By Rohana R. Wasala

(Continued from Friday February 7, 2025)

Since the JVP/NPP’s arbitrary decision to curtail former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s security and have him relocated to less expensive accommodation is now being legally challenged through an FR petition lodged with the Supreme Court in Colombo, nothing more needs to be said here about it. What I am doing here instead is to express a personal opinion for what it is worth, about something that is of utmost national importance. The interests of the country (nation) matter more than those of individual politicians or political parties. That is why inclusive nationalism (not ethnonationalism or racism) is vital at this juncture.

It is an open secret now that almost all our leaders, with a few honourable exceptions, are being led by the nose by foreign powers (at loggerheads with each other, pursuing their own respective national interests) as Sri Lanka is located in a geostrategically sensitive point in the Indo-Pacific Ocean. Our response to the inevitable aggression that we have no choice but to face should not be politicised within the country. As a patriotic senior Sri Lankan living outside Sri Lanka with absolutely no stake in its current affairs or future prospects, I earnestly request all the MPs and the President with due respect to ponder on the useful implications of what I have just stated. It is their responsibility to look after the people/country (raja dhamma paja rakkha) (the ruler’s duty is to protect the people) through wise statecraft at home and suave diplomacy abroad.

To return to my subject, the question why probably the NPP is going after Mahinda Rajapaksa, though not a mystery, remains to be considered. I hope that this will not be misconstrued as propaganda for Mahinda Rajapaksa who, I believe, is politically ‘out of combat’ because of his advanced age, and should now be in quiet retirement. His significance, though, as the foremost champion of nationalist politics, has not diminished yet. Out of the five living past Presidents, Mahinda Rajapaksa, when in power, was recognised as the most authentic face of Sri Lankan nationhood. He cut an imposing figure on the world stage. In accordance with usual diplomatic protocols, top level foreign state visitors still regularly pay him courtesy calls. Foreign ambassadors in Sri Lanka have formal goodwill meetings with him occasionally. As he wrote in an X post, he had a meeting with Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha on February 5, 2025.

I never hero-worshipped Mahinda Rajapaksa. Quite a number of my articles that I wrote as a nonprofessional newspaper columnist, especially those written over the past 18 years (2007-2025) and published in The Island and elsewhere, bear testimony to this. I have criticised Mahinda Rajapaksa more than I have praised him. I always offered constructive criticism of his politics, both when he was in power and when he was in the Opposition.

My criticism of Mahinda Rajapaksa was basically focused on three areas: what I saw as his family-bandyism or nepotism (giving his own sons, siblings and other kith and kin priority in his public/political life, often to the disadvantage of more deserving others), his harmful, unnecessarily secretive approach to wooing the support of the minorities while taking the loyalty of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, his main support base, for granted, and his lenient treatment of some of his closest associates who were up to no good. This made me describe him once as ‘a flawed diamond’ (a borrowed metaphor that surfaced from the depths of my ancient literary memory). More recently though, I found myself using such pejorative adjectives as ‘ruinous’ and ‘rascally’ in reference to the Rajapaksas, for squandering, as I believe, the benefits that accrued to the nation from the heroic victory of 2009 over separatist terrorism. That it was a national victory that would not have materialised but for the invaluable contributions of the Rajapaksas is a different matter.

The barefaced geopolitical meddling that intensified after the end of terrorism in 2009, seriously undermining the stability of unitary Sri Lanka, according to my understanding, was greatly facilitated by the three blunders mentioned above that MR could have avoided had he had enough foresight to keep in check his ego-propelled dynastic ambitions. It looked as if his concern for the youth of the country didn’t go beyond his own sons and nephews. He never wanted to allow someone outside his family to succeed him. Had he at least made Maithripala Sirisena Premier (instead of the late D. M. Jayaratne, even then a doddering old man) in 2010, the disastrous upset of 2015 would not have come about so easily (though engineered from outside).

