Features
SCHOOL DAYS AT ROYAL COLLEGE (1939-1946)
(Excerpted from Falling Leaves, autobiography of AC Arulpragasam*)
The War Years: Royal College Buildings Taken Over
During World War II (around 1939), the British military took over the buildings of Royal College, including the College Boarding, where I was boarded. The whole of the Race Course was taken over together with the Royal College and University grounds to make an airfield for the British fighter planes. Meanwhile, Royal College was forced to share classrooms with the University. Since we were short of classrooms, some of our classes were actually held under the wings of the ‘Hurricane’ fighter planes and the camouflage nets covering them! After about a year, Royal was able to rent four large houses down Turret Road, where I spent the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Forms. Discipline became lax, with the boys taking the chance “to scoot” (play truant) whenever they changed classes from one building to another.
For me personally, the take-over of the College Boarding meant that I had to move from one private boarding to another, facing many hardships. I had to cycle to and from Wellawatte for rugger practice in the morning at Police Park then. I had to cycle back to my boarding house in Wellawatte to shower and change: and then cycle back in the monsoon rains to Turret Road for classes at Royal College. There I would sit in drenched clothes throughout the day, before having to preside over athletics and boxing practice in the evenings, before returning home completely exhausted after 7.30 p.m. – after which, I was supposed to study for the Senior School Certificate (SSC) exam!
My Studies
In my early days in Forms I to III, I tried to be accepted as a sportsman, but without much success. But two things happened in the Fourth Form which entirely changed my academic career. First, I switched from ‘Science’ to ‘Arts’, despite being brainwashed from birth that I should become a medical doctor like my father and brother. My second lifesaver was that the Japanese dropped a bomb (around 1941) on the outskirts of Colombo. Parents rushed to take their children out of Colombo to the safety of provincial schools. I automatically became first in the class and was anointed the ‘jewel’ by the Form Master, Mr. J.E.V. (Bada) Pieris. I had to sit in the front row and was called upon to answer all the questions, which the others could not. With the best students gone, I found that among the blind, the one-eyed man was king! Although somewhat embarrassed by this turn of events, I found that I enjoyed being considered the fount of all knowledge! I also won the Rajapakse Prize, for the best student at the junior level.
Although I sat and passed the SSC Examination (the equivalent of the GCE ‘O’ Levels) one year earlier than usual, over the objections of the School Principal, who objected to anyone skipping a year in school. Although I passed in the First Division and first in the whole school, the Principal, Mr. Bradby, true to his earlier warning, refused to promote me to the post-SSC Class (the Upper Sixth).
He ultimately did so because he wanted to make me a Prefect (the tradition was that one could be made a Prefect only in the Upper VIth form). But he made this on condition that I would not be allowed to sit for the University Entrance that year. I found out later that this was because he wanted to make me Head Prefect of Royal, which he could not do if I left school one year earlier. Meanwhile, I sat for the examinations for the most prestigious prizes in Royal College and won the Shakespeare Prize, the Stewart Prize (or was it the Turnour Prize?) and later the Dornhorst Prize for the Best All-Rounder. Thus, my name was inscribed four times on the Rolls of Honour in the main Royal College Hall, which was an all-time record for the school at that time.
My Teachers
I wish to honour my teachers at Royal College. There were many dedicated and outstanding teachers among them, but for reasons of space, I shall single out the two from whom I benefited the most. The first was my teacher in the Fourth Form, Mr. J.E.V Pieris, affectionately called ‘Bada Pieris’ on account of his rotund figure. He epitomized the consummate teacher of the old school, giving us such a thorough grounding in English, Latin and History, which provided me a base for the future. Above all, I have to thank him for bringing out the student in me, since up to that time I had been more interested in sports than in my studies. Moreover, at a time of great instability, when our school was physically scattered and our morale low, he gave us the stability, emotional security and core values that we needed most at that time.
