Features

Cultural revival, education reform, and study of history

Published

5 years ago

2022/01/8

By Uditha Devapriya
(with Uthpala Wijesuriya)

Most accounts of education reform in British Ceylon focus on officials and administrators, rather than the people on the ground and the historical forces they had to contend with. Very little effort, indeed next to no effort, is made to situate reforms in a broader historical context. Works like Ranjit Ruberu’s Education in Colonial Ceylon (1962) and the Education and Cultural Affairs Ministry’s Education in Ceylon: A Centenary Volume (1969) do explore these areas, but these remain more the exception than the norm.

Whether scholars have gone beyond a colonial-centric reading of education reforms in 19th century Ceylon is of course debatable. But the need to go beyond such a frame of reference is evident enough. By paying attention to official accounts, we tend to view those reforms through the lens of colonial administrators, whose intentions may not have been as clear-cut as what their biographers would have us assume. On the other hand, we also fail to note the socio-cultural forces that shaped these reforms, including nationalist agitation, religious revival, and progressive forces within the administration itself.

The truth is that, like the society in which they came to be enforced, these reforms were riddled with ambiguities and contradictions. Hence, while colonial officials could dismiss vernacular education at the beginning of the 19th century, events like the 1848 Rebellion resulted in their successors viewing it less unfavourably.

At the same time, the administration distinguished between elementary and secondary education, limiting vernacular schooling to the former. The government did endeavour to expand facilities, but these conformed to the imperatives of confining superior education to a Westernised bourgeoisie. As Swarna Jayaweera has observed, “British policy consistently stressed quality rather than quantity in secondary education.”

Perhaps more than anything else, colonial reforms bequeathed a set of elite secondary schools to the country. The Donoughmore Commission noted this when it stated that the island was fortunate “in possessing a remarkable number” of such institutions.

These schools were run by the State, Christian denominational bodies, and other private interests. Many of them had been set up between 1835 and 1860, while schools founded by Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim revivalists were set up in the latter part of the century. It was only in the Donoughmore period (1931-1947), when Ministers exercised more powers over their areas of specialisation and a radical Left entered the legislature, that facilities for which these institutions had gained a reputation were extended to the poorer masses.

It is from this standpoint that we need to assess the contribution of cultural and religious revivalists, progressive educationists, and historical forces to the education and curriculum reforms of late 19th British Ceylon. As the evidence makes it clear, these figures and forces played a part in reforming the face of education in colonial society, even if they did not bring about, much less promote, radical change within that society.

Preoccupied with the issue of the country’s finances, the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission recommended the establishment of a public school in Colombo, the reform of government schools, and the setting up of a Commission to administer education reforms. Established in 1834, the latter body collapsed seven years later due to various disagreements and clashes. It was followed by another Commission in 1841, which in turn gave way to a more successful institution, the Department of Public Instruction, 28 years later.

By this point in time, the colonial administration in Ceylon was being guided by two contrasting ideological impulses: utilitarianism and orientalism. On the one hand, colonial administrators gave priority to reforms that were practicable and in line with the objective of creating a class of Westernised elites. On the other, not a few of them found themselves drawn to the history of the country they were governing. These developments blended in with the tenor of education reforms and the Buddhist revival of the late 19th century. Their effects were to be felt more fully in the early part of the 20th century.

Probably the most crucial development at this time was the excavation of Anuradhapura. Coming in after centuries of neglect, the restoration of the former capital of the country left a deep impression on people, evoking memories of a lost civilisation and a lost grandeur. It awakened no less than a desire to reclaim a national heritage.

Fittingly, the publication of an Archaeological Commission of Inquiry in 1870 fed into a clamour to know more about the country’s past. Ceylon history, as it came to be called, soon preoccupied officials and elites, leading to the formation of groups like the Ceylon Reform League and provoking much debate among educationists.

These debates centred on a rather pressing problem. Since their establishment, secondary schools had exuded a literary bias, with curricula which placed emphasis on the classics at the cost of other subjects. Long noted as a weakness by officials attached to the Department of Public Instruction, there was very little done to change the situation.

The teaching of history, in particular, limited the child to Europe and India. At the Colombo Academy in the period under discussion, for instance, the two textbooks in use were John Murray’s Guide to India and John Marshman’s Brief Survey of Ancient History. The situation remained much the same elsewhere, with the exception of schools set up by the Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS), where the revivalist objectives of the organisation mingled with a personal interest among foreign teachers and principals in local culture.

