the colonial venture.

One discovery of great importance is worthy of mention. A large number of stone pillars and columns bearing mysterious inscriptions in a hitherto undeciphered Brahmi script had been scattered across the length and breadth of India and, rather strangely, gone unnoticed for centuries. In the 1830’s it was an English Philologist and scholar James Prinsep (1799-1840) who successfully deciphered these inscriptions. The edicts written in the Bhrami language mentioned a King Devanampriya Piyadasi which Prinsep had initially assumed was a Sri Lankan king. He was later to discover a Pali text from Sri Lanka from which he was able to connect the title Piyadasi with Ashoka, and thus was revealed for a first time a long-hidden secret of Indian history – the life and times of Emperor Ashoka who had reigned between 268 and 232 BCE. Ashoka is famous as the Indian monarch who became a Buddhist and unified a vast part of the Indian subcontinent into a single empire ruling it according to Buddhist principles. H.G. Wells in his “Outline of World History” said of Ashoka that amid tens of thousands of names of monarchs, “Ashoka shines, shines almost alone, a star”.

In the 1920’s it was again thanks to British archaeologists that we owe the next major discovery – the unravelling of the great Indus valley civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro which represents another long-hidden chapter in the prehistory of the Indian subcontinent stretching back to the third millennium BCE. We already had knowledge from Mesopotamian records of a vigorous trade in lapis lazuli that existed between empires in the Mesopotamia and India, but now we could link this precisely with the Indus valley civilizations.

Unravelling a Buddhist heritage

A few British Civil Servants who were posted in Ceylon in the 19^th century became assiduous students of Buddhist texts and wrote extensively and enthusiastically about Buddhism. Thomas William Rhys David (1843-1922) was one such scholar who found himself posted as Government Agent near the historic ancient city of Anuradhapura. There he became actively involved in archaeological excavations that led to the discovery of a vast number of inscriptions and manuscripts relating to Buddhism and this triggered his interest. He soon became a formidable Pali scholar, translated many Buddhist Pali texts into English and also wrote extensive commentaries on Buddhism that are still being read today.

The colonial response to Buddhism on the whole had been positive throughout the time of the Empire. H.G. Wells (1866-1946) in his “Outline of World History” writes of Buddhism thus:

“Many of our best modern ideas are in closest harmony with it. All the miseries and discontents of life are due, he (the Buddha) taught, to selfishness. Selfishness takes three forms – one, the desire to satisfy the senses; second, the craving for immortality; and the third the desire for prosperity and worldliness. Before a man can become serene he must cease to live for his senses or himself. Then he merges into a great being. Buddha in a different language called men to self-forgetfulness five hundred years before Christ. In some ways he was nearer to us and our needs. Buddha was more lucid on our individual importance in service than Christ, and less ambiguous upon the question of personal immortality.”

The amazing degree of concordance between Buddha’s view of consciousness and modern post-Jungian ideas in psychology were discussed by me and Daisaku Ikeda in our dialogue many years ago. The practice of Buddhist meditation is becoming increasingly popular in the West today because of its potential to yield mental and physical health benefits. Such practices, however, are looked upon with suspicion by many – now and in the past – as heathen primitive rituals that challenge the cannon of Christian faith. Such a narrow view cannot be interpreted as being any other than a component of racial thinking that prevailed throughout the period of British imperialism and filters down even into our post-colonial modern era.

Buddhist cosmology

In matters relating to cosmology and life in the Universe ideas from Buddhist as well as earlier Vedic traditions have run contrary to the canonical Western world-view. For instance, in the cosmology described in the Anguttara Nikaya (a Buddhist text dated at around the 1^st century BCE) it is stated thus:

“As far as these suns and moons revolve, shedding their light in space, so far extends the thousand-fold world system. In it there are a thousand suns, a thousand moons, a thousand inhabited Earths and a thousand heavenly bodies. This is called the thousand-fold minor world system….”

