University Autonomy and Governance: Towards a Dismantling of Institutionalized Mal-practice

(Invited Lecture delivered at the workshop, ‘University Governance, Autonomy and Accountability: Issues and Directions for Change’ organized by the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Colombo, 3rd September 2015). [1]

If the oldest and perhaps the most established university in the country considers it necessary to organize a workshop of this magnitude on the theme, ‘University Governance, Autonomy and Accountability: Issues and Directions for Change’ with the participation of major stakeholders of higher education in the country, then, one has to assume that there is a serious and entrenched crises in our midst that can be understood within this theme. Unfortunately however, not too many of us have discussed such issues this openly until now. That does not mean that concerned colleagues have not whispered about these issues in the informal corridors of academia and sometimes spoken publically as well. But institutionally and collectively, we have not discussed these issues in public, and with the kind of urgency that they so deserve. In the words of Romila Thapar: “it is not that we are bereft of people who can think autonomously and ask relevant questions. But frequently, where there should be voices, there is silence.” (Thapar 2013). Closer to home, Savitri Goonasekere calls this the “studied silence of the university community.”[2] I see the venture undertaken today as a significant attempt to overcome our silence. In this context, I want to do two simple things, assuming this might help place the discussions over the next two days within a broader perspective. 

First, I would like to set forth some ideas on what ‘autonomy’ means to a university. 

And second, I will attempt to think aloud about what I understand as ‘governance’ in so far as universities are concerned. 

I leave it up to the technical discussions that follow to work out the details, modalities, and the legal frameworks within which ideals pertaining to these concepts might be achieved. Or in the very least, to figure out how it might be possible to come closer to these ideals than we are today. I have discussed some of these issues many times before, including during my address in 2014 to the colleagues in the Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo. To them, I apologize for some inevitable repetition. 

Autonomy and academic freedom

Let me first deal with the idea of ‘autonomy.’ In the detailed background note of this workshop, it is suggested that in Sri Lanka, autonomy in universities is understood in terms of two perspectives, one ascribed primarily to university academics, and the other to politicians and officials. 

The second perspective has, by far, tremendous political power in the Sri Lankan context because universities are imagined in much the same way as other government entities, and are seen within the ambit of direct state control. Talking about the same tendency in the Indian context, Arun Kumar notes that “universities cannot function like a bureaucracy or the police where orders are implemented without questioning; compliance is expected and dissent is a malaise – the anti-thesis of what academia needs. … Autonomy of the institutions and of the academics is so crucial for advancing knowledge generation” (Kumar 2013). 

While these two perspectives make sense when presented in this manner, their analytical utility disappears in the realm of actual practice. As all of us know quite well, there are many academics among us who have been touting the second-perspective on autonomy as if we are sales reps for the University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Higher Education. 

In talking about ‘autonomy’ in universities, I will restrict myself to academic freedom which obviously cannot blossom unless universities are truly autonomous. In 1992, in Sinaia, Romania, in a conference partially sponsored by UNESCO on ‘Academic Freedom and University Autonomy,’ the proceedings made the following basic but crucial observations: “History has shown that violations of academic freedom and institutional autonomy have high costs in intellectual regression, social alienation and economic stagnation. In light of profound social changes and new demands placed on universities, there is a need to forge a new understanding between universities and society. A reaffirmation and revitalization of the principles of academic freedom and university autonomy are imperative” (CEPES Papers on Higher Education 1992: 4). 

It seems to me that today, as we meet to discuss our own crisis, we are experiencing what these colleagues felt, thought about and attempted to break free from, at a much earlier moment in time and in another place. It should be clear that academic freedom, along with the very function of a university as a key source of knowledge, cannot be sustained unless these institutions are autonomous from destabilizing external and internal forces. 

As we know, all major universities in the world were conceived and established initially as autonomous zones of intellectual freedom, open to debate and uncensored production of knowledge. Concepts such as ‘academic freedom’ found their genesis in these contexts. In the United States, ‘academic freedom’ found its meaning within contentious political debates over a period of 100 years. In 1967, in a well-known case, Keyishian vs. Board of Regents, speaking on behalf of the majority of the US Supreme Court, Justice William Joseph Brennan made the following statement: “academic freedom --- is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom” (Perera 2005). 

In the Sri Lankan context, the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations in May 2013 reiterated this understanding of the university as a zone of freedom: “The fundamental role of a contemporary university is teaching and research based on the principle of the search for unbiased truth. This role is facilitated by intellectual freedom in carrying out teaching and research, autonomy of universities, evolution of various disciplines with inherent and independent standards/priorities and internationalism.”[3] While some of us may have differing views on the search for an ‘unbiased truth’ given the instability of the notion of truth itself, we can all stand behind the sentiment espoused through this statement. 

Our academic colleagues made these observations in the specific contexts in Sri Lanka when the general ideals of both autonomy and academic freedom were in the process of being seriously curtailed as a necessary requirement of the state. 

Autonomy conventionally ascribed to universities and the resultant freedom to pursue academic and intellectual goals have been restricted in recent times not only in our country, but in many other parts of the world as well, due to a number of reasons. Conventionally, universities were seen not only as producers of knowledge, but also as centers of critique, and the conscience of a society. But critique is increasingly not something that states appreciate. And this is particularly the case when it comes to a region like ours where democratic practices and institutions as well as ethics in politics have been steadily dismantled over the last three decades. 

It is in such a context that Terry Eagleton observes with reference to higher education in the United Kingdom, “what we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centers of critique” (Eagleton 2010). According to him, the function of a university and the responsibility of academics beyond the transmission of subject-specific knowledge is the creation of a space for self-reflection and responsible critique. As we have seen from our own experience, this is not a role governments like ours with increasingly authoritarian tendencies would want its citizens or universities to play. Hence the urge on the part of the state to curtail the autonomy of universities as well as academic freedom which goes with it. Eagleton further explains that since recent times, “the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future” (Eagleton 2010). This redefined role of the university as a purveyor and protector of the status quo would naturally suite any government. It offers less resistance; no dissent; and therefore easier governance by any means. 

The ways in which university autonomy and academic freedom have been defined in discussions globally and by FUTA in our own context might seem to suggest that threats to these ideals invariably come from the state and from beyond academia. As self-evident from our own experience, however, we know this is only a partial truth. Much of the ability to entrench negative tendencies such as curtailing these freedoms comes from within, from the tacit support of colleagues for different reasons. Arun Kumar, with reference to deteriorating autonomy in Delhi University over the last five years, refers very clearly to these internal dynamics in the following words: 

The senior academics of the university are dependent on the university administration for many things and, therefore, prefer to hold their counsel and mostly take a cue from the vice chancellor (VC). Those academics who dare to challenge the VC are branded as trouble makers. Often they face systematic harassment ---. An example is set to dissuade others from following these independent academics.