Two developments conspired to extend the teaching of these subjects to the island’s elite schools. Firstly, the Governors in charge at this point, in particular William Gregory, took an interest in studying the country’s past and setting up institutions for that purpose. Indeed, the likes of Gregory did not just direct funds to digging up ancient sites, they also financed the establishment of institutions like the Colombo Museum despite the misgivings of their more fiscally conservative colleagues. Under Gregory, moreover, science and art education was prioritised, though progress remained frustratingly slow.

Secondly, while Buddhist schools saw their share of teachers dedicated to the study of local history, at the turn of the century other schools also began employing such figures. The most prominent among them was W. G. Fraser, Principal of Trinity College for 20 years. Described as “the finest colonial headmaster of his day”, Fraser oversaw the teaching of Sinhala at Trinity and abandoned subjects imported from England.

Less well heard of than Fraser, but no less significant, was Charles Hartley. A classics and language master who had taught at a number of English public schools, Hartley served as Principal of the Colombo Academy, now renamed as Royal College, for 16 years. During his tenure he oversaw several reforms, including starting Sinhala and Tamil classes on Saturday mornings at “a fee of Rs. 2 per month.” Anne Blackburn notes that the school employed the brother of Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thera as its first Sinhala teacher.

Hartley’s experiments became successful, and in 1908 “vernacular teaching was instituted in the time table of the lower forms.” Despite his classical training, he also took an interest in science education, commencing physics classes for Technical College students in 1907. That same year, he introduced Ceylon History “to the three upper forms.”

Such reforms continued to influence students even after Hartley’s term ended. In 1913 at the College, for instance, two prizes were offered for Ceylon History, pointing to a growing enthusiasm for the subject. Whereas oriental studies had been neglected in the early 19th century, in the early 20th century such subjects were being taught with much interest. More pertinently, towards the end of the 1920s the results of the Cambridge Examination began to record impressive improvements in history.

Noting these achievements, in 1930 a group of students and teachers conferred with each other and presented a proposal to the principal that led to the establishment of a Historical Association. For its inaugural meeting the Association invited G. C. Mendis to speak on “The study of history with special reference to Ceylon”, underscoring the interest in local history that had led to the founding of the society. Predictably, other public schools followed suit: S. Thomas’ College, for instance, formed such an association in March 1936.

These years and decades saw the publication of a number of history books. They included Paul E. Pieris’s Ceylon and the Portuguese (1913) and The Kingdom of Jaffnapatam (1920), H. W. Codrington’s A Short History of Ceylon (1929), L. E. Blaze’s History of Ceylon (1933), and G. C. Mendis’s The Early History of Ceylon (1940). Needless to say, they had a profound influence on the local curriculum, even at the elite secondary schools.

To say that is not to overrate these works. For the most, the early historians favoured a chronology that divided the past into a series of dynastic periods. It was much later, in the 1960s, that a new generation of historians departed from such frameworks and delved into the material base of society. In its own way, however, it is a testament to the influence of the early historians that our schools still adopt their chronology, with the syllabus focusing on ruling dynasties and clans. Whatever the limitations of such an approach are, there’s no denying that it has penetrated the classroom today, as it did in their time.

These developments were a product of the political, cultural, and social forces that came together in colonial society in the late 19th century. While the work of colonial officials and commissioners, who had their own peculiar motives in the field of education reform, have been noted and can’t be denied, the work of other individuals, including educationists and revivalists, is more significant than what they are given credit for.

What needs to be noted in conclusion is that the reforms overseen by these individuals reflected the ideological impulses of British colonialism. So long as they did not contradict the broader aims of the colonial project, these reforms by and large gained official support, begrudgingly though it was often given. This is not as astounding as it may seem: not even in the 1930s, on the eve of the Donoughmore Reforms, did the most ardent revivalist imagine a Ceylon falling outside the British orbit. It is this, essentially, that guided education reforms, within the framework, and the limits, of a plantation colony in Asia.

(Uditha Devapriya is an international relations scholar and columnist, who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com. Uthpala Wijesuriya is a student and the outgoing Chairman of the Royal College History Club, who can be reached at wijesuriyau6@gmail.com)

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Features

Addressing human rights needs multi-pronged approach

Published

19 hours ago

2026/09/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Volker Türk

by Jehan Perera

The ongoing 63rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which runs from September 7 to October 7, 2026, in Geneva is important to Sri Lanka. Its outcome will send a signal to other international actors, including the European Union, as to whether Sri Lanka’s reform policy is on track. The written update on Sri Lanka, prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights under High Commissioner Volker Türk and presented by Deputy High Commissioner Nada Al-Nashif, has taken a more holistic approach to the government’s performance over the past year. It acknowledged the progress Sri Lanka has made under the NPP government in relation to accountability for financial fraud and other economic crimes. At the same time, the High Commissioner’s update made clear that progress in relation to economic crime cannot be equated with progress in relation to accountability for grave human rights violations committed during the armed conflict and in other periods of political violence.