It then goes on to define a hierarchy of world systems, referring to the entire universe as “this sphere of million, million world systems”. Similar views do not dominate scientific thinking in Europe until after the Copernican revolution in the 17^th century of the common era. Today, with the recent discoveries of exoplanets in the past decade, the total number of exoplanetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy alone is estimated to exceed 100 billion.

As far back as the first millennium BCE a school of atomism similar to that of Democritus was founded in India, the most important proponent of this school being a philosopher named Kanada (600 BCE). The idea was that atoms are point-sized, indivisible and eternal, each possessing a distinct property and individuality. These concepts were developed further by a burgeoning Buddhist school of atomism that flourished in the 7th century CE.

Aryabhata (476-550CE) was perhaps the first Indian astronomer in the modern mould who discovered an approximation of pi to six significant figures and also correctly maintained that the planets and the Moon shine by reflected sunlight. He also correctly inferred from observations that the daily motion of the stars in the celestial sphere is due to Earth’s rotation about its axis.

From both archaeological and later historical evidence there is no doubt that high levels of advancement in science and technology had been achieved in India long before Aryabhata going back to at least the second millennium before the common era. Vedic Sanskrit texts dated at the 8^th century BCE refer to Pythagorean triples (eg. (3,4,5 (5,12,13), (8,15,17)) and display a knowledge of Pythagoras theorem. One of the earliest Indian astronomical texts (Vedānga Jyotiṣa) dates from 1400–1200 BCE, with the currently extant form dating possibly from 700–600 BCE. This latter timespan also corresponds to the dating of the most ancient known “university” in the world, Takshashila in India, which was a centre first of Hindu and later Buddhist scholarship.

Ayurveda and plant-based pharmaceuticals

Developments in the field of ayurvedic plant-based medicine, and including reports of surgical interventions, have been recorded in a variety of sources from the earliest times. In one of the Ashokan pillars (272-231BCE), to which I have already referred, an edict reads: “Everywhere King Piyadasi (Ashoka) erected two kinds of hospitals, hospitals for people and hospitals for animals. Where there were no healing herbs for people and animals, he ordered that they be bought and planted.” There also exist many thousands of ayurvedic texts both in India and Sri Lanka with extensive lists of medicinal herbs and their alleged benefits for curing various ailments. The result of four centuries of colonial rule has unfortunately been to relegate this vast legacy to the “archive of curiosity”.

The few ayurvedic physicians who now practice in India and Sri Lanka still rely on time-hallowed anecdotal accounts of the efficacy of their plant-based medicines. The correct procedure will be for western science to fully explore these claims with chemical analysis and trials, but this has not yet been done. It should be recalled in this context that many drugs currently used in western medicine are indeed derived from plants – aspirin, quinine, digitalis, morphine, codeine – are just a few. It is hard to imagine the medical legacy that would follow from a complete investigation of the thousands of claimed herbal remedies that still remain unexamined.

Transition from ancient to modern science

I have already mentioned the knowledge of land surveying technologies and irrigation schemes that was evident in the Indus valley civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa; and these and other technological developments have also been found elsewhere in India and in neighbouring Sri Lanka throughout the period from the beginning of the common era until the time of the arrival of the British in 1600CE.

When the British arrived in India the difference in technological development between Britain and the subcontinent was arguably marginal. Handlooms and weaving technology that were developed and used in Bengal made India (run by the Moghuls) one of the richest countries of the world at this time. In a real sense it could be maintained that the technological advancement of the West took place at the cost of the continued impoverishment of India.

From the beginning of the 20^th century many Indian scientists who were trained in British Universities and laboratories made highly significant contributions to the progress of science furthering the dominant scientific paradigms of Western science. A common feature of all these scientists is that their corpus of work supported and did not in any way challenge the major accepted paradigms of the day. Their achievements were thus thought to be a continuing tribute to the prevailing and predominant traditions of western science, and so were readily acknowledged and rewarded. However serious difficulties can arise whenever an ethnically non-European scientist hailing from an ex-colony dares to challenge a reigning paradigm of Western science.