The result is the silence of most academics and the dominance of the administration. --- The erosion of autonomy, growing bureaucratisation and growing outside interference in the universities in India have gone together. --- In India, politicians like to control institutions, and ambitious academics collaborate in this to quickly move up the ladder to gain power” (Kumar 2013).

This is about the erosion of autonomy in India’s premier central university, and of the role played by its own academics in generating this state of affairs. When I first read this account and had numerous conversations with colleagues in that university over the last four years, my immediate sense was that I was still in Sri Lanka. That this was Colombo, Peradeniya, Sri Jayawardenapra and so on. Across the board, ours is also a story of betrayal, lack of ethics, lack of common sense and a complete lack of vision and an infatuation with a hallucination of power. And much of this has come from within universities. 

This deliberation on autonomy naturally leads to a discussion of governance in relation to universities. 

Governance

In the proposal for this workshop, ‘university governance’ has been defined as a set of practices that entails two domains: (a) university-government relations, (b) governance within the universities.”[4] It further suggests that “the concept of governance should not be restricted to the narrow sphere of administration” and should necessarily involve “a normative framework built on the ideals of freedom, autonomy, accountability and democratic governance.”[5] Despite the exhaustive and inclusive nature of this specific understanding of governance, my own thoughts today will be restricted to one specific modality of governance that involves the university and the state as well as interactions within universities.

As an example that addresses both of these domains, let me refer to the practice of appointing Vice Chancellors to our universities, which is directly done by the state, and specifically by the President of the Republic. In theory, Section 34 (1) of the Universities Act - 1978 offers the legal provisions and the power to universities and the University Grants Commission to exercise autonomy when appointing Vice Chancellors. Very simply, this clarifies that the UGC must recommend the ideal candidate to the President, selecting the nominee from the three names recommended by the Council of the University. However, under the previous government and with the passing of the 18th Amendment to the constitution, unmitigated political power was vested in the office of the President. Under this general situation and the resultant extreme and crude politicization of the UGC, an extremely negative precedence was set of sending all three names to the president without a specific recommendation. This allowed him the sole discretion to select the Vice Chancellor of his choice within the obvious limits of his wisdom.[6] The debacle over the appointment of a suitable VC at the University of Colombo is but one example.

Compared to this, in all ‘developed’ societies in Western Europe, North America and the Far East, appointments of Vice Chancellors or Presidents to major universities is done by their internal governing bodies. It is strictly an internal affair that usually ends after the recommendations of a search committee is taken to its logical conclusion. This is done taking into account the university’s autonomy and its right to govern itself. 

For example, at Oxford University, whose model upon which many of the older universities in our part of the world were based, the Council of the University appoints a Nominating Committee for the Vice-Chancellorship to conduct the search for the Vice-Chancellor. To express an interest in the post of Vice-Chancellor, anyone with the required qualifications simply uploads the application to a specified website quoting a reference number. The university’s Congregation, which acts as the ‘parliament’ of the University, with over 4,900 members, including academic staff, heads and other members of governing bodies of colleges, and senior research, computing, library and administrative staff, approves the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor. It is a simple, transparent, fairly independent and democratic system.[7] This is part of their tradition. 

In most parts of the world with underdeveloped economies and dismantled democratic traditions however, the situation is very different. Edward Said, with reference to the post-independence Arab world, notes that state universities were seen as extensions of the national security states. In this context Said makes the following observations about the Arab academy: 

Alas, political conformity rather than intellectual excellence was often made to serve as a criterion for promotion and appointment, with the general result that timidity, a studious lack of imagination, and careful conservatism came to rule intellectual practice (Said 2001).

As all of us know quite well, Said’s description of post-independence Arab academy describes equally well the prevailing general situation in Sri Lanka as well as the wider South Asia region. In Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, Vice Chancellors are appointed by the President or the Prime Minister of the country. Appointments to similar positions in regional universities in Pakistan and India are made by provincial governors. In all cases, these are acutely political appointments where academic credentials are made to have little relevance. 

What is of relevance is an appointee’s proximity to political authorities which make the appointments. In Sri Lanka, this state of affairs has come about as a result of the state’s relentless intrusion into universities since the late 1960s with much vocal support from sections in the academia since at least the 1990s in the backdrop of out-migration of skilled academics to the greener pastures of the West, experimentation with neo-liberal policies of governance, and the long-term impact of war and political violence on the practice of democracy. 

When crucial appointments such as these are made on the basis of narrowly defined political ends, what happens to ideals of governance and autonomy? How does it impact upon the integrity of both academics and academia? The politically anticipated ‘responsibility’ of academics appointed to positions such as that of vice chancellors to serve one’s masters to ensure one’s own political survival. Can they be true guardians of a system whose original goals were far greater than the self-interests of the politicians who now appoint them? 

Let me offer some clarifications here. Even in the early 1970s, Vice Chancellors in Sri Lanka were appointed by the state. But these appointees were individuals with a very different kind of education with an emphasis on ethics, which enabled them to think independently and as scholars despite the political nature of their appointments. They were capable of not adhering to political diktats if they lacked reason and ethics. It would be naive to assume there are too many of such people left in this country due to the serious ruptures in our education system in general as well as in our collective civic sense. 

Even so, if one studies the process of appointing vice chancellors to our universities provided under Section 34, it is obvious that there are certain safeguards to ensure that political authorities cannot simply appoint anyone they want. However, due to the kind of ‘timidity and studious lack of imagination’ that Said talks about, and also due to the ‘silence’ of senior academics that Thapar, Kumar and Goonasekere refer to, which are traits that have been deeply institutionalized in our universities also, violating norms so blatantly becomes something of a second nature, with no repercussions. Savitri Goonasekere explains this state if affairs in our own context in the following words:

Though the Senate is the highest academic body according to the University Act, and the Council the governing body with the autonomy to choose the nominees for the post of VC, they all surrendered their responsibilities in the face of political pressure. The Deans and Senate nominees in the Council were a powerful voice on university governance in the past, since the official nominees represent only a majority by one in the Council. The erosion of a collegiate sense in the university, the passivity of academics on these bodies, and the professionals in the Council, legitimised abuse of power even in the matter of professorial appointments.[8]

What else can be a better example of dismantled governance? What else would explain that failures in governance and autonomy in universities come first from within, rather than from the relatively distant structures of the state?

Future

As you deliberate over the next two days, I hope you would take the time to work out the modalities of how to deal with and decisively address these internal contradictions that we have allowed to manifest within our institutions. I would now like to make a number of concrete suggestions on how some avenues for critical engagement on these issues might be opened: 

• Regarding university autonomy, a careful re-thinking of the legal framework within which the present crisis in university autonomy is located, has become a necessity. Rather than re-inventing the entire legal framework, what is suggested is a critical engagement with the existing structure to re-formulate the areas that are of critical importance such as the appointment of VCs, in order to restore autonomy to universities. This would enable these institutions to be freed from the vagaries of party politics. I strongly believe that it is essential to establish an independent body to which all groups such as the UGC, ministerial administration, university-level administration, academics and even student bodies can appeal, in cases of mal-practice or doubt.
  