The baiyas, who are ready to forget and forgive their old champion for services done, will not take kindly to the NPP for harassing him. If there are plausible allegations of financial or other crimes against him and his family, let them be investigated and let them face the full force of the law. But mere unsubstantiated allegations should not be bruited about as political propaganda against them. This is what I emphasised in a column, under the title “Prosecute, but don’t persecute,” published in The Island on May 28, 2015 (that is, almost 10 years ago). Who might want him persecuted? His political opponents and those who are baying for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s and his brother GR’s blood for defeating separatist terrorism, who seem to be allies now.

Let’s now turn to his would-be nemesis Anura Kumara Dissanayake. At the last presidential election held on September 21, 2024, as the leader of the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, popularly known as the Malimawa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake was declared winner after obtaining just over 42% of the total votes cast across the country. He beat his nearest rival Sajith Premadasa, leader of the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), who was supported by only about 33% of the national electorate. But the important thing is that there was little for AKD to crow about in this victory. Had it not been for the split between Sajith Premadasa and his former boss Ranil Wickremasinghe the leader of the almost defunct United National Party (UNP) that he left to form the SJB, Anura Kumara Dissanayake would hardly have become President. (I have criticised both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa, too, while admiring some of their personal attributes, as I did in ‘A role for Sajith and UNP ginger group’ published in The Island/August 28, 2019).

Let’s also remember the fact that AKD’s presidential win on September 21, 2024 and the Malimawa’s seemingly impressive performance at the subsequent parliamentary election held on November 14, 2024 were heavily qualified by certain factors that render both successful outcomes (i.e., Malimawa’s presidential and electoral victories) seem accidental, i.e., they are not truly representative of the significant asymmetries of public opinion between regions and communities, for it is probable that the different racial and religious communities that voted for the Malimawa expect different things from the NPP government in return. The Malimawa win seemed almost an electoral aberration.

The wild promises made by the JVP/NPP for getting elected were probably nonchalantly exaggerated due to their unstated private assumption that they were not going to face the hazard of being required to deliver on those promises, as they never expected to win with such a massive majority. For example, what did the Malimawa promise the voters in the North and East, who are predominantly Tamil-speaking ethnic Tamils and Muslims respectively, not forgetting the Sinhalese minority living with them, to win their collective support? Were these promises identical with what the ‘Malimawas’ pledged before the ethnically mixed population in the rest of the country where the Sinhala speakers form the overwhelming majority? Did the Malimawa politicians work to bring about a uniform and consensual awareness of their principal electoral platform of fighting endemic corruption among politicians and bureaucrats, and what they have erroneously identified as ‘the atrocious legacy of the past 76 years’ (alleged wrong policies and corrupt practices of politicians in power in the post-independence period to date)? Do these ‘Malimawans’ believe that their approach to the first and their specific conception of the second are being accepted and embraced by the average citizens in every part of the country with equal conviction and enthusiasm? (To be concluded)

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 Lecture14 February 2025 SLFI Auditorium, Colombo)

Professor J.E. Jayasuriya is remembered today for his work in so many diverse aspects of the field of education. Indeed, one can be forgiven for wondering whether this is just one person or a combination of several. These aspects include his excellence as a teacher and a writer of textbooks on Mathematics; a renowned school principal, handpicked by Dr C.W.W. Kannangara to establish the first Central College; an able administrator; a Professor of Education in the University of Ceylon and a leading academic; a pioneer in the fields of educational psychology, population education and even my own area of medical education; a policymaker, analyst and commentator at both national and international levels; an advocate and political activist; an internationally recognised expert and author; and last but not least, a great teacher and much-loved mentor. My own debt to his work would be patently obvious to anyone who reads my book Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education, in which I have relied heavily on his insightful analyses. It is no surprise, therefore, that this memorial lecture had been delivered in the past by some of the most eminent women and men of intellect produced by our country, not only from the field of education but even other fields. I am truly humbled when I think of the stature of this great intellectual or read the list of those eminent past speakers. I will strive to do justice to the expectations placed on me by the J.E. Jayasuriya Memorial Foundation when they invited me to join that list of names, and I thank the President and Management Council of the Foundation. Following in Professor Jayasuriya’s path, in this lecture I, too, will deal with education as a social institution and look at it through a wide-angle lens.

