KANDY,  Sri Lanka––

An AVAAZ petition addressed to Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake by Champa Fernando,  President of the Kandy Animal Advocacy Organization KACPAW,  alleges “Daily shooting of wild elephants after a government member of Parliament called upon citizens to ‘shoot any animal that wanders into their lands,’  openly inviting them to act in contravention of the Fauna & Flora Protection Ordinance with impunity,  issuing 13,207 firearms as of now to deal with crop damage,  and publicising off-the-cuff that we have ‘4,000, too many wild elephants.’

“Mr. President,”  Fernando wrote in the preface to her petition,  “the woefully understaffed and under-equipped Department of Wildlife Conservation is unable to treat the wounded elephants at the same frequency the wild elephants are being shot now.

“Unattended for months,  limping around in pain”

“Bullet-ridden elephants,  unattended for months,  limping around in pain,”  Fernando charged,  “are what we and the tourists see as Sri Lanka’s wildlife wonders, with carcasses of fatally shot wild elephants increasingly being shown on media,  tarnishing Sri Lanka’s image as a top animal-and nature-friendly tourist destination.”

The ongoing elephant/human conflict has been brewing for at least a decade,  heating up in 2019,  when some of the estimated 7,000 to 7,500 wild elephants in Sri Lanka killed about 150 humans.

Of the 361 elephants who reportedly died in Sri Lanka during 2019,  85% were reportedly killed by humans to protect their crops and homes.

Sri Lanka is a nation in which,  according to the United Nations World Food Programme, 32% of households suffer food insecurity.

This is defined as “a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active,  healthy life.”

Protected on paper

Elephants in Sri Lanka are strictly protected,  on paper.  Poaching elephants for ivory can potentially bring a death sentence.  But killing elephants in self-defense is permitted.

And Sri Lanka,  an island nation only slightly larger than the single U.S. state of West Virginia,  with more than ten times as many people,  does have quite a lot of elephants by comparison to other elephant range states.

The African nation of Gabon,  for example,  has 10,000 elephants and 2.5 million people,  but is more than four times the size of either Sri Lanka or West Virginia.

The African nations of Sierra Leone and Togo,  each close to the size of Sri Lanka,  have only about 300 elephants between them.

Ten nations have more elephants than Sri Lanka,  but only Botswana,  nine times the size of Sri Lanka,  with 130,000 elephants,  has more elephants per square mile.

Passing out shotguns

The Sri Lanka Ministry of Wildlife Conservation on January 13,  2020 responded to elephant/human conflict by distributing 2,000 shotguns to members of a 2,500-member volunteer cadre raised to deter elephant raids on crops.

The shotguns,  an inefficient weapon against elephants,  were supposedly to be used as noisemakers,  to scare elephants away.

But the tactic reminded observers of the distribution of firearms to rural residents early in the 1983-2009 insurgency against the Sri Lankan government by the “Tamil Tigers,”  a Hindu militia opposed to rule by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

Instead of quelling the rebellion,  arming one part of the rural population against another expanded the conflict into sixteen years of fighting that killed at least 70,000 people.

Other wildlife added to hit list

Diverting farmer anger and frustration with elephants toward other species,  “Animals such as monkeys,  peacocks,  grizzled giant squirrels,  porcupines,  wild boars,  and toque macaques listed on the protected list have been removed,”  announced then-agriculture minister Mahinda Amaraweera.

But that scarcely solved the problem.

Environment minister Dammika Patabendi on February 27,  2025 acknowledged the deaths of 1,195 humans and 3,484 wild elephants in elephant/human conflict between 2015 and 2024.

The Sri Lankan government paid $13,000 [U.S. funds] in compensation to human victims of elephant attacks over that time,  spending approximately three times as much to dispose of elephant carcasses––a point noted by opposition legislator Nalin Bandara.

Electrified fences

‘We are allocating more money to reduce the human/elephant conflict,”  Patabendi told the Sri Lankan parliament,  pledging to “build more electrified fences and deploy additional staff to help reduce elephant raids on villages near wildlife sanctuaries,”  Agence France-Presse reported.

