Author name: Hasini Lecamwasam

In December 2024, the Sunday Observer reported that the Vice Chancellor (VC) of the University of Colombo (UoC) had announced plans to reduce the University’s reliance on State funding by increasing foreign student intake and strengthening private sector ties. With 225 international students, and plans to double that number, the VC claimed the University was on track to meet its goal. His remarks echo national strategies and global trends aimed at decoupling public universities from state-funded education.

Charith Dilshan’s suicide has yet again brought state universities into the spotlight over concerns of ragging. It is by now well-known that any form of ragging constitutes an offence punishable by law as per the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act, No. 20 of 1998, as well as the Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Act No. 22 of 1994. However, as Shamala Kumar lucidly argued in an earlier Kuppi Talk (March 30, 2021), extreme incidents such as suicides or particularly cruel treatment are but aggravated symptoms of a much more pervasive and entrenched culture, both within universities and in wider society. In the university space, these pathologies find expression in innumerable daily interactions between seniors and juniors, teachers and students, and men and women, among others. A targeted approach to specific incidents that does not take this broader context, and, therefore, the underlying causes into account, is bound to fail. My aim, in this piece, is to briefly assess the implications of some of the measures proposed to curb and eliminate ragging and, in greater detail, discuss the role of education to that end. I argue for making a careful distinction between an anti-ragging stance and an anti-politics one, because the latter is as damaging as the former.

In the early 2000s, a colleague, returning to Sri Lanka after a decade in a research-heavy first world university, complained to me that ‘there is no research culture in Sri Lanka’. But what exactly does having a ‘research culture’ mean? Is a lot of funding enough? What else has stopped us from working towards a productive and meaningful research culture? A concerted effort has been made to improve the research culture of state universities, though there are debates about how healthy such practices are (there is not much consideration of the same in private ‘universities’ in Sri Lanka but that is a discussion for another time). So, in the 25 years since my colleague bemoaned our situation, what has been happening?

It’s with shock and sadness that we learnt of the passing away of our dear friend and colleague, Harshana Rambukwella on 21 April, 2025, in Abu Dhabi. Harshana was a founder member of the Kuppi Collective, when some of us from across the university system and its allies came together to form a voice of inquiry and resistance, at a time when it all seemed hopeless. An enthusiastic and committed actor, and thoughtful academic, his contribution to Kuppi and to the academic activist community has been invaluable. Here, we pay tribute to our comrade by reproducing a Kuppi Talk column of his, published on 23 November, 2021, on decoloniality, a theme he recently returned to in one of his co-written publications on language studies.

“ The locals were not interested in working in the plantations sector, so people were brought from India to work here.” 
As a 16-year-old sitting for my GCE OL examination, I never realised the gravity of these words. Presented to us as an afterthought when discussing the history of our country, I could not see how an entire community and their story of struggle were erased. Nor could I understand the importance of this brief statement against the backdrop of endless historical political reforms. Our texts drew attention to the needs of ‘locals’ and how labour could be easily acquired from elsewhere to suit the whims of our former British colonial masters, dead set on introducing coffee plantations. However, delving into the process of acquiring this labour, the conditions of existence leading to their taking up this arduous task, or this crude objectification of an individual, where they were “brought” to another country, without their consent, was missing in our grand narrative of Sri Lankan history and insignificant, as our sole purpose was passing our examination. Our conformity in unconsciously othering a group of people from the outset of their entry to this country as second-class citizens did not register in our 16-year-old heads.

“Private tuition centres, private schools, and institutions offering degree programmes for a fee all play a significant role in deepening the disparities between different social classes.” Education should be genuinely ‘free’—not just in the sense of being free from privatisation, but also in a way that empowers students by freeing them from oppressive structures. It should provide them with the knowledge and tools necessary to think critically, question the status quo, and ultimately liberate themselves from oppressive systems.

Our universities are characterized by hierarchies. They manifest in formal and informal ways, reinforcing power asymmetries based on class, ethnicity and gender, and placing inordinate authority in those with higher status. In medicine, a ‘hidden curriculum’ orients undergraduates to hierarchies from their early days in training, placing professors over lecturers, ‘clinical’ over ‘non-clinical’ teachers, consultants over medical officers, and so on. While hierarchies are needed at universities (and hospitals) to streamline decision-making, dysfunctional hierarchies create unhealthy learning environments and a culture of fear that discourages students from asking questions and voicing concerns. They also legitimize mistreatment, humiliation, bullying, and other abuses of power. A few months ago, when I invited a medical student to participate in a session on ragging and harassment for incoming students, she asked me (quoted with permission), “What’s the point of doing a programme like that if ragging happens in official level by teachers with everyone knowing, Madam?” Her question led me to explore the avenues available at state universities for undergraduates to counter abuses of power by teachers and university administrations.

In a recent Kuppi article by Nicola Perera, “Dealing with Sexual- and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Universities” (18/02/2025), the author discusses the gap between institutional structures and the reality of preventing violence against women and marginalised communities, including the LGBTQ+ community, in Sri Lanka’s higher education sector.

Despite policy interventions at the University Grants Commission (UGC), university, and faculty levels, sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) is so entrenched in the system that victim-survivors seeking justice are more likely to experience concerted pushback than the empathetic solidarity of their peers. Colleagues and friends will often close ranks, rallying to protect the accused under misguided notions of safeguarding the reputation of, not merely the assumed perpetrator, but the institution. While gender and sexual inequalities, inflected by class, ethnicity, religion, region, and other characteristics, shape the identities of the perpetrator and victim and the situation of abuse, the hyper-hierarchised nature of the university space itself enables and conceals such violence. It’s also important to note that women are not the exclusive victims of violence; boys and men are caught in violent dynamics, too.

Long before MIT and Jeff Bezos (the latter reluctantly referred to here) had supposedly banned PowerPoint in the classroom or at meetings, I had banned its use in my classes. I wished to live and create a moment of life, and not entice death, death by PowerPoint; a macabre slide-show of misadventure. Its hero, protagonist, or villain, deadly boredom. It is about aliens, made up of quantum particles of ominous signs, bullets and slides, circles and squares, colours that light up on command. It has taken over your mind, got under your skin, and holds you not in a choke hold (too much excitement for PowerPoint), but brings about a paralysis of the body; sleep overtakes one, one slips into another world, while the presentation washes over you.