• In terms of accountability and responsibility in governance at all levels within universities, a system of checks and balances that includes inter-departmental and inter-faculty collaboration within universities should be formulated to ensure that a culture of downward accountability is established and maintained. A mechanism to initiate periodic reviews regarding the following of good practices and rules at all levels is also very necessary.
   
• Specifically in relation to the appointment processes of VC’s and Council Members, apart from the revision of legal provisions mentioned above, the establishment of broader councils that play a significant role in governance within universities is a necessity. There also needs to be strict guidelines on the appointment of council members and their qualifications, including the provision to have members directly elected by faculty bodies. Also, there needs to be a clear legal provision for the vice chancellors to be responsible to their colleagues in universities and not merely to those political authorities who appoint them.

For me, the bottom line is that the aim of these proposed mechanisms should be to make governance and autonomy two sacrosanct terms that can exist without contradicting each other, and without violating the basic principles of academic freedom and the broader goals of university education. 

Let me end by referring back to the breaking of the collective silence I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation. There is an essential quality of human life we need to urgently rediscover and live by, if issues such as university accountability, autonomy, freedom of expression, and governance are to be re-established. But this cannot be done through the enactment of laws and regulations. I am thinking of our dignity, self-respect and understandings of right and wrong which we have so readily compromised for lesser things. 

For too long, we have been mute and have begun to believe that if we don’t see a travesty, through our own self-induced blindness of convenience, that travesty somehow does not exist. In that sense we are very similar to Salman Rushdie’s character in the novel, The Enchantress of Florence, Alessandra Fiorentina. As Rushdie narrates, “Alessandra Fiorentina had long ago perfected the art of seeing only what she wanted to see” and , “If she did not see you, then you did not exist” (Rushdie 2010: 190). To me, this seems like most of us in recent times.

If we are serious about reforming our university system, which is an urgently felt need, we need to first cure ourselves from this Fiorentina Syndrome of Convenient Amnesia, which afflicts many of us. If we can do that, and rediscover our lost sense of human dignity, then half the battle would be won. 

It seems to me that to a certain extent, we have begun to come out of our collective silence, if this workshop is any indication. And that too, with the direct guidance of the Vice Chancellor at University of Colombo and with the direct and personal intervention of the former Acting Vice Chancellor of the same university, Prof Lalita Mendis. This is a very clear sign of the importance of decent people in troubled places. This is also a very welcome sign, and an act other vice chancellors should readily emulate. This would not have been possible prior to the political changes of recent times. But one can never be certain for how long such an opening up of the public sphere might continue. However, just as much as individual tyrants with no vision have dismantled our institutions to a great extent while we have watched in silence, individuals can also set things right with our encouragement and support. 

In that sense Professor Dissanayake, though you have inherited an unenviable mess, transgressing that mess is well within what you can achieve during your tenure. I hope this is the time for a reinvention of ourselves. I hope the leadership for that will come from the University of Colombo, and from the deliberations of this workshop.

I thank you for your time, and hope this initiative reaches its fruitful end. 

References

CEPES Papers on Higher Education. 1992. Academic Freedom and University Autonomy. Proceedings of the International Conference, 5-7 May 1992, Sinaia, Romania

Eagleton, Terry. 2010 (17th December). ‘The Death of Universities.’ In, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees (last accessed on 02 10/14).

Kumar, Arun. 2013. ‘Delhi University and the Crisis in India’s Higher Education.’ In, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. - XLVIII No. 24, June 15, 2013. 

Perera, Sasanka. 2005. ‘Dismantling Academic Freedom.’ In, Alternate Space: Trivial Wrings of an Academic. Colombo: Colombo Institute.

Rushdie, Salman. 2009. The Enchantress of Florence. New York: Random House. 

Thapar, Romila. 2014. To Question or not to Question: That is the Question (Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture, 2nd November 2014). New Delhi (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/academics-must-question-more-romila/article6535612.ece; last accessed on 03 November 2014).

Said, Edward. 2001. ‘Identity, Authority and Freedom.’ In, Reflections on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta Books.

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Endnotes

_{[1]. I acknowledge with much gratitude the help from Samudrika Sylva at University of Colombo in formulating this address in the relatively short period that was available.}

_{[2]. Email communication from Prof Savitri Goonasekere, 1st September 2015.}

_{[3]. http://futa-sl.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/FUTA_Autonomy_Press-ReleaseMay20131.pdf (last accessed on 23/10/14).}

_{[4]. Unpublished draft Workshop proposal, University Governance, Autonomy and Accountability: Issues and Directions for Change, University of Colombo ; September 03-04, 2015.}

_{[5]. Unpublished draft Workshop proposal, University Governance, Autonomy and Accountability: Issues and Directions for Change, University of Colombo ; September 03-04, 2015.}

_{[6]. I thank Prof Savitri Goonasekere for her comments and explanations on the workings of Section 34, and the politicization of the UGC and the process of appointing Vice Chancellors; email communication, 1st September 2015.}

_{[7].http://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/field/field_document/VC%20Final%20Appointment%20Details%20(05.12.14).pdf (last accessed on 29th August 2015).}

_{[8]. Email communication from Prof Savitri Goonasekere, 1st September 2015.}

This presentation was was serialized in the Island, and can be accessed via the following links:

Part 1 (16 September 2015): 

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=131854; 

Part 2 (17 September 2015):

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=131900; 

Part 3 (18 September 2015): 

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=131965

The Inevitability of the Banana Republic

Sri Lanka has been a ‘banana republic,’ for quite some time, and clearly so throughout the oligarchy of the Rajapaksas. Formally, a banana republic is “a small country that is economically dependent on a single export commodity, such as bananas, and is typically governed by a dictator or the armed forces.”[1] But in our case, the fate of the citizenry is far worse than in most other banana republics. In Sri Lanka, all wisdom, action, dreams, hallucinations and the making of unmitigated profit came from the first family and then from its acolytes. They were essentially the centre of our universe as well as the structure that kept this universe in place in a very specific way. So, they were the ‘star’ rugger players of the nation; they were our ‘elite’ racing car drivers who made sure that lesser mortals had to stay locked up indoors until they raced around the city along public roads all night long; they produced the ‘ideal’ navy officers of the nation who could command the naval force of the country as if it was their personal army; they provided the next generation of ‘astronauts’ seemingly dedicated to take their ideology to outer-space so that bigger-than-life-size cutouts of the father figure could be affixed on the moon right next to Neil Armstrong’s forgotten foot print; it was their wisdom that built public toilets, playgrounds, schools, traffic lights, airports, municipal drains, harbors, bus stands and what not, according to the ubiquitous plaques installed at these places. 

