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Sumathy Sivamohan Why do the books deceive?Why is every letter of the alphabet chained,every human mouth bridled From Concerto Al-Quds by Adonis (On Palestine): Trans: Khaled Mattawa Why is every letter of the alphabet chained, indeed, as this poet asks. If I may attempt an answer to this question, I will want to raise it as an …

Oh Palestine, Palestine: Unchaining education3 Read More »

Ahilan Kadirgamar In a recent discussion with Hill Country Tamil teachers in Nuwara Eliya, a trade unionist said the claim that all have equal access to education in Sri Lanka, does not work for the Hill Country, because they, as a community, were denied free education for three decades after independence. Indeed, while we may …

Disenfranchisement, landlessness and education in the Hill Country Read More »

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?