Clash of Orthodoxy and Heresy

It should occasion no surprise to find that most important advances in science with regard to fundamental of issues concerning the Universe and Life have always been subject to cultural and religious constraints. Thus, in the 19^th century the unfolding facts of geology that yielded an age of the Earth of some 4 billon years came into sharp conflict with Biblical chronologies of mere thousands of years, and this had initially caused great angst in some circles. Likewise, the facts of biological evolution that were unravelled after Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859 continued to disturb conventional beliefs for several decades.

As already mentioned Buddhist and earlier Vedic cosmologies can be interpreted as being consistent with many aspects of modern and post-modern scientific thought. There are also fundamental differences that can cause consternation in a Western scientific context. In Vedic cosmology the universe is thought to be infinite in spatial extent and cyclic in time– strikingly reminiscent of the modern versions of oscillating universe models. In this context it is worth noting that the currently favoured Big-Bang theory of the Universe with an age of 13.8 billion years is by no means absolutely proved. The very recent discovery of a galaxy designated GN-z11 located at a distance of 13.4 billion light years (implying its formation just 420 million years after the posited Big Bang origin of the Universe) poses serious problems for the current consensus view of cosmology.

Recently Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose has come in among the select band of dissenters from the standard view of a unique Big Bang origin of the Universe 13.8 billion years ago. In a theory called the “conformal cyclic cosmology” Penrose postulates that the universe undergoes an infinite number of cycles in which the Big Bang event 13.8 billion years ago is the most recent cycle of which we are a part – a result strikingly in accord with ancient Vedic and Indian cosmology.

The inescapable fact of Panspermia

Finally, I turn to the age-old problem of our own origins – how we, humans and indeed all of life, came to be. This question has been approached in a multitude of different ways, embracing superstition, religion, philosophy and eventually science. The ideas that prevailed throughout ancient India involved the concept of life being an integral part of the structure of the universe – a view closely aligned to the ideas of panspermia discussed in the West by pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaxoragas of Clazomenae who lived around 500BCE. Panspermia implies that “seeds of life” are eternally present in the cosmos and take root whenever and wherever the condition permit.

This concept was vigorously rejected in the Western tradition in favour of the ideas of the more influential Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 3^rd century BCE. Aristotle proposed instead that life must arise from non-living inorganic matter whenever the right conditions prevailed, and he cited many instances that were incorrectly regarded as supportive evidence, the most graphic being the statement of “fireflies emerging from a mixture of warm earth and morning dew”. Over a millennium and a half later Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1272) essentially co-opted Aristotelian philosophy into church doctrine, so that dissent from any component of it thereafter was effectively construed as heresy. The Aristotlean doctrine of “Spontaneous Generation” was transformed into “Abiogenesis” in modern terms and continues to dominate Western science almost to the present day.

Attempts to re-examine panspermia in the West began in earnest with the French biologist Louis Pasteur in the early 1860’s. Pasteur showed in the laboratory what was already known for larger visible life forms – that life is always derived from pre-existing life of a similar kind. This casual chain of events – life-from-life – is true not only for lifeforms existing today but it is also true throughout the entire record of fossilised life on the Earth. The question that next arises is: when and where this connection cease to operate. The answer could be never – so this then naturally leads to panspermia.

Following the experiments of Pasteur, panspermia came at last to be championed by many contemporary physicists in the late 19th century.

Lord Kelvin declared: “Dead matter cannot become living without coming under the influence of matter previously alive. This seems to me to be as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation….”

And the German physicist Herman von Helmholtz wrote in 1874:

“It appears to me a fully correct scientific procedure, if all our attempts fail to cause the production of organisms from non-living matter, to raise the question whether life has ever arisen, whether seeds have not been carried from one planet to another…”.

A similar position was also championed a few years later by the Nobel prize-winning Chemist Svante Arrhenius in his 1908 book Worlds in the Making. But all this enthusiasm was transient. On the basis of poorly designed experiments concerning limits to the viability of microbes in space, the situation soon reverted, and spontaneous generation and abiogenesis came back into vogue.