If Mr. Pieris built up our academics and core values (in Form IV), Mr. Dickie Attygalle, our English teacher (in Forms V and VI), sought to question or destroy them! Although he was supposed to teach us English Literature, he never really ‘taught’ us in the conventional sense; but he did open our minds to the modern writers and poets, whom we had never heard of before. He was also a Marxist, atheist and cynic – but at least he taught us to think! This he contrived to do by questioning everything we believed in, cynically attacking our values and deriding all the ideals and institutions that we cherished.
He would come to the class with a bored look on his face and, without any greeting, would adopt his classic pose of ennui (he was a great poseur), gazing languidly out of the window. Instead of teaching us English Literature, he would suddenly ask: ‘I suppose you guys believe in God’? This was met with nervous titters from the class: we were only 15 years old at the time and no one had ever really thought about God! On another day he would ask: ‘I suppose you guys believe in marriage?’ He would then go on ridiculing the idea of marriage, once even going to the extent of saying: ‘If your wife does not flush the toilet, I guess you guys will run to flush the bog after her!’ Shocked to the depths of our puritanical souls, we had never given thought to such ‘existential’ questions as flushing the toilet after hypothetical wives!
Since he would get no response from the rest of the class, he would pick on me as their leader, asking me directly whether I believed in God or not, in marriage or not, etc, challenging me always to analyze and defend my assumptions and beliefs. Similarly, he would deride my athletics, which he described ‘as one fool chasing another round the track’! Apart from teaching us English literature, Dickie Attygalle encouraged us to read leftist literature, including Karl Marx. This early start enabled me to outgrow Marxism even before my first year in the University, although my leftist leanings still persist at the age of 95! It is not a coincidence that Royal College produced the top students in English for the next few years, but also the top students in political science, sociology and history. All this happened because of the reading and thinking provoked by Dickie Attygalle: his iconoclastic attacks taught us to question, to analyze – and to think!
Sports
My greatest ambition when I entered Royal College, at the age of eleven, was to be a sportsman. Having failed in every sport, I was left only with boxing. Having won my first two fights against older opponents unexpectedly, I had to meet Tuan Cassim, who was the champion boxer in all schools, in the finals. I survived the first round but with a bad cut over my eye, which bled profusely. In the second round, although I could hardly see because of the blood, I got him into a corner and went on hammering into the corner with all my might. Suddenly I heard the gong sound urgently, while the referee hastened to stop the fight! I thought to myself: ‘have I knocked him out’? To my chagrin, I found that I had been battering the corner post of the ring, while my opponent stood behind me, looking charitably but sheepishly on! Ironically, despite my pathetic performance that day, by dint of seniority in the team (because I had reached the finals), I was made Boxing Captain of Boake House, while still under 16 years, which is probably a record for the school – although completely undeserved!
I also have to record another discomfiting position that I attained without merit! Although I never went for cricket practice (since I considered it an absolute waste of time), I was always selected as the last man (11th man) for the Boake House Cricket Team, just to run around and save boundaries. But when all the good cricketers were promoted to higher-age teams, this left only my close friend, Mahes Rodrigo (a brilliant cricketer) as captain, and me as Vice-Captain – which made me a regular butt for Mahes’ jokes. Whenever I happened to pass by, he would switch to dramatic mode, declaiming for all (especially me) to hear: ‘What can I do? This b…..r Aru has been made Vice-Captain: he can’t even hold a bat, neither can he bowl! But I can’t sack him from the team, because he is the bloody Vice-Captain!’ And so, it went on and on – but only when I passed by, and only if there was an adequate audience!
In athletics, having won the 440 yards and 880 races, I was awarded athletics colours at an early age, and thus became Athletics Captain of Royal College. I turned to rugger (rugby) too. Although unimpressive in my first year, I became an attacking wing-forward in my final year. Unfortunately, I tore my hamstring soon after the first Bradby Shield (Royal-Trinity) match, in which I scored the only try – the first in the Bradby Shield!