The government may have felt sufficiently confident that its response to the High Commissioner’s update could be handled by its representative in Geneva and did not require the attendance of Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath. Sri Lanka’s representative Sumith Dassanayake called for a fundamental review of country-specific mandates within the UN Human Rights Council. Sri Lanka has been facing repeated scrutiny in the form of successive UNHRC resolutions from 2012 onwards. Ambassador Dassanayake argued that such mandates should not continue indefinitely and must be regularly assessed against measurable objectives and tangible outcomes. This may reflect confidence that its record of reform is beginning to receive recognition internationally. The reports and statements at the Human Rights Council acknowledged progress in the government’s efforts to address corruption and economic crime.

The government’s anti-corruption drive has included investigations into allegations involving individuals who held the highest political offices in the country. The arrest of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe in connection with alleged misuse of public funds, and the investigation into the controversial SriLankan Airlines Airbus transaction involving former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son, are examples of the reach of these investigations. The arrest of SLPP National Organiser and Member of Parliament Namal Rajapaksa in connection with allegations relating to the Airbus purchase scandal has also demonstrated that the government is willing to pursue cases involving politically powerful figures.

Wide Range

The ongoing investigations appear to encompass a wide range of parliamentarians and government members, both past and present. They suggest that accountability for corruption is not being confined to lower-level officials or to individuals who lack political influence. This is precisely the kind of accountability that the public has long demanded and that previous governments have too often failed to deliver. The government is also reaching into the upper levels of the military hierarchies of the past. The case in which 11 young men, most of them Tamil, disappeared after being abducted in Colombo between 2008 and 2009 involved allegations that some families were asked to pay ransoms. The investigation into this case has reached senior military figures. The willingness to pursue such cases is important because it challenges the assumption that those who exercised power during the war are beyond the reach of the law. Such cases would provide a practical test of whether the government’s commitment to accountability for economic crimes is part of a broader commitment to the rule of law.

Success in prosecuting corruption cannot substitute for justice for those who were unlawfully killed, disappeared, tortured or otherwise victimised. The UN report noted that there had been no recognition or accountability for crimes under international law, gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties during the war. The government has yet to establish a credible and effective process to address the many cases of enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, torture and other serious violations. The government needs to take the international commitments it has inherited on human rights issues seriously. It needs to adopt a multi-pronged approach and go beyond focusing primarily on financial and corruption-related accountability.

Need Action

As a member of the international community, Sri Lanka has a responsibility to abide by the commitments it has made. It cannot selectively uphold international obligations postponing those that are politically difficult. Also, as a small country, Sri Lanka has a self-interest in ensuring the survival of international law, which is all that it has to protect it from the depredations of the bigger international actors. The erosion of international law by powerful states makes it all the more important that smaller states uphold the principles on which the international system is based. Sri Lanka cannot credibly appeal to international law when it is threatened from outside while disregarding its own obligations within. Sri Lanka also needs to win the confidence of its own population that it is committed to justice and equality for all. Public opinion polls and community-level research have disclosed that ethnic and religious minorities are appreciative of the sense of greater security they enjoy under the present government from ethnic or religious extremists.

But a sense of security is not the same as the fulfilment of rights. As far as the Tamil people are concerned, the government has yet to deliver on several of its specific promises. These include the long-standing problems of missing persons, the release of political prisoners who have been members of Tamil militant organisations, and the return of land taken over for military purposes during the war. The issue of Buddhist statues and archaeological sites found on their properties which are then taken from their control continue to trouble them especially as they see no signs of resolution of those disputes. The issue of pastureland in the east of the country in Mylathamadu is particularly concerning to them as they see orders by successive presidents, both President Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, being disregarded on the ground. The Mylathamadu pastureland dispute is where traditional Tamil dairy farmers have engaged in multi-year protests against the ongoing encroachment of their ancestral grazing lands by Sinhalese crop cultivators relocated under government development schemes.