According to the July 9,  2024 edition of the Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka,  “The implementation of over three hundred community-based paddy field electric fences contributed to a reduction in both human and elephant fatalities in 2024—the first such drop in nine years.”

Despite that success,  the chief non-lethal government response,  time and again,  has been organising “elephant drives” by hundreds of villagers at a time,  undertaken in repeatedly unsuccessful and risky efforts to chase elephants back into wildlife reserves.

Elephant drives “completely failed”

Ten elephant drives “completely failed” between December 2024 and March 2025,  the Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka recounted,  “and the people in the drive villages now complain of increased raiding by elephants.”

A succession of Sri Lankan governments representing different political parties have also continued issuing guns.

Ceylon Today journalist Thusini Gajanayake on March 27,  2025 reported that,  “A total of 13,207 firearms had been issued to farmers for crop protection as of December 31,  2024, according to revelations made in Parliament.”

Elephant hospital & mobile medical unit pledged

But elephants tend to become even more dangerous when wounded,  and attract public sympathy when they fall.

Environment minister Dammika Patabendi,  “during a visit to the Polonnaruwa Wildlife Zone, inspected a critically injured tusker suffering from a gunshot wound to his right leg,”  The Morning of Sri Lanka reported on July 7,  2025.

Patabendi then “announced plans to establish a wildlife hospital and a mobile medical unit dedicated to treating elephants,  in response to a spike in wild elephant shootings,”  The Morning of Sri Lanka said.

Meanwhile,  charged the Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka,  “In the name of eradicating rural poverty,  the current government is set on stoking the flames of human-elephant conflict,  pushing both humans and elephants from the frying pan into the fire.”

Champa Fernando recommends

Champa Fernando recommends empowering the Department of Wildlife Conservation “with sufficient veterinarians,  other personnel,  equipment,  and vehicles, using the mega-money generated by the largely wild elephant-centered eco-tourism industry;

“Releasing the wild animal habitats taken over by successive governments to gain votes to remain in power;

“Establishing wild animal corridors,  including overpass and underpass wild-animal crossings at vulnerable rail-track points,”  to prevent train/elephant collisions such as those that killed seven elephants on February 20,  2025,  and another on May 20,  2025;

“Making the people of elephant conservation areas stakeholders in wild animal-centered ecotourism ventures,  so they too will benefit economically [from the presence of elephants and other wildlife] and will become on-location protectors of wild animals;  and

 “Implementing the law against the perpetrators [of elephant shootings] who are currently acting with impunity.

“Remember,”  Fernando’s petition finishes,   “if we generate enough money from tourism,  we can import any commodity,  but not our unique and precious fauna and flora.”

by Merritt Clifton 
aNIMALS 24/7

Dr. Justice Chandradasa Nanayakkara, who makes valuable contributions to Buddhist literature in these columns, has written another excellent article under the above caption (The Island, 10.07.2025), which could generate a useful discussion on Buddhist philosophy. The present article is an attempt to contribute to such a discussion.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with abstract subjects like being, reality, mind-body relationship, etc. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, was one of the earliest thinkers to write on the subject. His monumental work “Metapysics” set the tone for the subsequent development of it in Western philosophy. He calls metaphysics “First Philosophy” and in his work he dealt with “substance theory”, form and matter, different kinds of causation, cosmos, etc.

In the present context, it may be interesting to see what methods are generally employed in the study of metaphysics and what methods did Buddha use to gain his knowledge of the Dhamma. Metaphysicians mainly employ a priori methods like rational intuition and abstract reasoning from general principles, rather than sensory experience. In contrast, a posteriori  approaches are used in empiricism based science (Koon, 2015). What was Buddha’s method of gaining knowledge ? In the Sangarava sutta (Samyutta Nikāya) Buddha says, there are three methods of deriving knowledge that teachers and philosophers of his day employ. Firstly, there are the Revelationists who believe in revelation of knowledge by divine powers. Secondly, there are the rational metaphysicians who depend on reason for knowledge. Thirdly, there are those who derive their knowledge by sensory and extra-sensory perception. And Buddha said he belongs in the third group. This is very significant as Buddha confirms that he is an empiricist. He also cautions that one has to be very careful in being reliant on rational thinking alone for it could lead to metaphysical thought without a basis on experience (Jayatilake, 1963).