School Boy Adventures
During the War years, especially when school started only at 1 p.m., I would go swimming most mornings in the sea, off Kinross Avenue. At the age of 14, counting myself a good swimmer, I was tempted one day to swim out to the reef and beyond. But once I got beyond the reef, I unexpectedly got a severe cramp that paralyzed my entire leg. I doubled up in pain and went down, down, down. I looked wildly around: nobody was close enough to save me. I resigned myself to my own death. Fortunately, someone had spotted me and had shouted for help. A lifeguard who was on a raft at sea, was just able to reach me in time, to bring me safely to the shore. I was too young, busy and blasé to think about this episode at that time; but I realize now, in my old age, how close I came to dying that day, at the age of fourteen!
When we were in the Sixth Form in Royal College, my two best friends, Ana Seneviratne – who later became IGP – Upali Amarasinghe and I, pooled our money together to buy two war-surplus canoes off the pavement in Pettah. After some practice, we decided to go on an adventure. Starting from the Kirillapone Canal and going via the Bolgoda Lake towards the Kalu Ganga, we decided to find a long disused canal that led to the mighty Kalu Ganga. Although we had only 26 cents between us for those four days, we airily agreed that we could survive on the fish that we would catch and the birds that we would shoot. We ended up with no fish caught: we managed to survive the next three days only by eating lotus seeds and cooked lotus stems. Meanwhile, when swimming, we always kept a weather eye open for Sudu Moona, the man-eating crocodile, which had pulled three persons to their death that very year. Having found the entrance to the Kalu Ganga, we were able to return triumphantly home, with three cents to spare!
In the Cadet Corps
I was a Junior Cadet and then a Senior Cadet, rising to the highest rank in Royal College, as Senior Sergeant of the Cadet Corps in charge of two platoons, making up 60 cadets. I will narrate here only a humorous episode from our annual Cadet Camp in the hills of Diyatalawa. In an inter-collegiate competition, each school was asked to put forward its best Section (part of a platoon) in order to capture a so-called “enemy position” within a given time. I led the 12-man Royal College team. Having camouflaged ourselves with mana grass sticking out of our hair and ears, I sent our two scouts ahead to signal whether the coast was clear for us to advance.
Our scouts went over the top of the hill and we waited for their signal. But we waited…. and waited … and waited, but there was no sign of our scouts. So I sent the next three men (the so-called ‘machine-gun group’) over the hill to signal us to advance. But they too vanished! By this time, absolutely desperate because our time was running out, I gave the signal for the rest of our group to advance. Coming over the top of the hill, we found our lost scouts and machine-gunners hiding in the mana grass in their best camouflage kit, avidly watching a British soldier and a Wren (women from the British Navy) making love in the grass! Our boys, all around 17 years old, had never seen such magic in their lives! By this time, since we had already lost the ‘battle’, the whole team from Royal College ‘surrendered’, so as to better watch the show!
Final Exams and Last Days in School
I passed the Higher School Certificate (HSC) with distinctions in all four subjects, and stood first in the whole country in all three subjects at the University Entrance Examination and was offered the University Entrance Scholarship in each of them: English, History and Government (Pol. Sc.). With that, I come to my last days in Royal College, which ended with the Prize Giving, presided over by the Governor-General, Sir Andrew Caldecott. For me, it was a grand farewell. First, as Senior Sergeant of the Cadet Corps, I had to receive the Governor-General at the gates of the School and accompany him in his inspection of the ranks of the Cadet Corps.
I then had to abandon my rifle and run to the school steps in order to welcome the Governor into the main school, as Head Prefect of the school. Then the Prize Giving started and I had to go repeatedly to the podium to receive my prizes. Since it was war-time, and since I was wearing my Cadet uniform and the Governor-General was wearing his uniform as Commander-in-Chief, I had to walk up the steps, spring smartly to attention, give the military salute and then shake hands with the Governor-General before receiving my prizes. The poor Governor was forced to reciprocate, saluting me each time, followed by shaking my hand before giving each prize to me. When I approached for the last prize, the Governor-General wrung his hand repeatedly in mock pain and dismay, saying: ‘Oh not you again! Please not again!’ I was finally awarded the Dornhorst Prize for the Best All-rounder (the most prestigious prize of all), while the rafters rang with the applause of the whole school.