They were the players of an expensive socio-political drama which all of us had to finance and were forced to watch. Sadly, some of us began to believe this to be the only possibility of life in our country. I am not talking of people who benefitted from being the main or part-managers of the banana republic, but ordinary people who gained nothing. They gullibly swallowed a cluster of myths with all of their contradictions. The bottom line seemed to be, “because He won the war, we have to tolerate all of His and His loved ones’ idiosyncrasies and excesses.” In this scheme of things, we allowed our country to transform from a faulty democracy to a fully functioning oligarchy with an omnipresent system of surveillance. We allowed it to become a fiefdom and a banana republic from a non-functioning-but-attmepting-to-function regular republic. In this context, like for many other sensible people I know, it was a relief to see the head of the oligarchy defeated in the presidential election in January 2015. From a distance, and without the right to vote, I admired the tireless work of disparate groups of people and individuals, some of whom I knew quite well, who tirelessly worked to ensure the emergence of what seemed like the end of an era. I was elated at the miscalculations of ‘royal’ astrologers and over-confident political pundits who also played a key role in making the change in January 2015 possible. 

And without much fanfare but with much expectations on the part of the people wanting change and the emergence of an era of ethics in politics, the new President and the newly installed government officially declared the beginning of ‘good governance’ through the dynamics of a ‘national government.’ That was in January 2015.

Now, in August 2015, where do we stand? Have we transgressed beyond the banana republic or have we established beyond doubts its inevitability? True, the seemingly sobering presence of Maitripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickramasinghe offered a breathing space that the country had not experienced in a very long time. That moment was necessary, if Sri Lanka was to entertain any notions of rebuilding its overly dismantled democratic principles and traditions. Very clearly, the public sphere was invigorated as a result. Open and critical debates on the country’s political climate ensued. But the challenges faced in getting the much needed 19th Amendment passed in parliament and the inability to get the crucial 20th Amendment approved, showed that the art of mature political compromise with the future of the country as the only consideration, was not within easy reach of our politicians. It simply did not manifest within their imagination. In the post-January 2015 power equation, the much anticipated process of justice and investigations into corruption of the oligarchy suddenly seemed to stall even though this is what brought the people who ensured Sirisena’s victory together. From a distance, it seemed to me that at the ground level, the pragmatic space between people’s legitimate expectation for justice and ethics on one hand, and the government’s necessity to stabilize itself in an environment of political hostility and intrigue on the other, was not readily appreciated by people at the time. Or more accurately, they did not want to let go of the breathing space they had carved out amidst immense difficulties. The voting pattern in the August 2015 general election, offering power – though not by a great margin – to the same equation that came to prominence in January, further indicates this continuing hope. 

But post-January politics also indicated other disturbing trends, which continue well into the present. It appeared that the President was a man with no political friends. He did not seem to have any control over crucial political decisions that the government was making including foreign policy, and appeared to be in a situation of political limbo. He spelt out some of these difficulties and his thoughts on these issues in a televised address to citizens, which further entrenched with much clarity his thinking and what was possible within the UNP-led government as well as in his own party. Within his own political formation, much of the difficulties the President experienced were due to the SLFP and UPFA being dominated by individuals across the political landscape of these entities whose loyalty is to the oligarchy and to the former president. And the Patriarch of the oligarchy and his band of not-so-merry men refused to leave the political arena. In this context, the President assuming the duties as Chairman of the SLFP effectively meant nothing other than making very clear his own lack of ability to manoeuvre in the dark and treacherous alleys of power struggle that the SLFP and the UPFA are now going through.

Given his lack of control and inability to act decisively to clean up his own party due to stated fears of bifurcating the party and the coalition into pro and anti-oligarchy segments, the SLFP showed clear signs of working like a drug cartel more typical of the bad lands of Mexico and Columbia than a political party responsive to the electorate. Rajapaksa chaired many of these decision-making meetings in much the same way as drug kingpins in South and Central America did with their cartels. As such, despite the rhetoric of the sovereignty of the nation and other seemingly lofty ideals emanating from the pro-oligarchy bandwagon, the entire nomination process of the SLFP and the UPFA was a matter of criminal and dubious elements within these entities being nominated to contest the August 2015 elections to ensure their own political and personal survival. The process that made this possible was completely deaf to the very vocal discourse against corruption, political violence and the clamour for ethics in politics that was consistently articulated by concerned groups and the media. The UNP, in this context, was able to come off as the better of the two necessary evils in a country where a viable third option does not exist. 

When the elections were actually held, many of these criminal elements from the SLFP-UPFA combination were not only re-elected to parliament by the people, but re-elected with significant majorities in many cases. Not only that, similarly dubious characters from the UNP albeit the fact that that they have not held state power for nearly two decades were also elected to parliament. So despite the expectations of justice, we can also see that a very large segment of our population is so incredibly illiterate in political terms. They seem singularly incapable of voting on principles and by taking into account established track records of individual politicians. The people who voted for the UPFA in large numbers also displayed their inability to see beyond divisive tribalist politics that the oligarchy-led UPFA spearheaded during the parliamentary election. It is this lack of political maturity that failed to bring in more reasonable individuals to parliament though there was some choice. It is this lack of political literacy that ensured the relative failure of the JVP campaign despite its program based on ethics and integrity. Even though some commentators have noted the defeat of extremist elements such as the BBS in the election, this is only a partial understanding. True, the political arm of the BBS, the BJP, lost heavily in the election. But the positions this entity entertained were also very squarely represented in the pro-oligarchy campaign. Of the 95 seats that the UPFA won, at least 60 are claimed to be in support of oligarchic politics and therefore the political virulence it represented. 

And now, after the results of the election have been declared, the National List of the SLFP has been re-formulated to bring back to parliament some of the worst enemies of democracy and decency, such as S.B Disssanayake, though they have been clearly rejected by the electorate. The argument of course is that they ‘lost’ because they ‘supported’ the President. If they supported the President on principled grounds and lost, that should have been accepted, and they should have gracefully left politics. If they supported him for personal survival and lost, why should the people who voted them out be affronted by their re-induction into parliament by legal but dubious means? This action, more than his relative inability to act decisively prior to the parliamentary poll, has seriously dented the President’s credibility as a leader who is guided by ethics. Obviously, he has shown that he can be more easily moved by political expediency. It also does not help that he publically offered the recently retired cricketer, Kumar Sangakkara, the position of High Commissioner to London, a typical act of the kind of patronage politics that have come to define the thinking of our politicians. Her experience in politics notwithstanding, the Prime Minister offering the same post to Rosy Senanayake a few days earlier can also be considered an act in the same vein. What a sad story of the idea of good governance and what a sad understanding of how the country’s Foreign Service should look like! To her credit, Senanayake is reported to have turned down the offer in the name of serving the causes she has committed herself to. One hopes that Sangakkara would exercise the commonsense and decency he has exhibited as a sportsman and not accept this crude political appointment. 

