Opinion

Revisiting Humanism in Education: Insights from Tagore – II

Published

1 year ago

2025/02/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Panduka Karunanayake

Professor in the Department of Clinical Medicine and former Director, Staff Development Centre,
University of Colombo

The 34th J.E. Jayasuriya Memorial Lecture

14 February 2025

SLFI Auditorium, Colombo

(Continued from 17 Feb.)

Tagore and humanism

Tagore was born to a wealthy Bengali family in British colonial India in the year 1861. This was a time of great social transformation in India, involving political, social, religious and literary movements. In his youth he saw the organisational structure that I described in its formative days, and immediately realised how it is unsuited for anything except the British colonial plans. In particular, he appreciated the strengths of traditional Indian education such as the gurukula, ashrama and tapovana systems, the value of the aesthetic sense to human growth and the role of the environment in our lives. He placed a huge importance on emotions and social values, and decried a materialistic or hedonistic approach to life. Always explaining his ideas through brilliant similes, he said: “The timber merchant may think that flowers and foliage are only frivolous decorations for a tree, but he will know to his cost that if these are eliminated, the timber follows them.”

But he also saw the value of the science and technology that the British were bringing in. He wasn’t a simplistic indigene fighting to chase the British out. He wanted to combine the good of both the old and the new, both India and the world. The best description that we can give of the man is call him a great harmoniser of ideas and an incorrigible optimist.

According to Subhransu Maitra, who is a well-known Indian intellectual who translates Bengali works into English, Tagore’s experimental journey on education lasted approximately fifty years, from the 1890s to the 1940s, and evolved through three phases. In the first phase, roughly from the 1890s to the 1910s, he thought of education as ‘freedom to learn,’ in contradistinction to the kind of straightjacketed rote-learning that British colonial education had introduced to India. He also fought for education in the mother tongue instead of English. This was the time Tagore set up the Brahmacharyashrama, a school for boys in Santiniketan. In the second phase, from the 1910s to the 1930s, he thought of education as ‘freedom from ignorance and want’ and as a powerful tool to emancipate humanity from poverty, superstition and suffering. This was the time when he set up the Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, his version of a university, as well as Sriniketan, his effort at rural upliftment. And in the third phase, from the 1930s until his death in 1941, which was the time when Visva-Bharati was flourishing, he thought of education as an internationalist, humanist project or ‘freedom from bondage’, in contradistinction to nationalism. I will follow Tagore’s journey in this sequence, and at each stage try to highlight the lessons his educational philosophy gives us today.

But in toto, I feel that the common thread that runs through this journey is his commitment to humanistic education – a term that actually became popular only after his death, following the work of educational psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. So let me start by briefly explaining what humanistic education means.

Humanistic education is the application of the principles of humanism or humanistic philosophy to education. I am sure that many in this audience already know what humanism means, but bear with me when I try to explain it. I want to highlight the fact that humanism is not the same as some concepts with which it is often conflated – such as humanitarianism or humaneness or the humanities. In essence, humanism believes in the primacy of human agency, or the belief that humans are in charge of their own destinies; it is an Enlightenment idea that took agency away from divinity and placed it in the hands of the human being. (But of course, it is also very much part of some ancient philosophies.) But it identifies this agency as a responsibility both to oneself and one’s society, rather than as a libertarian licence. The ideal of humanism is human flourishing – not hedonism, nor any goal in the afterlife.

In humanism, human beings are considered independent, inherently good and capable of positive growth. One might look at these assumptions somewhat cynically – but it is hard to deny these qualities to a newborn child who has arrived on this world in all its innocence. As Tagore once famously said, “Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”

As Ratna Navaratnam (1958) wrote in New Frontiers in East-West Philosophies of Education:

“Humanism takes as its dominant pattern the progress of the individual from helpless infancy to self-governing maturity…The child is put at the centre of the picture and the educator judges the truth of any theory and the success of any system, by the contribution it makes to the transformation of creative childhood into creative manhood.”

In humanistic education, several features can be identified:

* The student is given a free choice to decide what to study, how and for how long, within reason. As a result, the motivation to learn is intrinsic, rather than extrinsic goals such as exams, grades or certificates.

* The educational experience is left open, exploratory and self-driven. There is little or no emphasis on a curriculum, syllabus or what we today call ‘intended learning outcomes’.