(*The writer, now aged over 95-years, is one of the last surviving members of the coveted former Ceylon Civil Service which he quit prematurely for a long career with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization)
In one of India’s coldest and most remote regions, a group of women have taken on an unlikely role: protecting one of Asia’s most elusive predators, the snow leopard.
Snow leopards are found in just 12 countries across Central and South Asia. India is home to one of the world’s largest populations, with a nationwide survey in 2023 – the first comprehensive count ever carried out in the country – estimating more than 700 animals, .
One of the places they roam is around Kibber village in Himachal Pradesh state’s Spiti Valley, a stark, high-altitude cold desert along the Himalayan belt. Here, snow leopards are often called the “ghosts of the mountains”, slipping silently across rocky slopes and rarely revealing themselves.
For generations, the animals were seen largely as a threat, for attacking livestock. But attitudes in Kibber and neighbouring villages are beginning to shift, as people increasingly recognise the snow leopard’s role as a top predator in the food chain and its importance in maintaining the region’s fragile mountain ecosystem.
Nearly a dozen local women are now working alongside the Himachal Pradesh forest department and conservationists to track and protect the species, playing a growing role in conservation efforts.
Locally, the snow leopard is known as Shen and the women call their group “Shenmo”. Trained to install and monitor camera traps, they handle devices fitted with unique IDs and memory cards that automatically photograph snow leopards as they pass.
“Earlier, men used to go and install the cameras and we kept wondering why couldn’t we do it too,” says Lobzang Yangchen, a local coordinator working with a small group supported by the non-profit Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in collaboration with the forest department.
Yangchen was among the women who helped collect data for Himachal Pradesh’s snow leopard survey in 2024, which found that the state was home to 83 snow leopards – up from 51 in 2021.
The survey documented snow leopards and 43 other species using camera traps spread across an area of nearly 26,000sq km (10,000sq miles). Individual leopards were identified by the unique rosette patterns on their fur, a standard technique used for spotted big cats. The findings are now feeding into wider conservation and habitat-management plans.
“Their contribution was critical to identifying individual animals,” says Goldy Chhabra, deputy conservator of forests with the Spiti Wildlife Division.
Collecting the data is demanding work. Most of it takes place in winter, when heavy snowfall pushes snow leopards and their prey to lower altitudes, making their routes easier to track.
On survey days, the women wake up early, finish household chores and gather at a base camp before travelling by vehicle as far as the terrain allows. From there, they trek several kilometres to reach camera sites, often at altitudes above 14,000ft (4,300m), where the thin air makes even simple movement exhausting.
The BBC accompanied the group on one such trek in December. After hours of walking in biting cold, the women suddenly stopped on a narrow trail.
Yangchen points to pugmarks in the dust: “This shows the snow leopard has been here recently. These pugmarks are fresh.”
Along with pugmarks, the team looks for other signs, including scrapes and scent‑marking spots, before carefully fixing a camera to a rock along the trail.
One woman then carries out a “walk test”, crawling along the path to check whether the camera’s height and angle will capture a clear image.
The group then moves on to older sites, retrieving memory cards and replacing batteries installed weeks earlier.
By mid-afternoon, they return to camp to log and analyse the images using specialised software – tools many had never encountered before.
“I studied only until grade five,” says Chhering Lanzom. “At first, I was scared to use the computer. But slowly, we learned how to use the keyboard and mouse.”
The women joined the camera-trapping programme in 2023. Initially, conservation was not their motivation. But winters in the Spiti Valley are long and quiet, with little agricultural work to fall back on.
“At first, this work on snow leopards didn’t interest us,” Lobzang says. “We joined because we were curious and we could earn a small income.”
The women earn between 500 ($5.46; £4) and 700 rupees a day.
But beyond the money, the work has helped transform how the community views the animal.