So we have had two elections at incredible cost to the country within seven months. We have indicated our hopes and aspirations for change and justice. We have also fairly loudly indicated our political immaturity by re-electing individuals to parliament despite their established track records of wrong-doing. As we move beyond August and horse-trading between political formations over the distribution of ministerial portfolios comes to an end, a new government will ultimately take shape. Whether its shape would be decided by issues such as ethics, justice and national interests or political expediency and personal survival of political power players remains to be seen. And it would be ‘seen’ even though many of our franchise-wielding voters unfortunately would not recognize it. Weather justice and war against corruption would be a reality or a convenient set of slogans used during elections and discarded soon after, also remains to be seen. 

Until our circumstances radically change with the emergence of political leaders guided by ethics and not by self-interest, it will not be possible for us to come into an era of civility in politics. Until that happens, our continued and inevitable imprisonment in the banana republic seems self-evident. That seems to be our karma – for the moment.

(also published in: http://groundviews.org/2015/08/29/the-inevitability-of-the-banana-republic/
and http://www.ft.lk/article/464769/The-inevitability-of-the-banana-republic)

---

[1]. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/banana+republic

වැලපුනු හද

Kandy, July 2015

ඉකිබින්දත් හද
ගොලූකරමින් වදන් විශ්වය
සැනෙකින් උපන්
දිගන්තයක් සේ හැගුනු විරාමයක,
කඳුලැල්නම් ඇද නොහැලූනි දෙනෙතින්
පෙන්වන්නට ලොවටත් ඇයටත් මටත්
වැලපුනු බැව් හද.

වසන්ත් කුන්ජ්, නව දිල්ලිය, 27 ජූලි 2015

Gender Conflict & Security: Ethics of Writing

Madam President, colleagues and friends, good morning.

A very warm welcome to the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences and the South Asian University.

It is good to see the sheer hard work my colleague Shweta Singh has put in, and perhaps the many sleepless nights she might have endured, have borne fruit. I have always tried to convince my colleagues that intellectual outreach programs initiated by the Faculty of Social Sciences, such as this conference, must not necessarily be only about intellectual curiosity or policy implications per se, but also about the sophistication in conceptualization, a sense of style in delivery and above all, being sensitive in self-consciously achieving some semblance of collective South Asian reality, if one claims a certain program is about perspectives from this region. And this conference makes that claim. Sometimes we achieve these goals. At other times, despite the rhetoric of regionalism, we don’t move too far beyond the long shadows of the nation states of India and Pakistan. And then, South Asia becomes a reductionist non-entity. This conference, it seems to me has achieved these ideals by putting together a series of practices as a matter of conscious policy. I must thank Dr Singh and her colleagues in the IR Department, UN women and the Swiss embassy for ensuring this outcome.

In terms of ritual, I have been asked to do something called “setting the context”. I don’t have the foggiest idea what this really means despite the seeming clarity of these two words. It seems to me that the context must have been set at the time the conference was conceived and fine-tuned over time. In that sense, it is preconceived, but linked to anticipations and hopes of what is expected to be achieved. On the other hand, discursive practices that emerge from dynamic events like conferences have the ability to transgress beyond set plans to become something truly path-breaking or fall well below anticipations. Only the future would tell us what truly transpired. As such, I would leave it up to your deliberations to either work within your anticipated context or better, move beyond it. But surely, I cannot be the author for setting this context.

Instead, let me say a few things that came to my mind when I read the concept note, went through the topics and some of the abstracts of the papers that would be presented as well as the structure of the conference itself. I hope my thoughts would be at least minimally coherent. 

I have been convinced for a considerable time that International Relations as a discipline globally, needs to move out of its straight jacket which typifies its practice in most parts of the world, and transgress into other areas of academic practice which I am sure would enrich the discipline. One can be hopeful this is what the discipline at South Asian University might be doing. In this context, I was immediately struck by Dr Singh’s and her fellow organizing committee members’ interest in initiating a series of cross disciplinary conversations involving sociology, anthropology, political science and economics while not losing site of the general location of the conference in International Politics and Peace Studies. This anticipation and ideological premise seem to have been significantly realized already going by the kinds of disciplinary domains different people at this conference come from.

Let me now briefly dwell on some ethical issues that one has to ideally come to terms with, when dealing with issues squarely located in the realms of violence, conflict and security. After all, most of you will be discussing issues of gender in the contexts of conflict, war and post war, in the context of which ethics of writing is a central issue. Though this seems commonsensical at one level, it also seems like an unresolved enigma at yet another level, particularly as we read anthropological literature that deals with violence in our part of the world and beyond. More specifically, we need to be concerned about attempting to communicate pain and narratives of survival over violence that so closely and intimately touch the lives of many amongst us. Writing way back in 1990, Veena Das made the following observations which have occupied my conscience ever since as a fellow scribe of violence: 

A crucial issue here is whether the form evolved in writing about survivor experience is simply used to titillate. Does it tear the facts of violence out of context? Does the author stand in relationship of a voyeur to the narratives of suffering? Most of the work on survivors done in this context would suggest that the distinction between the author and his/her subjects dissolves in the study of violence. To be the scribe of human experience of suffering creates a special responsibility towards those who suffer. While there cannot be a single answer to the nature of this responsibility, one cannot simply hide behind the axiological neutrality of Max Weber. We shall have to ask: did we take this responsibility seriously?

So have we taken this responsibility seriously? Do we take this responsibility seriously? And have you taken this responsibility seriously? Personally, I could never find a fool-proof way to address this issue. May be some of you in your own writings such as what you would present today and tomorrow might have worked out ways to do this. Let me end my thoughts with reference to a related incident that came from the world of visual culture and not scholarship. As part of a very complex and thought-provoking installation, when Sri Lankan painter Jagath Weerasinghe painted the shadowy image of a woman going from one site of illegal detention to another in search of her missing son in the context of that country’s entrenched political violence in the 1980s and claimed that he was speaking to the world on her behalf, he was essentially making two claims: One, was the claim that the woman was the eternal victim and bearer of grief in situations of conflict; and two, his unilateral decision to appropriate her voice, supposedly on her behalf. I brought this example into my thoughts for two reasons: 

One is to ask the simple question, how different is this appropriation of voice in this case from our own appropriation of other voices in the name of scholarship? Or, is it not different at all? Research is all about appropriating voices and making them our own. That is what conferences often do, though there are perhaps ways to mitigate these circumstances. My intention here is not to discomfort you, but to bring to focus an issue that many of us have found convenient to ignore in recent times.