* The setting for learning is safe. What the teacher does is provide the student with the resources to quench curiosity and play a supportive and facilitatory role, as a resource person and guide. There is no coercion, judgement, criticism or corporeal punishment.

* The learning environment focuses on both cognitive and emotional aspects of the learning experience; in other words, both ‘knowing’ and ‘feeling’ are considered valid and important to the learning process.

* And finally, at least a significant portion of the learning time is spent in contact with nature and the environment, rather than inside a classroom.

With that background, let me now turn to the three phases in Tagore’s journey in education.

Phase 1: ‘Freedom to learn’

Tagore was urged to experiment with education because he saw the unsatisfactory nature of schools, which he described as “…educational factories, lifeless, colourless, dissociated from the context of the universe, within bare white walls, staring like eyeballs of the dead…It provided information and knowledge for the intellectual growth and it neglected the aspects of human growth.”

Let me quote Tagore at length:

“The way we understand it, the word school means an education factory or mill of which the schoolmaster is a part. The bell goes off at half past ten and the mill begins to work. As the mill starts, the master also keeps spouting off. The mill closes at four o’clock. The master too, stops spouting and the students return home, their heads stuffed with factory-made lessons. Later, at the time of examinations, these lessons are evaluated and stamped.

“The advantage of factory production is that the products are exactly made to a standard and the products of different factories differ but little from one another. So, it is easy to grade them. But individuals differ a great deal from one another. Even an individual may not be the same from one day to the next.

“Even so, a man cannot get from machines what he gets from another man. A machine produces, it can’t give. It can supply oil, but it can’t light a lamp.”

Tagore’s journey was dedicated to find a suitable alternative to such factory-style education

You can see that he disliked uniformity and intellectual dominance in education, and he preferred freedom to do, experience, feel and learn. This is especially noteworthy today, because educational psychologists have since found the importance of the affective domain for learning: the so-called cognitive-emotional model of learning.

Importantly, the reason he liked a more active style of learning is not merely because it is better for assimilation or long-term memory – as we are accustomed to think today – but because it promoted the growth of individual talents and tastes and imparted a communitarian rather than an individualistic outlook to life.

He also preferred a more idyllic, rural setting to educate children, because he felt that cities and towns rob the students of their bonding with nature, which was necessary for the growing mind to grow freely, wholistically and strongly. This also included creating opportunities for social contact with the rural folk, and trying to help the villagers at least in small ways. So he was especially keen that school and society were welded together. That was his way of teaching two things: first, communication skills, and second, a sense of social service. It would be interesting to compare this to a similar local experiment: Dr C.W.W. Kannangara’s Handessa rural education scheme. (For an excellent account, see Gunasekara [2013].)

To Tagore, the school-society link was also necessary to impart moral virtues: “It is utterly futile to expect that the preaching of a few textbook precepts…at school will set right everything when countless varieties of dishonesty and perversity are destroying decency and taste every moment in today’s artificial life. This only results in different kinds of hypocrisy and insolent flippancy in the name of morality…”

All around us today, we can see how textbook-based teaching of virtues has led to hypocrisy among those who do wrong with impunity, flippancy among those who allow wrong to happen as if it is the norm, and cynicism among those who try to reconcile what they see with what they were taught in classrooms.

I am sure you will appreciate that some of Tagore’s humanistic ideas are being put into practice in pre-school and primary education even today, for instance following the teachings of Maria Montessori. In Sri Lanka, however, because of the bottleneck effect of exams, they are being throttled by the competitiveness and the rush to obtain certificates. This has enormous implications to our own education system. What Tagore taught us – by not judging learning through exams – is that if we had exams, much of what we expect students to learn would be ignored because they are not specifically assessed in the exams. The reason we want exams is because we want to compare student with student. But how can we compare student with student if each student is a unique person? What do we value greater: the comparison or the uniqueness? We must be careful when answering this question, because often it turns out that our answer is actually not that of the educationist but that of the industrialist, and not that of our society’s but that of the countries in the core of knowledge production.

Phase 2: ‘Freedom from ignorance and want’

This is perhaps the phase of his work that is hardest to pin down to a few fundamentals. But I will try.

To me, it appears that his first lesson is to tailor education to our own needs, rather than to import and transplant an educational system from elsewhere. (Tagore himself was, of course, warning about the dangers of blindly following the British system.) This is an excellent testament for what we today call contextual knowledge or conditional knowledge.