In the past five decades abiogenesis was confronted with a formidable array of new facts from astronomy, geology, space science and molecular biology, all of which challenged its validity. On the other hand, an ever-increasing number of predictions of panspermia has come to be verified to an astounding degree of precision. Wrong theories do not perform in this way, so it soon became amply clear that panspermia’s star was on the ascendant! The sociology of science now took over: the triumphs of panspermia over rival models began to irritate an ever-increasing body of scientists. This was aggravated by the fact that all attempts to demonstrate the validity of abiogenesis in the most advanced laboratories in the world consistently led to dismal failure.

The trajectory of panspermia from its early roots in the Vedas through to Anaxoragas in the 5^th century BCE and into modern times is sketched in Fig.4. The last phase following on from Pasteur led up to the work of the present writer, Fred Hoyle and many collaborators. This unfolding scientific drama is well-documented in a very large number of scientific papers and recent books.

What I would like to reiterate by way of conclusion is that the body of objective scientific evidence in favour of cometary panspermia and against abiogenesis is now compelling and overwhelming. The main reason that this new world view has yet to enter mainstream thinking, and even become more widely known, may be simply because its principal proponent (the present writer) is seen as a heathen and a former colonial subject. In what could be seen as the most egregious travesty of justice serious attempts are being made to “steal” our well-documented priority on these ideas in recent publication of similar ideas but with a deliberate omission of any reference to pioneering work over the past 40 years. In my view overt racism including antagonism for what is seen to be an alien concept is the only conceivable explanation for this conduct. This explanation also provides the only reason for why a long-overdue paradigm shift from planet-centred life to cosmic-centred life – a paradigm shift which is potentially of the most profound importance across the whole of science – is being delayed.

The long colonial encounter between “West” and “East” that began in the 15^th and 16^th centuries ending barely seven decades ago has in every sense shaped the modern world. Many scars have been left, however, and a priority of the ongoing decolonisation process must not only be to expand on the legacy of this long experience but also to heal its wounds.

All News Advertisement

Features

West Asian conflict undergoing manifold complications

Published

11 hours ago

2026/10/8

Sahan Weerasooriya

Captain Machchhar; heroism in the skies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message to Israel’s enemies was blunt and stark.‘We’re going to win; we have no choice.’ He said so while the majority of attendees at a recent UN General Assembly session walked out of the conference hall when the Israeli Prime Minister took the podium; many of them booing in derision.

Those commentators who have been studying Israel’s handling of her enemy states over the decades are unlikely to dismiss the entirety of Netanyahu’s address as rhetoric. The general pattern has been for the Israeli state to stand up firmly against its enemies in the battle field. On most occasions, these adversaries have been beaten back.

It is also little realized in particularly the Southern hemisphere that Israel, for the most part, could defend herself without much US assistance. The history of the conflict bears this out.

However, from the viewpoint of working towards a just and equitable peace in the Middle East the Israeli hard line stance has proved and will prove incalculably detrimental. The sworn enemies of Israel are not going to be in any way deterred by Netanyahu’s stark warnings. On the other hand, they would be only further provoked into taking on Israel by conventional or unconventional military means and seek its destruction.

The recent aborted mid-air hijacking of a Flydubai flight, consisting mainly of Israeli passengers, by an Omani extremist drives home the point. Israel’s enemies are bound to redouble their efforts to annihilate Israel rather than be deterred by the latter’s warnings about standing firm against them. This too history has proved.

It would be in the fitness of things at this juncture to pay a tribute to the professionalism, courage and humanity of the relevant airline pilot, Captain Machchhar, whose timely action proved decisive in botching the hijack attempt. His intervention averted what could very well have been another 9/11 type tragedy. History is not going to forget his daring and resourcefulness.

Meanwhile, the ground realities in West Asia are undergoing further complications that portend increasing regional instability. For example at the time of writing Turkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have agreed under the recently established ‘Mecca Alliance for Defence’ to deploy ‘deterrence measures’ collectively in the event of any member of the alliance coming under military strikes from a non-member state.