Ladies and Gentlemen: For some time now, I have been impressed by the education-related work of the great Indian intellectual Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). (His actual name in Bengali is Robindronat Thakur: the name Rabindranath Tagore is an anglicisation, much better known across the world than the Bengali original.) Tagore was, of course, a very famous person: the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize; a well-known poet, lyricist, musician, dramatist, novelist and painter; a polymath; an inspiring writer and public speaker; a social reformer; a philosopher; and one of the most widely travelled Indians of his generation and, unsurprisingly, an internationalist. In fact, his work on education – while an amazing labour of love – might be thought of as a lesser known part in his fame. In this lecture, I wish to delve specifically on his work on education.

One could point out that he carried out his iconoclastic experiments in education a century ago, and that the educational institutions that he created back then exist now only in name. Their original nature has changed with the rigors of time. So am I here trying to recreate a world one hundred years past and propagate nostalgia? If you bear with me, I trust you will find that my reasons are better than that.

The reason why I was so impressed with his work is the significant currency of his ideas to the contemporary world. Now this will immediately seem like a contradiction. If the ideas are still current, why did the institutions that were based on those ideas have to change with time?

I would explain these two contradictory positions by saying that his ideas were actually prescient – they weren’t sustained, because they were ahead of their time. Besides, although he correctly identified problems and designed effective solutions, the problems were not fully solved by them – because of asymmetrical power relations and lack of funding. Today, we see the same problems throughout the globe – in all their enormity, reach and complexity. They engulf us and in a way blind us, because we have been trained to think that the reasons underlying them are ‘natural givens’. And by a quirk of fate, the solutions are now hidden in the sands of time.

Let me offer a quick illustration of this. We can clearly identify elements of humanistic education in Tagore’s ideas, even though humanistic education itself was recognised only some decades after his death and still hasn’t permeated education widely.

In this lecture, I would invite you to retrace my own steps into his educational philosophy. I, too, began with the belief that his ideas were hopelessly out of tune with our times. That was because I had been trained to see the world of education in a certain way, and from that position Tagore’s ideas seemed alien. I am reminded of something that Marcel Proust wrote: “The real journey of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” But as we all know, letting go of existing perceptions and forming entirely new ones is probably the hardest thing for the human mind to do. And yet, as any good educator would tell you, learning to form new perceptions is the very essence of education.

Current education landscape and its discontents

Let me start with a proposition. Education in today’s world needs a fundamental reposturing – not because it is doing its job badly but because it is doing the wrong job. Everywhere we can see educational institutions doing a great job, but our society is no better for it. This state of affairs hasn’t risen suddenly or recently; rather, it has been emerging slowly and developing over a century or so.

Let us examine the last one hundred years or so. During this time, throughout the world, democratisation has given expanding access to education, decolonisation has helped to switch the medium of instruction from colonising languages to the mother tongue, expanding industries and middle class populations have led to increasing massification of university education, and the human capital theory has led to increasing investment and growth in all levels of education. Can anyone in education think of a better century?

But during this same period, what has education given society? Chemists invented the weapons of the First World War. Physicists invented the weapons of the Second World War. Biologists bequeathed us biological weapons. Medicine became more successful and less trustworthy. Economics created economic hit men and cross-border practices that made markets volatile and national economies vulnerable. The law reduced community rights and increased patent rights. Mass communications, which could not give populations any democratic skills, could nevertheless give them insatiable consumerism. Social scientists have not explained the underlying reasons, much less solve them, but continue to create faultlines in societies and fragment them. The humanities have failed to bring the human family closer. And the biggest invention that technology has given us thus far is climate change.

It would not be enough to merely put the blame for all this on a few demagogues or dictators – throughout this period, populations had at least acquiesced with them and had often strengthened them. The purpose of education should have been to give the masses the skill to avoid these traps, but instead, the masses have been compliant while the experts have been selling their souls. This is why I said that education – assuming it was doing its job well – has been doing the wrong job.