Looking around, I cannot help feel that this is such an important lesson for us too. I wish that as educationists we paid more attention to this. We cannot do so if we merely ask our teachers to do what international experts advise. We must study our own society, our own past practices and experiments, how they have succeeded or failed and why, what would work for us now and so on. Tagore said:

“Only when we are able to channel the current of education in our country through the numerous experiments of numerous teachers, it will become a natural thing of the country. Only then will we come across real teachers here and there, now and then. Only then a tradition, a succession of teachers will naturally follow. We cannot invent a particular educational system by labelling it as ‘national’. We can call ‘national’ only education of that kind which is being conducted in a variety of ways through a variety of endeavours by a variety of our countrymen…When a particular education system seeks to fasten a static ideal on to the country, we cannot call it ‘national’. It is communal and therefore, fatal to the country.”

To me, such a uniform education system is worse than communal – at best it would facilitate pedantry, at worst it could even facilitate totalitarianism and fascism.

Importantly, Tagore was keen to point out that when times change, the same energy needs to be spent on amending our systems and practices. In one speech he used a beautiful simile: he likened time to a river, and said that people who don’t change with changing times are like the people who would not change the position of the ferry even after the river has changed its position. He asked, How can they cross the river from the old ferry? This would be great advice for a country that still runs its educational system dictated to by policies that are over eighty years old.

The next crucial lesson is his trust in science and technology – but only appropriate technology – as well as his disdain for outdated traditions, superstitions and rituals. In this sense, he was remarkably modern. He said:

“When in the East we were busy calling upon the ghostbuster in case of disease, the astrologer to placate hostile planets in case of trouble, worshiping the goddess Sitala to ward off smallpox and similar epidemics, and practising home-grown black magic to get rid of enemies, in the West a woman asked Voltaire: ‘I have heard one can kill whole flocks of sheep by chanting a mantra?’ Voltaire replied: ‘It can certainly be done, but an adequate supply of arsenic along with it is also required.’ It cannot be absolutely ruled out that a modicum of faith in magic and the supernatural still persists in isolated pockets in Europe, but a trust in the efficacy of arsenic in this connection is almost universal there. That is why they can kill us whenever they want to and we are liable to die even when we do not want to.”

Tagore was wise enough to note that the British colonial government was actually quite keen to deny Indians this gift of science and technology. He pointed out that the colonial colleges and universities actually functioned with many constraints and limitations imposed by the colonial government. One of the main hopes that Tagore had in establishing Visva-Bharati was overcoming this. He knew that foreigners, both western and eastern, yearn to come to India to learn about her strong and vibrant achievements in the humanities. He welcomed them. In return, he also created space for Indians to come there and learn what the West had to teach – which, of course, was mainly science. This was the confluence of East and West that Tagore envisaged for Visva-Bharati. And I think that one
of the reasons why Visva-Bharati failed later on was that after Independence, India had an alternative, perhaps better way to forge ahead with science, when Jawaharlal Nehru set up the Indian Institutes of Technology. But I wonder whether Tagore’s plan in combining the strength in our humanities with the strength in science and technology of other lands within our educational system could still serve us here.

Tagore also created Sriniketan and its Institute of Rural Reconstruction, a rural upliftment
programme using what would later come to be called ‘appropriate technology’. This was not a
blind exercise in importing European machines and gadgets like washing machines or floor polishers. Instead, it was an attempt to solve the problems faced by the rural folk by the use of scientific knowledge and appropriate technological tools. It included components such as rural education, village sanitation, roving dispensaries, anti-malaria and child welfare schemes, cooperative societies, scientific
agriculture, experimental farming, dairy farming, weaving, tannery, smithy, carpentry and other
projects. It was designed to promote selfconfidence and self-help and eliminate ignorance and superstition among the villagers. As Tagore described his educational mission:

“Our centre of culture should not only be the centre of intellectual life of India, but the centre of her economic life as well. It must cultivate land, breed cattle, to feed itself and its students; it
must produce all necessaries, devising the best means and using the best materials, calling science to its aid. Its very success would depend on the success of its industrial ventures carried out on the co-operative principle; which will unite the teachers and students in a living and active bond of necessity. This will also give us a practical, industrial training, whose motive is not profit.”