Moreover, Nirvana, the final goal in Buddhism, is considered to be a form of  higher knowledge (Tillekeratne, 1993). Buddha experienced it in life and described it in detail. Similarly, other Arahaths, too, had vividly described their experience of Nirvana (Thera, Theri Gatha). In contrast, regarding the after-death experience of Arahath, Buddha  was non-committal (Aggivachchagotta sutta, Majjima Nikaya). This, perhaps, shows that Buddha did not want to comment on things he had not experienced. In other words, when it came to Nirvana, Buddha totally avoided metaphysical speculation. This does not mean Buddha did not engage in metaphysics, we will come to that later.

The Buddha’s theory of anicca (impermanence), on which his Dhamma was built, is another instance where Buddha relies entirely on experience and not on metaphysics. He could perceive that the empirical world was impermanent. Further he could see the suffering around him and thus the dukha theory was grounded on experience. He could see that one was not in control of oneself and could not do as one pleases, which would not be the case if there was a Self. He knew that the theory of Self in the Veda was based on metaphysical speculation. He also knew that when he categorically states that there is no Self, it is an inference based on experience. Therefore, one may surmise, that there could be an element of metaphysics that is based on empiricism, in the no-Self theory. That is the status of the “Three Marks of Existance” , “anicca, dukha, anatta.

With regard to the “Four Noble Truths” one could see that the theory is based primarily on experience. Suffering is an experience, and so is greed, and the relationship between these two could also be experienced.  The fact that, if one could control one’s desire one could lessen one’s suffering, is something one could experience in everyday life. It follows that if defilements could be spewed out there will be no suffering. Buddha by experiment and experience found the method to Aryastangika marga (Noble Eightfold Path) has very little, if any, metaphysics.

The theory of causation in Early Buddhism is also largely based on experience. One could see that, if there are no clouds, there is no rain. Buddha in Mūlapariyāya sutta (Majjhima Nikāya) says, “This being present that arises, this being absent that doesn’t arise”. He has not said “this arises from that”, which could be considered speculation.  Dependence on conditions is central to this theory and most empirical phenomena are, therefore, conditioned.

Dr. Nanayakkara has given a clear explanation of the paticca-samuppada and has categorised it as metaphysical theory. It is cyclic in form and is the basis of the samsaric cycle. Rebirth is an essential feature in this cycle. As there is no empirical evidence of rebirth, the cycle has a large component of metaphysics. Paticca-samuppada also provides a basis for several other metaphysical theories such as karma, rebirth, etc. It is the basis of the middle path that Buddha advocated and it avoids contrasting extremes like “existence and non-existence”, dualism and monism, eternalism and nihilism, determinism and indeterminism, etc.

Buddha preached the theory of karma and rebirth based on the higher knowledge he gained in Nirvana which gave him the power of extra sensory perception and thereby  knowledge of past lives. These theories constitute important components of Buddhist metaphysics.

Early Buddhism is mainly based on empiricism and it avoids substantialism, absolutism, eternalism and nihilism. It rejects metaphysics that support such theories and provides its own metaphysics grounded in empiricism to support its middle path.

N. A. de S. Amaratunga PhD, DSc ✍️

It is in the news that the Ministry of Education is seriously reconsidering the case for the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination. It is wise of the Minister of Education to undertake such reconsideration, given that the examination has lived, I think usefully, for more than sixty years. Long life itself is not a sufficient reason for a longer life; it may have outlived its usefulness and there may be more productive and fairer alternative solutions to the problems it was initially designed to solve. Or, the problems themselves may have changed. Has the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination outlived its usefulness? There are no longitudinal studies of the lives of children who won these scholarships, and one has to depend on anecdotal accounts.