The question of why education went to work for ‘the wrong boss’ has intrigued me for some time now, all the more because I know that during this whole period, policymakers and educationists have mostly been genuine in their intentions. My earliest clues came from two writers from the 1960s and 1970s. The first was the iconoclastic social critic Ivan Illich (1970) who published the book Deschooling Society. The second was a relatively unknown American education administrator, Grant Venn (1965, 1971).

Venn pointed out that throughout the twentieth century, the role that was required of education in society was undergoing a gradual change, although its response was not forthcoming. The general organisational structure of education everywhere was one that had been inherited from the time of the Industrial Revolution, but changing times were demanding a new structure. But educationists everywhere were not perceptive to it. They merely kept the old structure and tried to tinker with it.

In the old days, the majority of schoolchildren were destined to end up in farms, mines or manufactories, and they only needed an education in the 3 R’s and some basic disciplines such as punctuality. Only a few had to be selected and groomed for higher office. Learning how to live well, on the other hand, was acquired quite easily outside of school. The school itself played a relatively small role in people’s lives, except for the select few, and nobody would have equated education to school-going, because much of education happenned outside school. Our organisational structure was one that was created for this era.

But all this changed after the increasing domination of scientific technology in society. Thereafter, more schoolchildren had to be educated to a higher level – as tasks transformed from physical ones to cognitive ones, ‘work’ transformed into ‘jobs’, and the preparation needed for a life transformed from apprenticeship to prolonged schooling. Schools became a pervasive presence in people’s lives and tied them to their destinies, both individually and at the national level. Gradually, education became equated to school-going – learning how to live well, which had been learnt outside school, became sidelined, ignored and eventually lost.

As Venn observed:

[C]hanges now confronting us must be thought about in terms of certain new relationships that have developed between man, education, and society. Essentially, for the first time in man’s history, education is the link between an individual and society; and for the

first time this is true for every individual. Education, instead of a selection agency, must become an including agency.

When he suggested here that education must change from a selection agency to an including agency, he was referring to inclusion in the world of work and community, rather than merely inclusion in the school. In other words, he wasn’t talking about access to education – he was worried about what would happen to school-leavers when they go to live in the world outside.

If we look back at how education did respond, we would see that it has been preoccupied with strengthening the link between school and work. Let’s take Sri Lanka. In the 1970s we had pre-vocational studies. In the 1980s we had life skills. In the 1990s we had soft skills. In the 2000s we had twenty-first century skills. Nowadays we have industry-based capstone projects and entrustable professional activities. By and large, these were not our own inventions – they were simply the global responses replicated locally. But even these had no chance of success, because while education could prepare school-leavers for jobs, the economy still had to create those jobs. Without that, all one could have is what Ronald Dore (1976) forewarned us: qualification inflation and qualification escalation. In the 1960s the human capital theory suggested that education could serve as a springboard for economic development, and there were, indeed, some early successes, such as with Japan and South Korea. But more recently, that theory, too, has run into controversies and failure.

The failure to adapt to these changing circumstances manifested as what we see today in its fully developed form. We have over-indulged ourselves in designing education to chase after employment, and compromised education’s role in preparing students to be citizens in the community. This is not to say that education should not have played a role in economic development or preparing its students for the world of work. It is to point out the loss of balance in achieving these two goals: economic development on the one hand and human flourishing on the other hand.

But while education may have lost sight of the second goal, it also didn’t do very well promoting the first goal. Even here, it has lost its way.

After the Cold War ended in the 1990s a bipolar world was replaced by a unipolar world, with ‘all roads leading to Washington’. When that happened, a more balanced use of technology – what used to be known in the 1970s as ‘appropriate technology’ – was replaced by the use of often highly expensive and inappropriate technology that came tied to funding. This was because the global economy was capitulating to the major industries and multinational corporations and conglomerates, which were initially situated in the West but are now situated in other countries, too. We can conceptualise these as the ‘core’ in the ‘core-periphery relationship’ in global financing, knowledge production and commoditisation.