The agreement is modeled on the NATO collective defence pact and should help in defusing any threat perceptions experienced by the alliance members in the short term. However, the group would need to be cognizant of the major and potentially divisive role Iran could play in the interstate politics of the Middle East region going forward.

Iran’s reported support, for example, for Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are engaged in attacking Saudi national assets, could at some point in time compel the alliance, under the terms of the pact, to initiate deterrent military measures against Iran.

The implications for regional peace from such a turn of events hardly require elaboration. A full blown regional war emerges as a distinct possibility if Iran sees itself as being excessively antagonized by the alliance. A further complication is that antagonistic sectarian identities of an Islamic kind could come to play hugely divisive roles in it. Shiite Islamic states would be inclined to back Iran while those countries seen as Sunni Islamic in orientation are bound to support Saudi Arabia.

Accordingly, West Asia is a region rife with manifold aggravated insecurities. If the latter are not defused dexterously they could escalate into a conflict of extra regional dimensions. The latter development would render the world a collective loser.

Unfortunately, no constructive help could be expected from the US at this juncture by way of working towards regional and international peace even of short durance. Its war against Iran has only aggravated the world’s current insecurities.

For example, the world has been compelled to face the possibility of compounded economic woes as a consequence of the Hormuz crisis remaining unresolved. The world is currently experiencing what could be seen as a ‘winter of economic discontent’ of unprecedented proportions.

Unfortunately, the international community is to all intents and purposes helpless in the face of this multifaceted crisis. Substantial intervention is expected of the UN but since it has failed to reform itself over the years it is compelled to stand idly by while the world’s insecurities heighten and multiply.

Yet, it is the seemingly paralyzed UN system that has some potential to contain the current tide of international disorder to even a small measure. Given the persisting divergent and conflicting interests among the world’s principal power blocs, the G7 and BRICS for instance, it is mainly the UN and its principal agencies that could carry some credibility as peace brokers and mediators.

However, as an initial step towards bringing the principal protagonists to the negotiating table the UN would need to convince the principal powers of the UN Security Council of the need for a substantive broad-basing of the membership of the Council so as to reflect more accurately the current global political and economic realities. Such reforms would render the Council more representative and help in strengthening its credibility and effectiveness.

The above reforms call for years of dynamism, hard work and resourcefulness on the part of the international community, read the UN. Yet the aims are not impossible to achieve if strong leadership is brought to bear by the UN.

Meanwhile, the UN agencies and allied organizations need to pay stepped-up attention to the West Asian theatre and its wasting conflicts and wars. Here too there is immense hard work to be put in.

There is, for instance, identity politics and its issues that need to be managed urgently. While internal political matters of countries could not be addressed directly by UN agencies, awareness-raising programs and projects could be energetically carried out by them to blunt the appeal of identity-based slogans, relating to, for instance, religion and race.

Besides, values at the heart of democratic politics need to be freshly and enthusiastically propagated. Vast reserves of energy and resources are needed, to be sure, to consistently champion and implement these crucial projects but they need to be pursued single-mindedly if even a dent is to be made in the current runaway global disorder.

The aborted hijacking of the Flydubai flight pointed to the dehumanizing impact of identity politics on the human consciousness. It was also an indication that those sections endowed with humanity cannot stand idly by while identity politics continues to destroy civilizational values. The time to act is ‘now’.

Features

Future of Sri Lanka’s state university system: Should it be shut down and reopened?

Published

11 hours ago

2026/10/8

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Professor Ranjith Bandara
Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Colombo

My life has been closely connected with Sri Lanka’s state university system for more than four decades. Its doors opened to me first as a student and later as an academic. The system gave me knowledge, opportunities and a life. Therefore, when I speak about its future, I do so not as an outsider, but as someone who owes much to it and genuinely wishes to see it become better.

Over the years, our university system has expanded significantly. New institutions, faculties, degree programmes and opportunities for students have been created. For 2024, the government expected to admit 43,204 students to national universities. By the time the relevant report was prepared, 42,282 students had been admitted through the general admission process, which had not yet been completed. This is an achievement that should not be dismissed.