When the time came for Tagore to send his son Rathindranath for higher education, he sent him not to Oxford but to learn agricultural science at Illinois: “Indians should learn to become better farmers in Illinois than better ‘gentlemen’ in Oxford”. Similarly, he sent the children of his relatives and friends, including his son-in-law, to learn other skills, such as scientific dairykeeping, the cooperative movement and rural medical systems.

We can see that Tagore’s educational philosophy was not merely bookish but also practical, not merely ideological but also pragmatic, not merely effective but also of quality, and not merely focused on the individual but also on uplifting the community. We can see that it was not pedantic but contextual, not blind but appropriate, and not profit-oriented but promoting human flourishing.

(To be concluded)

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Opinion

Eulogy to a supremely gifted son of Lanka

Published

20 hours ago

2026/04/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Professor Rezvi Sheriff

Vidya Jyothi Professor Rezvi Sheriff

We do mourn the passing away of Vidya Jothi Emeritus Professor Rezvi Sheriff on the 30th of March 2026. He was a man who was one of the finest doctors who served the health service of our beloved country and several other nations as well.

I was most fortunate to be selected to formulate and present the citation for Professor Rezvi Sheriff just last year, for the award of the coveted Fellowship of the Sri Lanka Medical Association during the Inauguration Ceremony of the Annual Congress of the Sri Lanka Medical Association on the 23rd of July 2025.

That narrative is reproduced here as the final tribute to a superlative medical scientist, a humane carer, teacher par excellence, an academic of profound scholastic stature and a very close friend.

Our Chief Guest tonight, Guest of Honour, Special Guests, the President, Council, Fellows, and Members of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, and Distinguished Invitees…….

I am delighted to present to you, Vidyajyothi Professor Rezvi Sheriff, MBBS Ceylon), MD(Ceylon), MRCP(UK), FRCP(London), FRCP(Edinburgh), FRACP, FCCP, Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka, and Emeritus Professor of Medicine for the superlative award of the Fellowship of the Sri Lanka Medical Association.

In fact, the man is so very well-known, and formulating a citation for him was a veritable Herculean task, similar only to one trying to sell ice to Eskimos. In such a context, I will attempt only to portray some strategic vantage points of a career that clearly defies an adequate description in the time allotted to me. One could write reams about the man and still leave quite a lot unsaid.

Following a spectacular school career, Rezvi entered the Faculty of Medicine, Colombo, in 1966, just one year after me, and we have been close friends ever since. The man went through his undergraduate career, securing many distinctions and gold medals, and qualified in 1971 as the first in class valedictorian, topmost performer of the batch, and the first in the combined order of merit of the two Medical Schools of Colombo and Peradeniya.

From then onwards, there was no looking back. It was a steady, persistent, and exponential climb in the academic ladder to finally reach the pinnacle of the Chair Professorship of the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Colombo. He is a great researcher and has a monumental plethora of scientific papers published in peer-reviewed, indexed, high-impact medical journals. He has delivered several orations, many plenary lectures, guest lectures, and taken part in numerous academic symposia as a resource person. He has been internationally recognised through fellowships and memberships from prestigious colleges and academic institutions. He has lectured in many centres worldwide, inclusive of a considerable number of universities in the United States of America, Great Britain, Australia, Norway, Japan and Pakistan.

As an Educator, he has mentored thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students and allied health professionals. He is acclaimed for his quality clinical teaching, integrity, kindness and compassion. His medical journey, culminating in the Chair Professorship of Medicine, has inspired many a generation. He retired from the University of Colombo in 2014 and then worked at the Kotelawala Defence University for another 10 years. Altogether, he has had 60 years of university service and been a professor for 41 years. He was awarded Emeritus status by the University of Colombo, following his retirement.

He is known as the Pioneer Godfather of Nephrology and Transplant Medicine in Sri Lanka. He initiated the country’s first Dialysis Unit and Kidney Transplant Programme, a vision that forever transformed renal care and paved the way for other organ transplantations in Sri Lanka as well.

He has served for six years as the only Sri Lankan Council Member in the International Society of Nephrology. Incidentally, he and I were in the UK around the same time during our postgraduate training. He was in nephrology in the South of England, and I was doing nephrology in Nottingham in the Midlands. He continued in nephrology while I changed track and went in a different direction.

Professor Sheriff’s influence extended beyond the lecture rooms, wards and clinics. He was a member of the First National Health Policy Formulation Team, the University Reforms Committee, the National Education Commission and the Sri Lanka Medical Council. He was the Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine from 2006 to 2011. All these assignments were conferred directly by the Executive President of Sri Lanka.