The reason why education lost its way is because that, too, became merged with – and disappeared into – this core-periphery relationship. Education ceased to serve local communities or support appropriate technology, and instead began serving the interests of big industries and promoting inappropriate technological behemoths. In the past, a well-educated person was one who served one’s community well – today the well-educated person is one who works for a successful global industrial giant.

One of the interesting changes in education that was promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s was the concept of the ‘three E’s’ of education: effectiveness, equity and efficiency. They were meant to help align educational systems to national goals. But they were overly quantitative, promoting measurable outcomes and ignoring the unmeasurable ones. What they succeeded in doing is replacing the broad goals of education with immediately measurable outcomes. Thus, quality was pushed aside in favour of effectiveness, and value-for-money in favour of efficiency. Insidiously, we also began chasing after the measurable parameters that served the industries in the core countries. Today, we judge ourselves by their indices, such as webometrics, accreditations and citations.

Even before these quantitative indices emerged, Venn asked some insightful questions about ‘quality’. Can quality be measured based on how well the institution serves those most in need of education rather than only those who are lucky, or defined in terms of how well individual differences and unique talents are developed rather than how well students become like all others, or in terms of one’s behaviour and contributions after one leaves school rather than on what one does while in school? Can accreditation be based on how well the school succeeds in its own goals rather than those of other schools? Can status for an educational institution be gained by how well it meets unfilled needs of society rather than how much it is like recognised institutions? We ought to have focused on these tasks; but instead, we have lost these unmeasurable attributes in our rush to comply with measurable parameters.

But it is not merely that this approach has robbed society of important attributes that were unmeasurable. Arguably, even those who were ‘successfully educated’ lack a wholesome education. This had been noted even before the 1990s, as when Aldous Huxley wrote in his book Psychedelics:

Literary or scientific, liberal or specialist, all our education…fails to accomplish what it is supposed to do. Instead of transforming children into fully developed adults, it turns out students of the natural sciences who are completely unaware of Nature as the primary fact of experience, it inflicts upon the world students of the Humanities who know nothing of humanity, their own or anyone else’s.

To use a phrase from his book, we have mistaken the menu for the meal!

So what kind of different organisational structure would help us achieve this balance? Let me quote Illich, as he hints the answer:

Everyone learns how to live outside school. We learn to speak, to think, to love, to feel, to play, to curse, to politick and to work without interference from a teacher… Increasingly, educational research demonstrates that children learn most of what teachers pretend to teach them from peer groups, from comics, from chance observations,…”

– and to this, today I could add ‘from social media and the Internet’.

In other words, although the education-industry link is important, we need to realise that education itself is a lot more than this role. In order to capture the other important goals of education, we must broad-base it. Education is not something that happens only in the syllabus; it happens outside it, too. It is not something that is destined to enter only the workplace; it enters our private lives and community life, too. In fact, its true value lies therein. We need to rediscover this balance – this broader concept of education.

It is when we begin to see the true role of education in this way that we can begin to see sense in Tagore’s ideas. So now, it is time to turn to him.

is pleased to comment on two films, one Sri Lankan in Sinhala and the other American. She admits she is still to see the local film which is running in several cinemas to full audiences. It has been reviewed as outstanding; raved over by many; and already grossed the highest amount in Sri Lankan cinema history – Rs 100 million from date of release January 30 to February 14. This last: testimony to its popular appeal and acceptance as an outstanding cinema achievement. Director is Asoka Handagama and producer Subaskaran Allirajah for Lyca Productions. Swarna Mallawarachchi is said to give a stellar performance as Dr Manorani Saravanamuttu with an exceptional supporting cast including Sanath Gunatihilake, Sajitha Anthony, Rehan Amaratunge and others.

Titled Rani, the film concentrates on Manorani Saravanamuttu, mother of Richard de Zoysa, who was made to undergo the devastating trauma of seeing her son taken away, and then to identify the battered, tortured body washed ashore in Lunawa. Her commitment first was to identify the abductors or at least the leader of the group that came late at night to her home as media persons, and, on the pretext of speaking to the then sleeping Richard, took him away to murder him and drop him in the sea so his disappearance was complete.