The second is a plea for methodological innovation in the study of issues such as violence, conflict and gender. I wondered how International Relations scholarship, or for that matter the practice of sociology and anthropology might look like, if we explored these issues through visual culture, creative writing, music and so on which might have an imprint of temporality and the politics of those times embedded in them, including conflict. Would we see the world differently but come to similar conclusions as scholars not using such subjective and seemingly unscientific approaches? But given the constructed-ness of science itself, I am personally not too concerned about these anxieties. But it would be interesting if my colleagues at some future point can think on similar lines without disrupting the core tenets of our respective ‘disciplines.’ Who knows, it might be worth the effort.

Let me not take too much of your time. I hope I would be fortunate enough to listen to at least some of your presentations. It does not help Madam President, when a scholar is made into an academic bureaucrat simply because he has a few more grey hairs than some others. But then, when dreams are at stake and when a vision still remains to be realized which are quotidian considerations in our university, personal idiosyncrasies and fantasies necessarily have to be retired, at least in the short term.

I wish you all the best and an intellectually stimulating two days at South Asian University.

Thanks for your time.

(Opening Remarks made at the international conference on ‘Gender Conflict & Security: Perspectives from South Asia,’ April 23, 2015, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi)

Letter to the President of Sri Lanka from an Ordinary Citizen

Faculty of Social Sciences

South Asian University
New Delhi - 110021
India

09^th January 2015

His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena
The President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
The President’s Office
Colombo 1
Sri Lanka

Your Excellency:

Best Wishes for Your Appointment as President

Greetings from South Asian University, New Delhi! Though a citizen of Sri Lanka, I am one of those people who did not vote for you in the presidential election concluded yesterday. Not that I was not interested, but as a person displaced from Sri Lanka as a necessary condition of my present employment in New Delhi, there are no facilities for people like me to vote in our elections despite the great technological advances that all of us routinely enjoy today. But this is a minor matter compared to the challenges you have to face in the immediate future as President and concerned citizen. Let me first of all congratulate you on your election and appointment. I am sure Your Excellency is more acutely aware than I am that the hardest work in your tenure is about to begin. I thought I should share some of my thoughts with you as a fellow citizen who shares with you and many others a great concern for Sri Lanka’s well-being.

The fact that Your Excellency agreed to be the common candidate for the united opposition gave Sri Lanka a much needed breathing space to try and reclaim its democratic practices and its civilizational heritage both of which had been seriously mauled in the previous decade. I am thankful to all the political leaders who made this possible. It made all of us aware that not all is lost, and that there is some room for hope. This reminds me of Reverend Desmond Tutu’s words that “hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Your Excellency’s victory, the cobbling together of the coalition which made that victory possible, the selfless, tireless and brave work of many ordinary but committed people from all walks of life against unthinkable odds to ensure that the transition Your Excellency personifies would become possible, point to the kind of hope that makes difficult things possible. These actions symbolize the light beyond the darkness that Reverend Tutu referred to. But Your Excellency, I am sure you agree with me that we cannot live on hope alone. We have to act in ways that make what we have hoped for materialize in our own life time.

This becomes all the more difficult considering the situation you find yourself in today. This path-breaking victory which is a watershed in recent Sri Lankan history was made possible by ideologically and politically disparate groups who have no real history of working together. They were brought together by the specific desire to defeat Mr. Rajapaksa while all of them agreed on the main issues focused on in Your Excellency’s campaign. What would happen in a situation when that much-aspired defeat has actually been achieved? Will they be able to compromise on some matters and agree on more crucial issues in order to move ahead as a country despite very obvious political differences? It remains to be seen if we as a country can move forward to a more secure future or if we might get bogged down in impenetrable political semantics. However, the mere fact that the disorganized opposition that has been in the political wilderness for nearly a decade could ensure your victory within such a short period of time suggests that this might be possible. I hope quite fervently that Your Excellency would be able to lead those around you to govern with wisdom as you step into the future so that what has been achieved in this election is not prematurely lost. I think it was the American political activist, Malcolm X who once said “the future belongs to those who prepare for it today”. So how would we imagine and prepare for our collective future? 

According to Your Excellency’s own election manifesto you are expected to curb the powers of the executive presidency within the first one hundred days. This should be a goal that you should not deviate from like your predecessors. I hope this interest in curbing the powers of the executive is linked to curbing the ability of elected representatives crossing from one party to another for mere personal gain as we have seen time and again since the late 1970s. This needs to be changed so that if an individual truly wishes to change his allegiance for ideological, moral, ethical or any other reason, he should take this step by forfeiting his seat and facing a by-election that allows the electorate to decide again. That would be the democratic way of changing political allegiance rather than allowing crude market conditions to decide these matters. Added to this is the necessity to be very serious about not allowing criminal elements to enter politics at any level even though it is more difficult to implement at a practical level.  

In the last ten years or so, the country’s armed forces and police became for all purposes an extension of the regime rather than unbiased professional entities of the state. More clearly, they became extensions of the ruling dynasty. This is typified by the rather bizarre admission of one of President Rajapaksa’s sons to the Navy and the very unprofessional relationships this admission created in that agency which once played a significant role  in the defeat of the LTTE. I know that many officers and ordinary men and women in these services were very uncomfortable with this situation; yet they had no real choice. I hope Your Excellency would be able to take necessary measures to re-establish these institutions as agencies of the state under a rational command structure so that public confidence in them might be restored.

Your Excellency, your campaign focused a great deal of attention on the extensive corruption that had developed in all sectors of our society over the last decade. During the campaign, in addition to you, members of the Janata Vimukti Peramuna, the Jatika Hela Urumaya and the United National Party articulated quite convincingly the extensive level of this corruption. Much of the evidence presented is still in the public domain. The Mongolian politician Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj has noted that “corruption is a true enemy to development.” This is because corruption adds to the costs of development activities and becomes a long-term burden for the people. We have set in place some of the most vulgar systems of crony capitalism in South Asia. We as a collective of people prefer not to know how some of our top politicians have become so visibly rich in alarmingly short periods of time, owning incalculable properties both locally and abroad. In this context, the only way in which we can address corruption in the long run is to establish beyond any doubt that corruption does not pay. This means that corruption in ministries, government departments, armed forces, universities, among powerful families and wherever else, must be investigated. And corruption is not only about kickbacks and the misuse of funds, but also about the abuse of power. Consequent to legally and ethically constituted investigations, the culprits must be punished irrespective of their positions in society and wherever in the world they might be at present. But I would emphasize that this must only be done as matter of law following due process, and not as a matter of vengeance and an exercise of the law of the jungle. The country has suffered enough already under such a dispensation. But this is a policy that must be relentlessly pursued to its logical conclusion. I hope Your Excellency’s administration is up to this task.