Professor Sheriff founded major nationally important bodies such as the Sri Lanka Society of Nephrology, the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka and the Hypertension Society of Sri Lanka. He was also instrumental in building critical medical infrastructure, such as the CLINMARC building at NHSL, the National Institute of Nephrology Dialysis and Transplantation Centre in Maligawatta, the Ceylon College of Physicians Building in Rajagiriya, and the first Kidney Transplant Unit at NHSL. He also set up the most advanced Dialysis Unit in Sri Lanka at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University Hospital.

In a kind of nostalgic rumination, Rezvi and I used to be on the opposing teams in the Annual Physicians Versus the Paediatricians Cricket Match. If I remember right, and in a lighter vein, that is perhaps the only time anyone has been able to beat this great man.

Ladies and Gentlemen, legends are found not only in the movies. They are there in real life, too. Role models are remembered, not just for what they achieve, but for the lives they inspire, the opportunities they create, and the kindness they perpetually exhibit. Despite his vast achievements, Professor Rezvi Sheriff remains an extremely humble, deeply religious, superlatively kind, service-oriented person. Today, as we honour him, we celebrate not just a brilliant academic and a superb clinician, but a man who has lived a life of purpose and integrity: a life devoted to service to the community. Some years ago, in recognition of his services to our Motherland, the Government of Sri Lanka conferred on him the National Titular Award Vidya Jyothi, the highest national honour that can be bestowed on a scientist.

Mr President, I am ever so pleased to present Professor Rezvi Sheriff, a superlative clinician and a healer, a fine researcher, a brilliant teacher, a visionary, and a true servant of humanity, for the award of the legendary Fellowship of the Sri Lanka Medical Association.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please be kind enough to rise and applaud this great son of Mother Lanka.

***

With the demise of Professor Rezvi Sheriff, we have lost a superlative son of our hallowed Motherland, and I have lost a very dear friend.

Goodbye, our friend…, May the turf of our Motherland rest ever so gently on you.

May he rest in eternal bliss as we acknowledge the words in the Holy Qaran 𝗜 i𝗜𝗹𝗮i𝗵 𝗻!

(Verily to Allāh we belong, and verily to Him, we shall return)

By Dr B. J. C. Perera
Specialist Consultant Paediatrician

Opinion

Is there hope for Palestine?

Published

20 hours ago

2026/04/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Map courtesy BBC

Since the creation of Israel, in 1948, Palestine has lost so much that it is a wonder that it is still a part of the world map. Since 1948, Palestinians have lost approximately 85% of the land that made up historic British Mandate Palestine. This loss occurred in several major stages, beginning with the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and continuing through the 1967 Six-Day War and ongoing settlement expansion.

It is necessary to outline the relevant historical facts about the state of Palestine. Palestine was among former Ottoman territories, placed under UK administration, by the League of Nations, in 1922. All of these territories eventually became fully independent States, except Palestine, where, in addition to “the rendering of administrative assistance and advice,” the British Mandate incorporated the “Balfour Declaration” of 1917, expressing support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. During the Mandate, from 1922 to 1947, large-scale Jewish immigration, mainly from Eastern Europe, took place, with the numbers swelling in the 1930s with the Nazi persecution. Arab demands for independence and resistance to immigration led to a rebellion in 1937, followed by continuing terrorism and violence from both sides. The UK considered various formulas to bring independence to a land ravaged by violence. In 1947, the UK turned the Palestine problem over to the UN.

After looking at alternatives, the UN proposed terminating the Mandate and partitioning Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalised (Resolution 181 (II) of 1947). Records indicate that Jewish individuals, or organisations, only owned between 5.8% and 7% of the land in Palestine, prior to the 1947 Partition Plan. The remainder was either privately owned by Palestinians (94.2% according to some fiscal records) or classified as state/public land by the British authorities. The vast majority (90%) of the population was Palestinians. The Partition Plan did not take these demographic facts into consideration and this led to the war in 1948 with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia joining forces against Israel. The war was a major loss for the Arab countries as Israel was backed by the west and, following the war, Israel established control over 77% to 78% of the land. The remaining 22%—consisting of the West Bank and Gaza Strip—came under Jordanian and Egyptian administration, respectively.