Those times of fear

Cass was very much into following the trajectory of the political situation in the country as it was at that time. It was hot and turbulent with Ranasinghe Premadasa President and D B Wijetunge PM – admittedly ineffective against Premadasa. The country was gripped by fear; fear of an enemy and his cohorts who struck any outstanding person as being a threat to the Prez. And the LTTE, too, were active with raids south of the Vanni controlled by the Tigers.

Cass was working in the British Council when the news flashed that Richard had been tortured and killed and his body washed ashore. We cried as he had been much with BC; had performed in a Greek tragedy in the front garden of the BC. We knew instinctively who the perpetrator of the murder was and who executed through others the expressed displeasure that Richard de Zoysa was an irritant. The film, too, does not directly point a finger, merely indicates who he was. And thus the fear increased with frustration and deep sorrow at the loss of this brilliant young man brutally scythed at the age of 31.

We heard that Manorani identified the leader of the gang who came to her house that night, while watching TV on April 30. He was a security officer of the Prez. He was blown to bits with President Premadasa and others as the May Day rallies were commencing.

Another incident remembered with a shiver of apprehension passing down the spine was just prior to May Day. Prez Premadasa spoke at a public meeting in a near demented, almost strangled voice that people were pointing fingers of accusation at him for the murder of Lalith Athulathmudali.

Cass’ comment is to congratulate all involved in the film Rani for two reasons: exposition of a crime and a woman’s desperate sorrow that evolves to inner strength to help other women who had lost sons tragically. The second reason is that crimes have to be punished and that such crimes should not be forgotten. Reminders are good to keep people on their toes: on watch-out.

US movie

The other is the film of U S Vice President, J D Vance’s life story up to adulthood. He was born James Donald Bowman in 1984 but his parents divorced while he was a toddler and his name was changed to James David Vance after his mother – Beverly or Bev’s third marriage. He is first seen as a young boy living with his mother and sister in Middleton, Ohio, with loving grandparents close by. In swift flashbacks and forwards, his childhood life is juxtaposed with him as a graduate at Yale Law School and romance with Indian co-student Usha Bala Chilukuri.

Vance wrote his memoir in 2016 and titled it Hillbilly Elegy. The film was directed by Ron Howard with Vanessa Taylors writing the screen play. Amy Adams and Glen Close act as mother and grandmother; Gabriel Basso and Haley Bennett as boy and man Vance; and Freida Pinto as a very alike Usha.

Cass watched the film on Netflix and was stunned at how much the young boy had suffered, his mother being a druggie and moving from one man to another. In the car the young chap of around 10 years mentions: “Your latest boyfriend.” Bev gets mad and accelerates almost killing the two of them. He jumps out when she slows down and runs to a house for protection. The woman of the house phones the police but JD lies to them that nothing happened. Emotionally searing scenes show Bev’s addiction and trouble she causes her son. The film ends with his sister taking charge of Bev after her rehabilitation of many before, and Vance going back to New Haven, greeted by Usha and presenting himself for his first job interview.

An epilogue in the film reveals that JD and Usha married and have three children, moving to Ohio to be near his family. Bev was sober for six years. She was present at his swearing in as VP.

Comments

Much admired and applauded is Vice Prez JD Vance’s honesty in his memoir of his mother’s scandalous behaviour and drug addiction. That is, Cass presumes to say, Western honesty about personal history.

Now for a prediction. After all is said and done, Cassandra must live up to her Trojan ancestor Cassandra and call out an augury. She kept calling out: “I see blood!” True enough. Blood flowed as Agamemnon was murdered by his brother Menelaus and his wife Clytemnestra.

The present-day Cassandra’s cry is so different from her cries during many previous regimes in this Island. Now, she cries with contentment: “Peace it is. Peace be”, as she sees turmoil and wars all over the world and peace here. Also, the ability to look forward to rogues being caught, corruption slowly washed away and Sri Lanka restored to its resplendency.