“Earlier, we thought the snow leopard was our enemy,” says Dolma Zangmo, a local resident. “Now we think their conservation is important.”
Alongside survey work, the women help villagers access government insurance schemes for their livestock and promote the use of predator‑proof corrals – stone or mesh enclosures that protect animals at night.
Their efforts come at a time of growing recognition for the region. Spiti Valley has recently been included in the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve, a Unesco-recognised network aimed at conserving fragile ecosystems while supporting local livelihoods.
As climate change reshapes the fragile trans-Himalayan landscape, conservationists say such community participation will be crucial to safeguarding species like the snow leopard.
“Once communities are involved, conservation becomes more sustainable,” says Deepshikha Sharma, programme manager with NCF’s High Altitudes initiative.
“These women are not just assisting, they are becoming practitioners of wildlife conservation and monitoring,” she adds.
As for the women, their work makes them feel closer to their home, the village and the mountains that raised them, they say.
“We were born here, this is all we know,” Lobzang says. “Sometimes we feel afraid because these snow leopards are after all predatory animals, but this is where we belong.”
[BBC]
If elephants are truly to be given “freedom” in Udawalawe, the solution is not simply to open gates or redraw park boundaries. The map itself tells the real story — a story of shrinking habitats, broken corridors, and more than a decade of silent but relentless ecological destruction.
“Look at Udawalawe today and compare it with satellite maps from ten years ago,” says Sameera Weerathunga, one of Sri Lanka’s most consistent and vocal elephant conservation activists. “You don’t need complicated science. You can literally see what we have done to them.”
What we commonly describe as the human–elephant conflict (HEC) is, in reality, a land-use conflict driven by development policies that ignore ecological realities. Elephants are not invading villages; villages, farms, highways and megaprojects have steadily invaded elephant landscapes.
Udawalawe: From Landscape to Island
Udawalawe National Park was once part of a vast ecological network connecting the southern dry zone to the central highlands and eastern forests. Elephants moved freely between Udawalawe, Lunugamvehera, Bundala, Gal Oya and even parts of the Walawe river basin, following seasonal water and food availability.
Today, Udawalawe appears on the map as a shrinking green island surrounded by human settlements, monoculture plantations, reservoirs, electric fences and asphalt.
“For elephants, Udawalawe is like a prison surrounded by invisible walls,” Sameera explains. “We expect animals that evolved to roam hundreds of square nationakilometres to survive inside a box created by humans.”
Elephants are ecosystem engineers. They shape forests by dispersing seeds, opening pathways, and regulating vegetation. Their survival depends on movement — not containment. But in Udawalawa, movement is precisely what has been taken away.
Over the past decade, ancient elephant corridors have been blocked or erased by:
Irrigation and agricultural expansion
Tourism resorts and safari infrastructure
New roads, highways and power lines
Human settlements inside former forest reserves
Sameera
“The destruction didn’t happen overnight,” Sameera says. “It happened project by project, fence by fence, without anyone looking at the cumulative impact.”
The Illusion of Protection
Sri Lanka prides itself on its protected area network. Yet most national parks function as ecological islands rather than connected systems.
“We think declaring land as a ‘national park’ is enough,” Sameera argues. “But protection without connectivity is just slow extinction.”
Udawalawe currently holds far more elephants than it can sustainably support. The result is habitat degradation inside the park, increased competition for resources, and escalating conflict along the boundaries.
“When elephants cannot move naturally, they turn to crops, tanks and villages,” Sameera says. “And then we blame the elephant for being a problem.”
The Other Side of the Map: Wanni and Hambantota
Sameera often points to the irony visible on the very same map. While elephants are squeezed into overcrowded parks in the south, large landscapes remain in the Wanni, parts of Hambantota and the eastern dry zone where elephant density is naturally lower and ecological space still exists.
“We keep talking about Udawalawe as if it’s the only place elephants exist,” he says. “But the real question is why we are not restoring and reconnecting landscapes elsewhere.”