The Arab countries were very much concerned about this situation and were very sympathetic towards the Palestinians. In a desperate attempt, in 1967, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked Israel, which by now, with huge western support, was militarily far superior to the collective strength of these countries and could capture Sinai Peninsula, Gaza strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Again, in 1973, Egypt attacked Israel in a surprise move and inflicted much damage, though finally losing the war. This led to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and the return of Sinai. The outcome of all these wars was that today the Palestinians have lost administrative and sovereign control over approximately 85% of historic Palestine, since 1948, with current autonomous Palestinian areas (Gaza and parts of the West Bank) making up less than 15% of the total original territory.

Palestine gradually lost its major military allies; Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Libya, due mainly to the machinations and direct invasions by western forces and Israel. There were internal disputes and betrayals, as well, with Hamas falling out with Fatah and Palestinian Authority colluding with Israel to undermine Palestinians. All this shows the pathetic tragedy that has befallen the historical inheritors of the land of Palestine. Today, they are subjected to the most inhuman harassment and genocide, with daily killings, and their land is being grabbed by Israel. And there is, apparently, no one to help them; the UN can only pay lip service and if this continues Palestine will soon be obliterated from the world map.

However, there may be a glimmer of hope for this beleaguered country if the war between Iran and Israel ends in the way people like Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Prof. John Mearsheimer, Col. Douglas Macgregor, Prof. Richard Wolf, Miko Peled, etc., predict. These people have made comments like “Iran has the upper hand”, “The US has already lost the war”, “Iran will be the graveyard of American hegemony”, “This will be the end of Israel”.

It was Miko Peled, a Jew by birth, and a Palestinian activist by conviction, who said “This will be the end of Israel” in a recent podcast interview, and he was hoping that it would eventually solve the Palestine problem. Peled’s grandfather, Avraham Katznelson, was one of the founders of Israel who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Peled’s father, Mattityahu Peled, had fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and served as a general in the Six-Day War of 1967.

In 1997, Peled’s 13-year-old niece Smadar, daughter of his sister Nurit Peled-Elhanan, was murdered in a Palestinian suicide terror attack in Jerusalem. After her funeral Peled had said, “Why not tell the truth… That this, and similar tragedies, are taking place because we are occupying another nation and that, in order to save lives, the right thing to do is to end the occupation and negotiate a just peace with our Palestinian partners?” Today Miko Peled is fighting for the liberation of Palestine. He asserted that the raid by Hamas into Israel, in October, 2023, was not terrorism but a heroic act.

Col. Douglas Macgregor, a retired US Army officer, who had faught in the Iraq war, and who was nominated by President Trump as the Ambassador to Germany, and also appointed to the board of the US Military Academy, has said “Iran holds the upper hand”. He has several reasons to support his claim; Iranian missiles outnumber the interceptors of Israel and Gulf states, and already Israel is running out of weapons, the economic fallout in the US, Gulf countries and Europe would be catastrophic if the war drags on, ground forces option would be disastrous as landing them would be a suicidal process given the advance surveillance methods that Iran possess, courtesy China and Russia. Further, he says, several such US campaigns in the past have failed, pointing out that Iraq, which was ‘conqured,’ is now asking the US to leave. The Syrian leader – another country ‘conqured’ – is visiting Russia. A Minister, in Qatar, has told the US to leave her country alone.

Prof John Mearsheimer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. In his 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer argues that the Israel lobby wields disproportionate influence over US foreign policy in the Middle East. Mearsheimer asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu is driving the push for conflict, rather than US interests. He describes Israel as an “albatross around our neck” regarding this war. He claims the U.S. and Israel initiated this war against Iran, which he does not believe the US can win.

Mearsheimer has argued that “Iran holds all the cards” in the war of attrition, suggesting that Iran is not losing and that the US is facing a strategic defeat. He argues that Iran does not represent a threat massive enough to justify American involvement in the conflict and that the US is fighting ‘somebody else’s war’.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs is a professor at Columbia University, where he was formerly Director of The Earth Institute, and is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University. He had been a tenured professor of Economics at Harvard. From 2002 to 2018, Sachs was special adviser to the UN Secretary-General. Regarding the war, he has said that the US and Israel had underestimated Iran and that Iran would be the Graveyard of American hegemony. Further Sachs has called Israel ” a reckless country” and a joint military campaign with it is not in the US interests. He has made a special appeal to the leaders of China, Russia and India to pressure Donald Trump to stop the war, which he says would be very effective.