However, expanding the system does not necessarily mean that its quality has improved. The real question is not simply how many students we have allowed through the doors, but what kind of education they receive after entering. (Source: Ministry of Education Annual Performance Report 2024.)

We often proudly declare that “our university is number one.” Yet a university does not become number one through publicity. Its true standing depends on the quality of its teaching, the strength of its research and the contribution it makes to society. A vice-chancellor writing about the institution’s, or his or her own, achievements on Facebook does not improve the quality of a university. What matters is good teaching, an education that encourages students to think, credible research and new knowledge that benefits society. A reputation must be earned through meaningful work, not through self-promotion.

The fundamental purpose of a university is clear: to create knowledge, to teach it and to train students to examine and understand it critically. To fulfil this purpose, academics need freedom, responsibility and time. Students must be free to ask questions, disagree and develop their own views based on evidence. Without such an environment, a university may award degrees, but it cannot fulfil the true purpose of university education.

The most serious danger I see is the growing tendency for political activity to take precedence over the academic mission of universities. Over the past five decades, this problem has gradually become more serious. In some universities today, it has become difficult even to hold or express an opinion that differs from the dominant political view.

Members of a university community have every right to hold political views and express them peacefully. A university should not be a place inhabited by silent people. However, when political loyalties, power blocs and struggles for positions become more important than research, teaching and learning, the university moves away from its true purpose. When the political camp to which an academic belongs matters more than the value of that academic’s ideas, the respect that should belong to knowledge is transferred to power.

These criticisms are not ideas I have borrowed from books. They are based on experiences from my own professional life. One such experience was the manner in which I had to leave the university nearly twenty years ago. In my view, the improper exercise of political power within the administration of the University of Colombo at that time, and the strong desire to retain that power, had a serious effect on my professional life. Although this was a personal experience, I mention it with regret because it reveals a deeper institutional problem.

The lesson I learned from that experience is not merely about one person or one incident. When there are no strong institutional safeguards to ensure that power is exercised fairly and individuals are protected, even an academic may be forced to leave an institution he deeply loves.

To those who criticise my later decision to enter national politics, my answer is this: when the university’s institutional system failed to provide me with fairness and professional protection in the face of the injustice I experienced, I had to choose another path through which I could use my knowledge and experience in the service of the country.

This does not mean that all vice-chancellors, academics or students behave in the same way. I personally know many people who, despite difficult circumstances, have taught with dedication, undertaken meaningful research and transformed the lives of their students. Scholars such as Professor W. D. Lakshman, Professor Arjuna Aluwihare and Professor Lakshman Jayatilake may be recognised among the distinguished vice-chancellors in the history of Sri Lanka’s university system. Their service deserves our respect and appreciation.

Nevertheless, the presence of a few good and committed individuals cannot, by itself, strengthen a weak institutional system. We must also create an institutional environment in which such people can work independently, fairly and effectively.

First, university leaders must be selected through a process based on clearly defined qualifications, transparent evaluation and accountability. Once a vice-chancellor has been appointed, his or her performance should be assessed according to the support provided for research, the quality of teaching, student welfare, the institution’s financial discipline and the fairness of its decisions. Personal loyalties and publicity skills cannot replace these measures of performance.

Second, academics must be given the time and space required to carry out their core responsibilities. It is meaningless to demand “world-class universities” without providing adequate time, facilities and reasonable funding for research. Teaching, too, should not be treated merely as delivering lectures. Students must be trained to reason, write, investigate and apply their knowledge to real-world problems. The quality of a degree programme should be measured not by its title, but by the capabilities of the graduates it produces.

Third, universities must establish an honest connection with the needs of the country. The problems confronting our economy, schools, healthcare system, agriculture, environment and wider society are all legitimate subjects for research. Seeking answers to these problems does not diminish the dignity of a university; it increases its value to society.

At the same time, research must not be controlled by short-term political demands. Knowledge can serve the country only when researchers are free to communicate what they discover. Sri Lanka’s World Bank-supported AHEAD higher education programme similarly connected the expansion of enrolment in priority disciplines with improving the quality of degree programmes and promoting research and innovation. These goals were linked because meaningful expansion cannot be separated from educational quality. (Source: World Bank overview of the AHEAD programme.