The Hambantota MER (Managed Elephant Reserve), for instance, was originally designed as a landscape-level solution. The idea was not to trap elephants inside fences, but to manage land use so that people and elephants could coexist through zoning, seasonal access, and corridor protection.
“But what happened?” Sameera asks. “Instead of managing land, we managed elephants. We translocated them, fenced them, chased them, tranquilised them. And the conflict only got worse.”
The Failure of Translocation
For decades, Sri Lanka relied heavily on elephant translocation as a conflict management tool. Hundreds of elephants were captured from conflict zones and released into national parks like Udawalawa, Yala and Wilpattu.
Elephant deaths
The logic was simple: remove the elephant, remove the problem.
The reality was tragic.
“Most translocated elephants try to return home,” Sameera explains. “They walk hundreds of kilometres, crossing highways, railway lines and villages. Many die from exhaustion, accidents or gunshots. Others become even more aggressive.”
Scientific studies now confirm what conservationists warned from the beginning: translocation increases stress, mortality, and conflict. Displaced elephants often lose social structures, familiar landscapes, and access to traditional water sources.
“You cannot solve a spatial problem with a transport solution,” Sameera says bluntly.
In many cases, the same elephant is captured and moved multiple times — a process that only deepens trauma and behavioural change.
Freedom Is Not About Removing Fences
The popular slogan “give elephants freedom” has become emotionally powerful but scientifically misleading. Elephants do not need symbolic freedom; they need functional landscapes.
Real solutions lie in:
Restoring elephant corridors
Preventing development in key migratory routes
Creating buffer zones with elephant-friendly crops
Community-based land-use planning
Landscape-level conservation instead of park-based thinking
“We must stop treating national parks like wildlife prisons and villages like war zones,” Sameera insists. “The real battlefield is land policy.”
Electric fences, for instance, are often promoted as a solution. But fences merely shift conflict from one village to another.
“A fence does not create peace,” Sameera says. “It just moves the problem down the line.”
A Crisis Created by Humans
Sri Lanka loses more than 400 elephants and nearly 100 humans every year due to HEC — one of the highest rates globally.
Yet Sameera refuses to call it a wildlife problem.
“This is a human-created crisis,” he says. “Elephants are only responding to what we’ve done to their world.”
From expressways cutting through forests to solar farms replacing scrublands, development continues without ecological memory or long-term planning.
“We plan five-year political cycles,” Sameera notes. “Elephants plan in centuries.”
The tragedy is not just ecological. It is moral.
“We are destroying a species that is central to our culture, religion, tourism and identity,” Sameera says. “And then we act surprised when they fight back.”
The Question We Avoid Asking
If Udawalawe is overcrowded, if Yala is saturated, if Wilpattu is bursting — then the real question is not where to put elephants.
The real question is: Where have we left space for wildness in Sri Lanka?
Sameera believes the future lies not in more fences or more parks, but in reimagining land itself.
“Conservation cannot survive as an island inside a development ocean,” he says. “Either we redesign Sri Lanka to include elephants, or one day we’ll only see them in logos, statues and children’s books.”
And the map will show nothing but empty green patches — places where giants once walked, and humans chose. roads instead.
By Ifham Nizam
SAARC or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has been declared ‘dead’ by some sections in South Asia and the idea seems to be catching on. Over the years the evidence seems to have been building that this is so, but a matter that requires thorough probing is whether the media in South Asia, given the vital part it could play in fostering regional amity, has had a role too in bringing about SAARC’s apparent demise.
That South Asian governments have had a hand in the ‘SAARC debacle’ is plain to see. For example, it is beyond doubt that the India-Pakistan rivalry has invariably got in the way, particularly over the past 15 years or thereabouts, of the Indian and Pakistani governments sitting at the negotiating table and in a spirit of reconciliation resolving the vexatious issues growing out of the SAARC exercise. The inaction had a paralyzing effect on the organization.