Prof Richard Wolf, leading economist, says the US is at present heavily in debt and the defence budget for 2026/27 has been increased from 900 bn to 1.5 tr which could affect health, education and welfare programmes. People in the US are on the streets protesting against the war.

What could be gleaned from all these opinions and views of people, who know what they speak of, is that, whatever the outcome of the war, the world will not be the same for all of us. Beginning from Trump and the people of the US, European leaders, China, Russia and India, Iran and the Middle East, particularly the Gulf States, the Global South and finally Israel, would learn that war cannot solve problems, that hegemony is hated, imperialism has to end and, last but not least, if the world wants peace the Palestine problem must be solved.

(Some of the information in this article was derived from Wikipedia)

By N. A. de S. Amaratunga

Opinion

Boots on the ground,minds in the dark

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/1

Sahan Weerasooriya

Confronting Sri Lanka’s Expanding Drug Threat

Senior security and intelligence professional with extensive experience in counter-terrorism, strategic risk assessment and law enforcement.

A Rising Tide Beneath the Surface

Sri Lanka’s recent success in intercepting large consignments of narcotics at sea is both reassuring and alarming. Reassuring, because it reflects the growing operational capability of the Sri Lanka Navy and the Police Narcotics Bureau. Alarming, because such volumes do not move without a market.

Are we merely intercepting supply, or are we ignoring a rapidly expanding demand within our own society?

· “If seizures are rising, it is not only a sign of enforcement success, it is also a signal of expanding demand.

“Boots on the Ground”: A New Meaning

In today’s Sri Lankan context, “boots on the ground” must be redefined. It is no longer limited to patrols at sea or coastal surveillance. It is about real presence intelligence-led, community-connected, and action-oriented.

Recent interdictions demonstrate a mature intelligence-to-action cycle. For this, the Sri Lanka Navy and Police deserve commendation.

Yet, behind every success lies a silent force

The Silent Shield: Intelligence Networks

Informants, analysts, and field operatives form the backbone of every successful operation.

* They operate under risk

* Their exposure can collapse entire networks

* Their contribution must be recognised discreetly, not publicly

“An exposed informant today is a lost network tomorrow.”

A Market-Driven Menace

Drug trafficking is not accidental, it is profit-driven.

The scale of maritime smuggling suggests that Sri Lanka is no longer just a transit hub. It is increasingly becoming a destination market.

This transforms narcotics from a policing issue into a national social crisis.

Inside the Network: A Structured Ecosystem

The drug trade operates through layered chains:

* International syndicates

* Maritime couriers

* Local facilitators

* Urban distributors

* Street-level peddlers

Each layer is insulated. Each link is replaceable.

“Break one link, and the chain adapts. Break the system, and the threat collapses.”

Demand Is Engineered

A critical reality:

Drug networks do not wait for demand; they create it.

* Free or low-cost initial access

* Targeting youth and vulnerable groups

* Expansion through peer networks

* Stealth distribution networks

Addiction is often designed, not accidental.

Awareness: Prevention or Promotion?

Sri Lanka’s awareness programmes show mixed results.

While well-intentioned:

* Overexposure can trigger curiosity

* Fear-based messaging is ineffective

* Generic campaigns lack relevance

“Poorly designed awareness can introduce what it seeks to prevent.”

The Missing Link: Awareness + Recovery

Awareness alone is insufficient.

A modern approach must include:

* Simple, relatable communication

* Focus on life consequences

* Clear access to rehabilitation

Shift the message:

From: “Say no to drugs”

To: “If trapped, there is a way out”

When Success Creates Strain: The Justice System Under Pressure

An often-overlooked consequence of increased drug detections is the pressure it places on the justice and prison systems.

A large number of drug-related offences are non-bailable, leading to a steady rise in remand populations. This has resulted in:

* Severe prison overcrowding

* Heightened tension among inmates

* Increased confrontation between prisoners and prison authorities

Overcrowded prisons are not only a humanitarian concern they are an escalating security risk.

The Forensic Bottleneck: Delays in Government Analyst Reports

At the centre of this strain lies a critical dependency the Government Analyst Department.

Every detection requires scientific confirmation. However, the system is under significant pressure:

* High volume of samples

* Shortage of trained personnel

* Limited availability of chemicals and laboratory materials
·

* Multiple deadlines imposed by courts

These constraints have led to delays in submitting reports, which in turn:

* Extend remand periods

* Increase court backlogs

* Fuel frustration among inmates

“Justice delayed in narcotics cases becomes both a legal failure and a security threat.”