Fourth, the responsibilities of students must be clearly emphasised. The duty to protect the academic environment of a university cannot be placed solely on administrators and academics. Every student has a fundamental responsibility to give priority to his or her education, respect the right of other students to learn and allow the free exchange of ideas.

Student activities, social debate and political engagement all have an important place in university life. However, none of them should be allowed to disrupt education or prevent other students from learning.

When students abandon their primary purpose of learning and create an environment that obstructs education, the university system cannot fulfil one of its most important functions: producing knowledgeable and responsible graduates. A university may continue to award degree certificates, but if lectures, research, open discussion and intellectual inquiry do not receive sufficient attention, it risks producing graduates who lack depth of knowledge, critical thinking and professional competence.

The result may be the emergence of a group of “half-educated” graduates, individuals who possess certificates but have not received a complete intellectual education. Therefore, just as we discuss student rights, we must also have an honest and open discussion about student responsibilities within the university system.

My position on the current professional struggle of university academics is also clear. If they are demanding fair conditions of employment, those demands should be discussed seriously. If their struggle is also intended to free universities from political interference and restore research, teaching and learning to the centre of university life, I stand with them.

The rights of academics and the educational rights of students should not be presented as opposing interests. Both can be protected and respected only within a well-functioning university.

When I say that “the state university system should be shut down and reopened,” I do not mean that we should close the door on the future of our students. I mean that we must close the door on systems in which power matters more than knowledge.

Students have the right to hold political views and participate actively in debates on national issues. A university needs a student community that thinks about the country’s problems and speaks out against injustice. However, student politics should not shut down the university, deprive other students of their education or become a means of displaying organisational power. The right to fight for one’s beliefs comes with the responsibility to respect another person’s right to an education.

Simply attempting to establish another 50 universities will not solve these problems. Sri Lanka needs a higher education system that brings together the contributions of state, state-affiliated and private institutions while applying clear standards and responsibilities to all of them.

Strict discipline within such a system should not mean suppressing freedom of thought. It should mean ensuring that everyone fulfils their responsibilities in relation to teaching, research, examinations, institutional governance and student welfare. A degree certificate will then have value not merely because of the name of the institution that issued it, but because the knowledge and capabilities of the person who earned it can be trusted.

We should learn from advanced higher education systems, but we should not simply copy them. We must develop institutional autonomy, reliable quality-assurance mechanisms and publicly accountable governance in ways that suit our own needs. What we owe future generations is not merely a country with a larger number of universities, but a country in which people can trust the education those universities provide.

What we must close down, therefore, is not the universities themselves, but the outdated system that closes the door on knowledge, freedom and responsibility. What we must reopen is a genuine university system devoted to learning, inquiry, research and the creation of new knowledge in the service of the country.

Features

The Sri Lankan who made Scottish history

Published

11 hours ago

2026/10/8

Sahan Weerasooriya

From beauty pageants and medical science to challenging British immigration policy and making political history in Scotland, yes, that’s Sri Lankan Deena Tissera, born into privilege, in Chilaw, but exposed to poverty and the realities of war.

Now, after 15 years in British politics, she tells Ivan Alvis why she is no longer interested in fitting anyone else’s image of a leader.

She was educated at The British school in Colombo and her father was a doctor-entrepreneur-philanthropist, and mother a former beauty queen and movie star.

She studied Medical Science, moved into Global Health and began a PhD in Public Health, competed in Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World, and, in 2022, made history as the first woman of colour elected to Aberdeen City Council; the first politician of Sri Lankan descent elected in Scotland.

The moment that set it all in motion came during the worst period of her life. Her father had died. She was 24 and missed her university examinations to attend his funeral.

“My father’s greatest wish for me was that I completed my education. However, I was being told that my education would be delayed because I had missed examinations to attend his funeral.”