The first 5th standard scholarship examination was held in 1944 and my sister won a scholarship and later volunteered to go to the Training College in Maharagama and become a Specialist English Teacher, so that I could go to university. I took the second Scholarship Examination in 1945 and joined my sister at Hikkaduwa Central School in January 1946. The case of these two siblings was repeated many times over to become a significant social force. The overthrow of the ‘Colombo elite’, who later became little more than a gang of thieves, from political power and the election to office of men and women from entirely new social strata, is an outcome of the social dynamics partly driven by ‘free education’. Can those social forces function without the fillip provided by the 5th standard scholarship examination?

Our parents had no idea of university education or the English language. This was true of most people in the country in the 1940s; it is no longer true. Now, practically everyone is literate and ‘university’  (uni, varsity, campus) is a part of their regular vocabulary. English is no longer a language spoken by people in a distant and strange land. Movies, radio and television, cheap air travel and somewhat higher incomes have combined to bring English closer home to most adults.

At home, English is still a stranger and not a familiar friend who casually walks into the living room. There are small groups of people who are conversant with Arabic, Japanese, Korean or Hindi. English is more familiar than Tamil to most Sinhala speakers and more than Sinhala is to most Tamil speakers. Even parents earning very little and are otherwise stingy and scraping to meet daily expenses, manage to send their children to ‘tuition classes’ to improve the chances that their children would do well at the 5th Grade Scholarship Examination. Changes during the last two generations in a world that has benefited from growth in knowledge and in technology have brought in massive changes in our society.

The social fluidity that the 5th grade scholarship examination and ‘free education’ brought to this society has fired up the imaginations of most people to demand high standards of living, which a sluggish economy has denied them. (I have argued many times on these pages that school education is not a condition necessary to promote or sustain economic growth.) Hence, the exodus from this country during the last generation continues unabated. To call in moralistic considerations and accuse the students of ingratitude when they emigrate for employment is to misread the plight of these young men and women.

Besides, they now remit more than several billion dollars annually, which helps to keep the economy from sinking, weighed down by debt, a part of which was robbed by politicians and public servants. (In 2024, émigré Indian workers remitted some $135 billion to India. In 1976, the amount was about 500 million.)  All these changes have made the 5th standard scholarship examination superfluous for driving children to school and for making them stay there for some 11 years. Drop-out rates become sharp at the end of grade eleven. These are massive achievements in our society, but I doubt the 5th standard scholarship examination is any longer necessary to sustain the dynamism that will sustain them.

The scholarship examination was part of a broader programme. Until well into the 1960s, secondary schools thrived in ‘urban’ areas. When I was in school, a child wanting to study beyond Grade 5 had to attend a secondary school, sometimes several and often many miles away from home, in a town that required resources for transportation, boarding and lodging near the school. (Martin Wickremasinghe and Gunadasa Amarasekera both wrote about this feature in their novels).

Likewise, parents needed information about these opportunities, which was scarce among poor people. An important part of the free education package was opening 54 good secondary schools in rural areas, each in an electoral district. Between 1944 and 1947, 54 central schools opened, first in Matugama and the last in Kuliyapitiya (Meeghakotuva). In between, schools opened in Weeraketiya and Henegama, Poramadulla and Green Street (Kotahena), Ginigathhena and Neliaddy. (Three months ago, when I was in the neighbourhood, I went up to see Wanduramba  Central School, where the first principal was Sumanasuriya, whom I knew a little.

I expected more imposing infrastructure.) Most of these schools had young men as their first principals, mainly university graduates. Many of these men had been teachers in urban secondary schools: Devendra in Hikkaduva from Trinity College, Kandy; Jayatilleke in Ibbagamuva from St. Peter’s, College, Bambalapitiya; T.C.I. Ekanayake in Pelmadulla from Christian College, Kotte. Young men and women emerging from the new University of Ceylon taught English, European and Indian history, Sinhala/Tamil, and occasionally mathematics and sciences in these schools.

Women had yet to enter these institutions, but when they came from central schools in large numbers, they almost took over the teaching profession. These schools taught in English, the ‘white’ language that once thrived in towns and now sought habitats in ‘brown’ rural areas. Students who won the 5th standard scholarships gained entry to these central schools. Most central schools had hostels for both girls and boys, which enabled students to participate fully in all school activities.