A Sensitive Concern: Accuracy of Detections

Another emerging concern is that a number of samples sent for analysis reportedly do not contain narcotics.

If substantiated, this raises serious issues:

* Are arrests being made on insufficient preliminary evidence?

* Are field testing methods reliable?

* Is there undue pressure to increase detection statistics?

The implications are profound:

* Wrongful detention

* Loss of public trust

* Weakening of legitimate enforcement efforts

Each inaccurate detection undermines the credibility of the entire system.

A Dangerous Imbalance

Sri Lanka now faces a structural imbalance:

* Strong enforcement

* Increasing arrests·

* Limited forensic capacity·

* Overburdened courts·

* Overcrowded prisons

This imbalance creates a chain reaction of institutional stress.

The Strategic Gap: Where Is the Research?

Despite strong enforcement, Sri Lanka lacks a research-driven response.

The Police Narcotics Bureau and National Dangerous Drugs Control Board must be strengthened with:

* Dedicated research units

* Data on usage trends·

* Behavioural analysis·

* Evaluation of awareness programmes

Supported by international collaboration.

“Without research, strategy becomes a reaction.”

From Sea to Society

“Boots on the ground” must extend beyond enforcement:

* Religious leaders·

* Teachers and schools·

* Parents·

* Community networks·

The real battle is not only at sea but within society.

A National Priority

The consequences are severe:

* Loss of youth potential·

* Rising crime·

* Family breakdown·

* Long-term public health burden

This is a national security issue with generational consequences.

STRATEGIC CONCLUSION

OFFENSIVE FRAMEWORK (SUPPLY DISRUPTION)

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

SRI LANKA NAVY / COAST GUARD

POLICE NARCOTICS BUREAU

STF / POLICE OPERATIONS

ARRESTS & SEIZURES

JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Focus: Intelligence-led interdiction, maritime dominance, legal enforcement

PREVENTIVE FRAMEWORK (DEMAND REDUCTION)

GOVERNMENT POLICY & RESEARCH

NDDCB / PNB COORDINATION

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

TEACHERS / COUNSELLORS

RELIGIOUS & COMMUNITY LEADERS

PARENTS

YOUTH

Focus: Awareness, early detection, social resilience, rehabilitation

INTEGRATED NATIONAL STRATEGY

(OFFENSIVE) (PREVENTIVE)

Sri Lanka has proven its ability to intercept drugs.

But interception alone is not victory.

“If enforcement is strong but society is weak, the problem will return.

If both are strong, the threat can be contained.”

Conclusion

Sri Lanka is no longer confronting a distant or isolated narcotics threat it is facing a deeply embedded, evolving ecosystem that stretches from international waters to the minds of its youth.

The recent surge in maritime interceptions is not merely a success story. It is also a warning.

Every shipment seized at sea is a reflection of a demand that exists on land.

We must therefore move beyond the comfort of operational victories and confront the harder truth: this battle cannot be won by enforcement alone.

“Boots on the ground” must now mean more than patrol vessels and tactical units. It must represent a nationwide presence of awareness, vigilance, intelligence, and responsibility from coastal radar stations to classrooms, from intelligence cells to family homes.

At the same time, we must protect what protects us from the intelligence networks that operate in silence. Their strength lies in their invisibility. Their recognition must remain measured, discreet, and strategic.

The drug economy is adaptive. It creates demand where none exists, exploits vulnerability where it finds it, and thrives where systems are disconnected. If left unchecked, it will not only fuel crime it will reshape society, erode institutions, and compromise future generations.

What Sri Lanka needs now is not a fragmented response, but a coordinated national doctrine:

* Strong at sea

* Smart in policy

* Deep in research

* Present in societyBecause the real battleground is no longer just geography it is generational.

What is required now is not just stronger enforcement but smarter systems, balanced capacity, and a unified national response. Because this is no longer just about drugs. It is about the future of the nation.

Mahil Dole is a retired senior police officer and former Head of the Counter-Terrorism Division of Sri Lanka’s State Intelligence Service. With over four decades in policing and intelligence, he has interviewed more than 100 suicide cadres linked to extremist movements. He is a graduate of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii and has received specialist training on terrorist financing in Australia and India.

By Mahil Dole