My next concern is the extremely politicized public sector, civil service and the foreign service. While the politicization of Sri Lanka’s civil service began when Mr. J. R. Jayawardena appointed an ex-army officer as the Government Agent for Gampaha in the late 1970s, it became much worse under Mr. Rajapaksa’s tenure when his own brother was appointed as the Secretary of Defense. In addition, many unqualified people with no semblance of ethics or morals were put in charge of public sector entities including Sri Lankan Airlines, and they were allowed to relentlessly plunder public assets as if it were their birthright. Our embassies were staffed with completely incompetent political appointees with no foreign policy or public service experience. As a result, competent and well-trained career officers were sidelined and their chances of heading missions overseas or making meaningful contributions to foreign policy formation became marginal. The blunders we have made in diplomacy and our isolation in the world of nations, the unhealthy over-dependence on China to deal with thorny world affairs as well as for local development projects clearly indicate this state of affairs. I hope Your Excellency and your administration would take urgent steps as a matter of priority to depoliticize these institutions and services and reestablish their sense of professionalism and self-worth which has been mercilessly dismantled in recent times.

Similarly, universities in our country have been so extremely politicized that they fail to function effectively as centers of excellence they once were and as the conscience of the nation. It is in this context that Professor Gananath Obeyesekere wrote to President Rajapaksa in 2012 and noted that “there is another challenge for a wise leader, and that is to bring back the universities to their early glory by supporting them at every level because a world bereft of intellectual life will end up as a dreary world.” But when we take stock of the rather obvious lack of intellectual caliber among the Vice Chancellors recently appointed to our universities, the actions of the chairperson of the University Grants Commission and the public utterances of the Minister of Higher Education, it is quite clear that neither Mr. Rajapaksa nor his government had the slightest idea as to what higher education was all about. This is even clearer when we juxtapose their collective attitude against the very reasonable demands presented by university teachers in recent protests and negotiations. For Mr. Rajapaksa’s government, universities were merely something that needed to be curbed and controlled. Given the fact that many of my former colleagues selflessly supported Your Excellency’s campaign thinking only that it is the right thing to do for the betterment of the country and not of any personal perks for themselves, my hope is that you would help deliver our universities from the present quagmire they are entrapped in. I hope Your Excellency’s government would exhibit the necessary wisdom to establish a practice of appointing university Vice Chancellors through a system delinked from narrow party politics and government interference.

One of the main priorities Your Excellency’s administration needs to pay attention to is the way in which we as a society and the state deal with ethno-religious minorities. Ayn Rand has quite correctly noted that “individual rights are not subject to a public vote” in the context of which “a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.” I think this a very basic principle that any sane society should be able to live with and cherish. Despite the rhetoric and irrespective of our very long and exemplary history of accommodating different people, many of us today seem to consider minority groups as a problem. It is precisely that kind of fundamentally faulty attitude that created the Tamil militancy in the first place. Already, many people are equating the voting pattern of Tamil citizens in the northeast in the recently concluded election with the map of Elam. It is indeed quite saddening that even after coming out of a very destructive and painful war which consumed and scarred all of us, many of our people are still incapable of thinking beyond parochial ethno-religious lines, and imagine a polity and a collective future as an inclusive nation. 

I find it quite intriguing and hopeful that such a mandate for you came from these people without any preconditions in exchange for their support. This is particularly so in a context where Your Excellency’s own campaign hardly focused on the northeast as a region and crucial issues of security and personal anxieties which particularly Muslims and Tamils in the country feel at present. Much of the anxieties felt by minority groups has come about as a result of the activities of fascist groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena which your predecessor encouraged almost as part of domestic political policy augmented by the silence of large sections of ordinary Buddhists, and also as a result of the wholly security-centered postwar internal policy in the northeast. It must be one of Your Excellency’s priorities to ensure that the present mandate you have very clearly received does not become yet another missed opportunity. We can, after all ensure the security of the northeast in particular and the country in general, and also ensure minorities becoming an integral part of our society. If we are welcoming and inclusive in our economic, educational, language and cultural policies, their own exclusivist tendencies that sometimes manifest would simply become irrelevant. But I personally feel that this kind of overarching tolerance and compassion which both Your Excellency and I receive from our own religious background in Buddhism, must legally and institutionally be preceded by a specific kind of intolerance. That is, the intolerance of any kind of intolerance. This means that legally and institutionally, any organization that promotes sectarianism and violence, however powerful they might be, should not be allowed to have any legitimate existence in our society. 

Your Excellency’s campaign endured not only enormous financial onslaught from Mr. Rajapaksa’s campaign but also the unethical use of state resources and relentless violence. But you prevailed. Why the election was not as bloody as many predicted it would be was mostly due to the credit of the restraint that your own campaign very clearly exhibited. It also helped that the Commissioner of Elections, the Inspector General of Police and the Commander of the Army exhibited much needed qualities of leadership at this crucial moment. Needless to say, such exemplary behavior which  we had once expected from public officials have been forgotten about in recent times. I hope this positive experience of which you are already a part would be the basis upon which a tolerant, enlightened, and sensible political culture could be established in our country.

Let me end my rather long letter with a personal note. I came to South Asian University which was collectively established by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 2011 because I strongly believed in the idea of the university as a centre of excellence for young people from the region. It is the result of the thinking of some very sensible people in our region. Even though my initial idea was to come and help set up this institution and go back to Sri Lanka, I had to resign from my position at the University of Colombo as I could not get the required long-term leave I needed due to systemic failures and also due to a lack of institutional support; however, I don’t wish to dwell on this point. Even though Sri Lankan taxpayers as well as taxpayers in other South Asian countries help maintain the South Asian University, only the government of India seems to pay some attention to it. What is the status of our citizens in the university, how are public funds sent from Sri Lanka for the university’s upkeep utilized and what are  Sri Lankan students’ experiences about the place, is the sense of collective South Asian sensibility that is a stated priority for the university being created? I often wonder if anyone in the Ministry of Higher Education or the University Grants Commission in Colombo ever thought of these questions. In this context, I hope Your Excellency’s administration would take a keen interest in the functioning of the university and help towards its development. By this however, I do not mean political interference in the day-to-day running of the university which has ruined once-reputed universities in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia.

Despite the difficult path ahead, I hope the democratic and civilizational space Your Excellency, Hon. Prime Minster, Ranil Wickramasinghe, your colleagues and many concerned citizens have opened up in our country would prevail. It is the Buddha who said long time ago, “there are only two mistakes one can make along the road to the truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” These are two mistakes neither Your Excellency nor your coalition partners can afford to make. These are also mistakes that no other Sri Lankan citizens can afford to make as well.