She refused to accept it. She challenged the university, protested, went before its board and represented herself — and won.

“I went from fighting for myself to realising there were thousands of students who sometimes needed somebody to fight with them.”

She was elected Students’ Union Vice President. Soon her campaigning grew larger. As an international student she had experienced Britain’s immigration system, first-hand, and helped build a UK-wide movement, campaigning for international student rights, and contributing to campaigns that helped achieve changes to immigration rules.

“That taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. Politics isn’t about having a title. Politics is understanding where power sits, organising the people who don’t have it and knowing how to make the people who do have it, listen.”

Deena: Beauty pageant
contestant

The instinct to challenge inequality began earlier. Though born to privilege, her father took her into communities affected by the war through his philanthropic work.

“I grew up with opportunities, but I was surrounded by poverty. That contradiction affected me enormously. My father taught me that privilege isn’t something you should feel guilty about. But you should understand the responsibility that comes with it.”

If her father gave her a sense of service, her mother gave her confidence. Inspired by her, Deena took to modelling … and the Miss Sri Lanka pageant.

“People sometimes expect serious women to edit the glamorous parts out of their history. I can, and have been in a beauty pageant, and still understand economic policy.”

Her academic background continues to shape her politics: “Medical science teaches you evidence. Global health teaches you systems. Public health teaches you that someone’s health can be determined by poverty, housing, education and employment long before they reach a hospital.”

While at the University of Aberdeen she joined Labour Students, later becoming Vice-Chair of her Constituency Labour Party. What followed was more than a decade of door-knocking, organising, strategising, winning and losing.

The overnight success took 15 years. In 2022 she won Hilton, Woodside and Stockethill in Aberdeen.

The historic label came with a complicated reality. She remembers entering rooms with qualifications, campaign experience and leadership credentials — and still sensing she was not the person others imagined as leader.

“There have been tables where I have looked around and known I may be the most accomplished person sitting there, but I wasn’t necessarily the person people saw as the leader. And that’s because I didn’t fit the look.”

Her answer was to work harder — another qualification, another campaign. Then she realised the flaw in that strategy.

“If you wait for everybody else to decide you’re good enough, you can spend your entire life auditioning for a position you’re already qualified to occupy. I owned my identity and started leading with the confidence of my competence.”

At 39, successful and unmarried, she speaks with unusual candour. “Being unmarried is a marital status. It isn’t a performance review.”

Her message to young Sri Lankan and migrant women is direct: “Do not shrink your ambition to make yourself easier for somebody else to digest.”

Her blog series ‘Taboo Tuesdays’ — with titles like “Politics Is a Blood Sport – And We Pretend It Isn’t” — examines ambition, envy, ego and power from inside the room.

Since her election, she has led on anti-poverty and inequality, served as Labour’s Energy Spokesperson for Aberdeen covering net zero, environment and transport, and served as Chief Whip of the Labour group.

She was adviser to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his Our Scottish Future commission, took part in the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, and served as Scottish executive representative for the northeast, Highlands and Islands at her party’s top table.

Recognition has followed — 35 Under 35 Scotland’s rising political stars, Exceptional Achiever of the Year, Politician of the Year nomination, and Outstanding Woman in Governance and Public Policy by Women in Management UK.

As Energy Spokesperson for Aberdeen, one of Europe’s key energy cities, she sits at the centre of Britain’s energy debate. She supports transition but warns: “A just transition cannot mean asking one community to carry the economic cost of everybody else’s environmental ambition.”

Ask her if she wants more power and her answer is simple: “Yes. I am ambitious. But power without purpose is just status.”

Perhaps her most personal answer is about representation: “The first Sri Lankan elected in Scotland means something to me because it means the next Sri Lankan isn’t the first.

“I didn’t have to become less Sri Lankan to become Scottish. I didn’t have to become less feminine to become politically serious. And I didn’t have to look like somebody else’s idea of leadership before I was allowed to lead.”

In conclusion, Deena Tissera had this to say: “There was a time when I wanted to prove I deserved a seat at the table. Now I walk in knowing I do.”