More important, life in hostels was culturally much richer than in the homes of most of those children. There were many bright students at varying stages of schooling and interaction among them was stimulating. There were a few teachers living in the hostel who were a constant source of help. (My novel aluth mathanga has a detailed account of that life.) Now, education from Grade I to university is available in Sinhala and Tamil. Secondary schools are widespread in the countryside, and the 5th standard scholarship examination is no longer required for children to access secondary education.

However, the culture of poverty, especially in disadvantaged homes, remains a serious problem. Some communities have yet to benefit from that feature of ‘free education’: children of families working on plantations. We, as a society, miss out on the contributions these children can make.

The children themselves lose both the material and the cultural wealth that education brings. As the 5th standard scholarship and the free education scheme both left these children and communities behind, any reform of the education system must address their needs seriously and without delay.

Yet, why are parents so keen to see their children score high marks at the 5th standard scholarship examination? Because those high marks have come to serve new purposes. The nature of the examination itself has changed over time, although I have not seen any analytical account of these changes. When I sat the scholarship examination, and many years later, it was a test of intelligence as was understood then.

There were no textbooks, and so far as I knew, nobody worked out answers to old question papers in preparation for the scholarship examination. For the examination itself , students were required to bring with them an HH pencil. They answered questions in simple logic, unencumbered, as far as possible, with differences in cultural backgrounds.  That feature ensured that children from poor homes and affluent families, of equal intellectual ability, had equal chances of scoring roughly equally. The examination, as now administered, is deeply biased against children from underprivileged homes. Casual evidence is that students who are felicitated each year for obtaining high scores are almost invariably from homes where both parents are highly educated, in regular employment and live in homes where a student could work quietly.

(The Consumer Finance Surveys conducted by the Central Bank in the earliest years and the Living Standards Surveys conducted by the Statistics Department latterly, inform you about the quality of housing by locality and income levels.) The whole idea of the 5th standard scholarships was to give a leg up to bright children from disadvantaged homes and not to speed up the progress of students from fairly affluent families. Such intensive study as 5th graders now undertake should not be necessary, if the objective were to test the intellectual ability of children. The present examination tests not only the intelligence of students but also their cultural sophistication, which varies with the income levels of parents.

(I ran around the village in grade 5, as if nothing else mattered. If we had had to answer question papers that students face now, my sister and I would not have had a ghost of a chance of going to secondary school and university.)  A child who runs off the noise and dust on village roads must be able to do as well as one who comes from a home with several rooms, cemented floors and tiled roofs. At least that is my experience.

Evidence is now plentiful that the culture in the home that children come from is a large determinant of how well students perform at higher levels of education. Where data is available, it is possible with knowledge of the zip code in the address of a student’s home, to guess correctly the level of education and the professions of the parents of a student and the probability of that student’s high SAT score and the eventual admission to an elite college. In rich countries, during the last 30 years or so, there has come to perpetuate a sort of a ‘caste system’ where children of brahmins perpetually keep out the rest from learning in elite colleges and universities.

As brahmins exclusively read, learn and pray from the vedas, so do the offspring of highly educated and well-off persons monopolise admission to elite universities and professions. The concern of parents to seek a ‘good school’ for their child is right. But that search must be backed up by the right kind of information. The ‘right kind of information’ is not distributed randomly. The more affluent have connections and the funds to obtain the right information.

The parents may be past pupils of ‘good schools’ and it is known that past pupils work to get elected to senior positions in the past pupils’ association when they need to admit their child to that school.

The 5th standard scholarships, central schools with students’ hostels and the system of ‘free education’ all served a civilising function in this society. Some features of that combination are no longer essential to continue that noble endeavour. There is a special responsibility of our society to integrate children from the plantations with the main society and a good school system can help in that process.  New sources of social stratification are emerging and we need to provide pathways both in and out of such structures. The new minister of education and the new government can be helpful.

by Usvatte-aratchi ✍️