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by Ranga Jayasuriya

Four Sri Lankan universities which according to their schedules are to be open have now been untimely closed due to disputes between the administration and the students bodies and the clashes between the students factions.

Kelaniya University became the most recent victim of this contemporary phenomenon when the university premises was made out of bounds for students two weeks before following a clash between two students factions. The Law Faculty of the University of Colombo was closed following a dispute between the administration and students and the efforts to re-open the faculty failed due to continuing students unrest.

The Medical Faculty of the University of Ruhuna was closed following the disputes between the administration and students over disciplinary actions taken against some students.The administration is now struggling to re-open the faculty on a staggering basis.

Ironically the Budhdhasravaka University which was set up to provide young monks with religious learning was also closed due to a dispute between the undergraduate monks and the administration.

Given the frequency of such happenings, students' demonstrations, clashes and closures of universities no longer in Sri Lanka make the headlines or front page news. But the real cost of this phenomenon is immeasurable.

Despite their slight differences, one principal similarity can be seen in behind the most of such closures and clashes i.e the JVP led student bodies in the universities and the vacuum of an alternative. A vacuum not because that students have their fullest faith in their representatives, but because the opposition is crushed. And any attempt to dissent is continuously crushed.

It was this intolerance to dissent- which has its roots in students politics since the JVP took control of the students councils- that was manifested in the murder of Daya Pathirana in 1987 and more recently in the attack on a group of students who assembled to set up an alternative students body at the university of Peradeniya.

The sad but stubborn fact is that whatever the expectations of the founders of the Sri Lankan university system who, of course, wanted to create an atmosphere for liberal thinking and free discussion, local universities are plagued by a strange type of totalitarianism.

Given the manner fundamentalism is sweeping the Eastern society through Shiv Sena in India, the defeated Talibans in Afghanistan, clerics in Pakistan and Bangladesh and monks in Sri Lanka, it can be argued that this island nation and its universities can not be alienated from the 'trend' of the rest of the region. But the tragedy is that this totalitarianism not only obstruct the freedom of students, but also paralyse the whole university sector.

It is general perception that the existing curricular and syllabuses of the universities should be reformed in order to equip undergraduates with new knowledge. But as long as totalitarianism reigns in local universities, no space will be made available for constructive discussions among students on such issues.

Ragging is one potential instrument which attracts students to the pro-JVP politics. Students specially those from villages find them alienated when they entered the university for the first time and are enticed by the student councils like Malaysian rural Muslim youth in Naipaul's non fictional work "Among the Believers" embrace Islam when they felt themselves alienated in the town. Student councils preach equality and ragging is their instrument of equalising.

Politics provide them with a group identity and a set of customs specially for the university subculture. Right to participate in politics through the students councils is guaranteed under the university act. But the tragedy is that the party which holds power of the students councils has obstructed other parties involving in politics. It may be argued that this is the very nature of Communism as it was exhibited in the USSR, China where the Culture revolution destroyed the country's entire post-revolutionary history and Cambodia where 1/4 of the total population was doomed during 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge rule.

But for their credit it should be noted that the most pro-JVP student activists truly work to make their ideology realising - even endangering their higher education. Lamenting on his motherland - Czechoslovakia invaded by Russian Red Army, expatriate Czech writer Milan Kundera once wrote that criminal regimes were made not by criminals, but by enthusiasts convinced that they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended the road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people.

Our student leaders are very much like them. They too defend their only road both to paradise of communism (in long term) and to continuation of free education so stubbornly that they would not hesitate to crush any voice of dissent.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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