Unfortunately the rest of South Asian governments too have not seen it to be in the collective interest of the region to explore ways of jump-starting the SAARC process and sustaining it. That is, a lack of statesmanship on the part of the SAARC Eight is clearly in evidence. Narrow national interests have been allowed to hijack and derail the cooperative process that ought to be at the heart of the SAARC initiative.
However, a dimension that has hitherto gone comparatively unaddressed is the largely negative role sections of the media in the SAARC region could play in debilitating regional cooperation and amity. We had some thought-provoking ‘takes’ on this question recently from Roman Gautam, the editor of ‘Himal Southasian’.
Gautam was delivering the third of talks on February 2nd in the RCSS Strategic Dialogue Series under the aegis of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, at the latter’s conference hall. The forum was ably presided over by RCSS Executive Director and Ambassador (Retd.) Ravinatha Aryasinha who, among other things, ensured lively participation on the part of the attendees at the Q&A which followed the main presentation. The talk was titled, ‘Where does the media stand in connecting (or dividing) Southasia?’.
Gautam singled out those sections of the Indian media that are tamely subservient to Indian governments, including those that are professedly independent, for the glaring lack of, among other things, regionalism or collective amity within South Asia. These sections of the media, it was pointed out, pander easily to the narratives framed by the Indian centre on developments in the region and fall easy prey, as it were, to the nationalist forces that are supportive of the latter. Consequently, divisive forces within the region receive a boost which is hugely detrimental to regional cooperation.
Two cases in point, Gautam pointed out, were the recent political upheavals in Nepal and Bangladesh. In each of these cases stray opinions favorable to India voiced by a few participants in the relevant protests were clung on to by sections of the Indian media covering these trouble spots. In the case of Nepal, to consider one example, a young protester’s single comment to the effect that Nepal too needed a firm leader like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seized upon by the Indian media and fed to audiences at home in a sensational, exaggerated fashion. No effort was made by the Indian media to canvass more opinions on this matter or to extensively research the issue.
In the case of Bangladesh, widely held rumours that the Hindus in the country were being hunted and killed, pogrom fashion, and that the crisis was all about this was propagated by the relevant sections of the Indian media. This was a clear pandering to religious extremist sentiment in India. Once again, essentially hearsay stories were given prominence with hardly any effort at understanding what the crisis was really all about. There is no doubt that anti-Muslim sentiment in India would have been further fueled.
Gautam was of the view that, in the main, it is fear of victimization of the relevant sections of the media by the Indian centre and anxiety over financial reprisals and like punitive measures by the latter that prompted the media to frame their narratives in these terms. It is important to keep in mind these ‘structures’ within which the Indian media works, we were told. The issue in other words, is a question of the media completely subjugating themselves to the ruling powers.
Basically, the need for financial survival on the part of the Indian media, it was pointed out, prompted it to subscribe to the prejudices and partialities of the Indian centre. A failure to abide by the official line could spell financial ruin for the media.
A principal question that occurred to this columnist was whether the ‘Indian media’ referred to by Gautam referred to the totality of the Indian media or whether he had in mind some divisive, chauvinistic and narrow-based elements within it. If the latter is the case it would not be fair to generalize one’s comments to cover the entirety of the Indian media. Nevertheless, it is a matter for further research.
However, an overall point made by the speaker that as a result of the above referred to negative media practices South Asian regionalism has suffered badly needs to be taken. Certainly, as matters stand currently, there is a very real information gap about South Asian realities among South Asian publics and harmful media practices account considerably for such ignorance which gets in the way of South Asian cooperation and amity.
Moreover, divisive, chauvinistic media are widespread and active in South Asia. Sri Lanka has a fair share of this species of media and the latter are not doing the country any good, leave alone the region. All in all, the democratic spirit has gone well into decline all over the region.
The above is a huge problem that needs to be managed reflectively by democratic rulers and their allied publics in South Asia and the region’s more enlightened media could play a constructive role in taking up this challenge. The latter need to take the initiative to come together and deliberate on the questions at hand. To succeed in such efforts they do not need the backing of governments. What is of paramount importance is the vision and grit to go the extra mile.
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