The government’s failure to hold Provincial Council elections is particularly troubling. The provincial council system is the only one that can provide the Tamil people and other ethnic minorities the opportunity to wield political power and exercise a measure of self-determination in the areas in which they are the numerical majority. The continued postponement of Provincial Council elections therefore has consequences that go beyond an ordinary electoral delay. It deprives communities of an important constitutional avenue for democratic participation and power-sharing. The ethnic and religious minorities appreciate what the government is doing in the larger national interest, but they must not be made to feel that their special concerns are being ignored. The government cannot resolve Sri Lanka’s entire legacy of rights violations overnight. But it does need to demonstrate that it is willing to move forward on multiple fronts, not only on a few.

Features

The emptying university: why are academics leaving?

Published

19 hours ago

2026/09/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Hasini Lecamwasam

Brain drain in Sri Lanka is at an all-time high. The latest Human Flight and Brain Drain Index for 2024 shows that we are 16^th of 175 countries on this count, and first in South Asia. That this is a crisis goes without saying. Brain drain affects all sectors, and is a huge strain on the resources of a developing country. Particularly in Sri Lanka, where considerable public investment is made in the moulding of professionals through the system of free education, this amounts to transferring the resources of poorer countries to richer ones with top migration destinations. It is, therefore, important to consider the push and pull factors behind skilled outmigration, specifically from the public university system of Sri Lanka, a key focus of the Kuppi column.

From frustration to exit

Several bitter realities in our crumbling public university system act as push factors in the migration decisions of academics. Many essays on this column have, over several years, attempted to highlight numerous aspects of this erosion. Perhaps, primary among them is the lack of adequate funding, which has debilitating ramifications for the system: very little investment is made in the up-keep of infrastructure (and even less in its expansion), resulting in serious constraints in accommodating growing batches of students and the wellbeing of the staff (particularly in regional universities); research funding is negligible, severely curtailing academics’ ability to effectively discharge their primary duty of teaching which should ideally be informed by their research (and the research of others, access to which is also, unfortunately, mediated by funding); a funding crunch also means a slash in (or greater constraints on) recruitments, increasing the workloads of academics, currently in service, and eating into the quality of their teaching and research.

What recruitments are done frustrate those with any faith in merit. As many of our interventions in this column have shown, recruitment processes are characterised by archaic selection criteria that place very little weight on a candidate’s postgraduate growth and the advantages of interdisciplinary training. Added to this is the general preference for ‘culturally compliant’ candidates who would not rock the boat too much. The combined effect is that those with the capacity and spirit to try out innovations in education are discouraged from joining or staying on in the public university system. Some, or many, of them may instead seek appointments abroad.

A thread that binds all of these problems together is pervasive hierarchy which, again, many interventions on this column have sought to highlight. It is the interest in preserving hierarchy that leads to the preference for alumni in recruitment processes. Hierarchy within universities can be particularly frustrating for younger faculty and women, who typically have to bear the brunt of the workload of their senior, often male, colleagues. In a context of funding, and, therefore, recruitment, restrictions, this translates into a disproportionate burden being placed on junior (usually female) faculty, seriously hindering their prospects of growing into successful academics due to the time constraints within which they have to operate. Junior academics, therefore, are more likely to look to educational institutions abroad for what they hope would be a different work culture that respects them more.

Ideological ruses

On top of these structural frustrations are also the workings of neoliberal ideology. For one, the nature of relations between the global metropole and peripheral countries like Sri Lanka largely dictates what is desirable and what is not. The apparent lifestyles of Western countries – from food to clothing, housing, appliances, and so on – have continued to lure people from the periphery with the promise of a ‘better’ life, alongside better career advancement opportunities. This, of course, masks much of the struggle that goes on behind the scenes to survive in Western societies. For instance, in most cases highly attractive public infrastructure such as roads, public transport, clean air, quality control of food, and so on belie the astronomical privatised costs of healthcare and education. Health insurance is usually mandatory and steep in most high-income settings, while even subsidised education (for which eligibility criteria are strict) creates a serious dent in household earnings. Of course, the happy images of glossy trams and gleeful international travellers don’t convey this.

A second ideological ruse is the myth of greater opportunities and recognition abroad. While there is no denying that local skilled sectors – be it higher education, health, civil service, or private white-collar positions – are replete with issues that inhibit merit-based professional advancement, the notion that things are fundamentally different in Western countries stems from an uninformed optimism. As is now increasingly known and discussed, Western labour markets are notoriously racialised, and equivalent skills are rarely treated as such. Instead, it is usually demanded that skilled migrants clear certain formal examinations in their host countries. In fields like medicine, this is followed by an interview that may also be racially prejudiced. Once these initial steps are cleared, remuneration reverts to square one irrespective of experience accumulated abroad, not to mention the many subtle aggressions, rejections, and trials one has to go through in the negotiation of everyday life. In the many cases where professional qualifications are used as leverage for a move abroad, sights are set on a better future for one’s children, which again is informed by the misplaced faith in greater opportunities and a lack of awareness of the factors outlined above. Needless to say, in the global swing to the Right, things have become even more challenging. In such a context, considering the few rare cases where skilled migrants live extremely comfortable lives as the norm becomes a dangerous misconception.