I wish Your Excellency the best of luck and the blessings of the Triple Gem.

Very sincerely,

Sasanka Perera

Professor and Dean
Faculty of Social Sciences 

(This letter was sent to President Sirseina on 9th January 2015 and was initially published at: http://groundviews.org/2015/01/13/best-wishes-for-your-appointment-as-president/ )

The Sound of Silence

Photograph by Joyashree Sarma, Mphil/PhD Program in Sociology

Avijit Roy, a writer and an acclaimed champion of ‘secularism’ and freedom of expression was killed in a Dhaka street on 26th February 2015. Very clearly, to deserve this terrible public execution, he had committed two crimes: One was that he had an opinion which was not shared by some others in Bangladesh. The second was that much of what he believed in was expressed openly in the public domain, and often through Mukta-Mona (free mind), a Bengali blogging platform which he had established after migrating to the US in 2007. Roy was not the first to be hounded or killed in Bangladesh for his opinions. He will not be the last.

But this is not merely a Bangladeshi phenomenon, it is a form of global intolerance, which nevertheless has a profoundly obvious presence across South Asia. In 2011, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province in Pakistan was killed in Islamabad by one of his own bodyguards. His crime was his defense of a Christian woman who was sentenced to death in terms of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Lasantha Wickrematunge, the editor of the Sunday Leader was killed in Colombo in January 2009, and his crime was his criticism of the government of the former president of Sri Lanka. Taunted by people who had issues with his novel, Madhorubhagan, Indian writer Perumal Murugan decided on his own to cease his passionate engagement with creative writing. He had posted on his Facebook account not too long ago, “Perumal Murugan, the writer is dead. As he is no God, he is not going to resurrect himself. He also has no faith in rebirth. An ordinary teacher, he will live as P. Murugan. Leave him alone.”[1] Though his corporeal body was not harmed, his emotions and his will to write and express were shattered, and the end result was not too different from the fate of the others referred to earlier. 

In all of our countries, books and films have been banned for very similar reasons under similar circumstances. In these different places, these people were all silenced and their ideas erased by our own people who believed that only one kind of truth and reality should exist. That is, one kind of powerful truth is expected to prevail, be it political, religious or both, within a larger domain of silence and acceptance. Many more have been killed in South Asia under similar circumstances since these killings and muzzling of voices. And by all indicators, going by the nature of relative state (in)action in theses contexts in South Asia and the relative lackluster public opinion, these kinds of actions will continue. 

Whenever I am confronted with this discomforting expansion of silence and the accompanying expansion if a single claim for ‘truth’ that must necessarily hold sway in our countries, I am always reminded of an encounter attributed to a group of people known as the Kalamas who lived in Kesaputta and the Buddha nearly three thousand years ago. These were our ancestors living, thinking and debating very much within the borders we call South Asia today. But they also had encountered the spectre of a singular truth and its rhetoric for superiority in their time. The Kalamas’ question to the Buddha was to figure out how to ‘know’ what is ‘right’. According to the narrative, they asked the Buddha: “Lord, some teachers come to Kesaputta, expounding and glorifying their own doctrines. But as for the doctrine of others, they abuse them, disparage them, deprecate them, and pull them to pieces. Other teachers, on coming to Kesaputta, do the same thing. When we listen to them, we feel doubt and uncertainty as to which of these teachers are speaking truth and which are lying."[2] What is expressed here all those years ago have an uncanny similarity with what we see in our region at present. 

The Buddha gave the following response to the Kalamas: “Come, Kalamas. Don't go by reports, by legend, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by consistency with your own laws, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that 'these mental qualities are unskillful; these mental qualities are blameworthy; these mental qualities are criticized by the wise; these mental qualities when acted on lead to harm and suffering' then abandon them. When you know for yourselves that 'these mental qualities are skillful; these mental qualities are blameless; these mental qualities are praised by the wise; these mental qualities when acted on lead to well-being and happiness' then keep following them."[3] Surely, this encounter, in terms of the circumstances, the question posed and the response given is not about religion. Instead, we can see this has much to do with the freedom to think and freedom to express, and more importantly, to have the choice and the right to do these things. 

This is a state of logic and commonsense that prevailed in the minds of thinking people in our region all these years ago. I find it very sad, when we talk of our past with much rhetoric and virulence these days, we often forget what was truly unique in our past and remember and recall only what might best be left in the haziness of the past and myth.

What the killings of today and the anticipated silence through these acts clearly show is a very radical shrinking of our public sphere and a relentless encroachment of our collective conscience and a dismantling of our collective intellectual traditions. What we see is an emergent fear of the plurality of ideas and an intolerance of engaged and reflective dissent. 

Photograph by Joyashree Sarma, Mphil/PhD Program in Sociology

In these grim circumstances, when students of the Department of Sociology at South Asian University associated with the departmental students’ blog, ‘Rickshaw’ organized a ‘public meeting’ on the theme, ‘Muzzling Freedom, Killing Dissent: South Asian Scene’, taking the killing of Avijit Roy as its point of departure on 5th March 2015, I wondered what it means for the university, and by extension South Asian citizenship. I also wondered if it would mean anything at all going by the large regional realities all of us are very familiar with. A handful of students and faculty members constituting a panel expressed what the incident and the larger issues it entails, mean to them. Some other students also took part in the discussion. 

But obviously going by the student and faculty population in the university, most people clearly had other things to do, going by their absence. I have no doubt, for each individual whatever else they had to do, must have been important. But then, this is precisely what the larger South Asian polity’s inactivity in the context of the regions’ larger crises including the intolerance of ideas and dissent has also indicated. If issues such as the shrinking public sphere in our time do not touch our house, salary, scholarship, our right to buy a car and so on, it appears that killings and dismantling of collective conscience that is necessary to expand the singular truth in our time could be tolerated. We can, as we have seen in many parts of the region, be contended with gleaming highways, chandelier-hugging five star hotels, urban beatification and other manifestations of ‘development.’

Photograph by Joyashree Sarma, Mphil/PhD Program in Sociology

It seems to me this is the kind of reality my friend and poet, Rudramurti Cheran wrote in another context as “the irresponsibility of distance”. If so, this also means that the people perpetuating the intolerance of the plurality of ideas that has become endemic in our region are not merely religious and political extremists as often claimed. The silence of ordinary and often reasonable people is as culpable. So the small ‘public meeting’ at South Asian University is not going to change the direction of South Asia’s future or the way its citizens think for sure. But it indicates that our collective conscience still flickers on and off and sometimes can be seen above the glitter of irrationality and disinterest.

_______________________________

Notes

[1]. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/perumal-murugan-gives-up-writing/article6784745.ece
[2]. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/rosenberg/righttoask.html
[3]. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/rosenberg/righttoask.html