The two ideological pull factors mentioned above are complemented by a push factor, which has to do with a highly classed understanding of what a white-collar professional is due in their society. Many of these aspirations are clearly articulated in academic trade union action demanding separate quotas for school entry, increased fuel allowances, winning back the presently stalled vehicle permit scheme, salary hikes, and so on. While working people have every right to agitate for better material conditions, insofar as it remains unconnected to a broader movement for improving the conditions of the lot of the working class, it remains self-serving and very much within the class logic of capitalist society. Since these demands are articulated as a means of maintaining distinction, it is clear that they are not envisaged as part of a class movement. The frustration of not having these needs for distinction satisfied may push some to seek greener pastures abroad, at least financially, (perhaps as a means of social mobility based on it), only to be disappointed on most occasions.

What is to be done?

Addressing the systemic push factors listed above requires, first and foremost, greater allocations for free public higher education. This would immediately translate into more recruitments and less work per academic, and better research and teaching in the long haul. An increase in funding would also ideally lead to greater infrastructural investments, especially including improving the living conditions of those who work in regional universities amid untold hardships. Next, fairer, more creative, and, therefore, more effective recruitment policies are badly needed to attract talented individuals to university positions. Rather than carving out a ‘special category’ for academics to achieve this purpose, which is informed by a classed logic, this needs to be done through fundamental reforms in recruitment processes. Third, a persistent attack on the entrenched hierarchy within universities through internal reform is much called for. Reforming recruitment practices will go a long way towards addressing this. Measures should also be taken to introduce more stringent policies against SGBV (not to mention ragging, even though it is not directly connected to brain drain). Such measures would create a safer, fairer, and more attractive workplace, which would give more reasons for people to stay.

On top of greater allocations, we also need a transformation of our aspirations themselves if this situation is to change. That necessitates a kind of education capable of questioning the ‘paradise’ conception of Western societies, and lays bare their colonial material and ideological dimensions, in both their historical and contemporary manifestations. These colonial understandings of the ‘good life’, moreover, have devastating ecological implications for the planet, not to mention social justice. An education with the ability to transform this mindset would hopefully prove to be more than a mere path to social mobility, rather being a tool of social emancipation that renders mobility moot.

(Hasini Lecamwasam is with the Department of Political Science, University of Peradeniya)

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

Features

Friends favourite Suzi Croner returns for Oktoberfest 2026

Published

19 hours ago

2026/09/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Charming audiences in Switzerland as Suzi Flückiger, Sri Lanka’s own Suzi Croner is coming home… for a very special occasion.

The bubbly former frontline vocalist of 90s band Friends will take the stage at a popular venue in Colombo for Oktoberfest 2026.

Known in Europe for her country and classic hits, Suzi has remained a much-loved name back home. This will be a rare chance for local fans to see her live and celebrate the voice behind so many Friends memories.

Oktoberfest 2026 in Colombo promises an evening of live music, traditional Bavarian food and beer, colourful dirndls and lederhosen, folk dancing, and plenty of community cheer.

Suzi Croner (Flückiger)

Against this lively backdrop, Suzi will take the stage for a special solo set, featuring her own pre-recorded music. She performed at the event last year too, as a solo artiste, but a German band providing the music.

This year, however she says, it’s a different scene.

“The novel attraction will be the dancers from Germany — all girls, clad in German outfits,” Suzi said. She added that the event will also highlight the activities generally connected with Oktoberfest, which should generate a lot of fun and excitement for those who join her in Colombo next month.

Suzi has become a much-in-demand artiste in Europe, and has even performed Down Under, in Melbourne.

In Switzerland, where she has been based for the past 42 years, she continues to charm audiences with country and classic hits, performing at private events and community nights across Europe.

“My weekends are generally loaded with my work as a singer,” she said. “And I also play tennis three times a week, because I need to keep fit to entertain my audience in an active way.”

Her repertoire is made up mainly of Swiss, German and English songs.

And true to form, Suzi loves springing surprises.

“So watch out when you join me at Oktoberfest 2026, in Colombo!” she said.