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Survey of education under colonial and post-colonial era

With a Fistful of rice
Author: Indrani Meegama
Mahamaya, Kandy, OGA

Indrani Meegama has made a remarkably illuminating study of the historical interaction of capitalism, the colonial governance that subserved capitalism, the local collaboration that consolidated the capitalist economy, with the educational system that was fashioned to serve capitalism and its servicing class.

Quoting from her impartial survey of a century of the educational process in governance, both colonial and neo-colonial is sufficient to summarise the developments and the complexities that emerged in trying to keep education as a colonial and post-colonial tool of capitalism.

The so-called British 'reforms' of the mid-nineteenth century very much like the neo-colonial reforms of the World Bank in the mid-20th century; "monetised the economy (Sterling diktat!) and created a land market (NB. World Bank advised recently to skip land reform and 'liberalize' the land market) which pauperised the majority of inhabitants especially in the Kandyan areas. It also spelt destruction to agriculture that had been maintained by the (traditional) irrigation system.

Class snobbery

The changes brought about by class snobbery, commercialism and a laissez-faire capitalist economy caused; catalytic changes in the economic and the social life of the people, pushed the majority into extreme penury, but it was accompanied with spectacular riches for the British imperialists and the (comaprador) elite among the indigenous population."

In keeping with the typical colonial pattern the British nurtured a native middle class to service the exploitation of the people and the country's resources.

The second generation of this new petit-bourgeois class studied English in the missionary schools and entered the professions of law and medicine. This middle class expanded with the growth of English education that created an English speaking class of doctors, lawyers, teachers and the lower-rung Government officers.

The English educated elite formed an exclusive small group, to a large extent cut off from the majority of their countrymen by language, values, and affluence."

The indigenous middle class thus drawn into the process of colonial mercantilism and governance at the middle level either collaborated or were generally indifferent to the capitalist exploitation of the vast majority of the population who in the mid-nineteenth century (as in the mid-twentieth century) were forced into abject poverty by the 'free economy.

The resultant breakdown in agriculture was followed by a breakdown in the traditional pattern of productive activity and consequently in the vibrant social, cultural, religious and educational activity that gave Knox's villager the high literacy and social conscience he found remarkable, especially the Kandyan laws that ensured the freedom and educational status of women. All this was negatived by the colonial government.

However, alongside this social disruption and poverty brought on the Kandyan peasantry by the growth of plantation capitalism there began a movement of the new rich low country mercantile class, till then vastly gorged and content with its comprador role, for a decision making role in administration and governance.

This was provoked by the colonial officials who had totally relied on and supported missionary education to provide them with loyal second rung administrators and professionals from the indigenous middle class they had themselves nurtured.

This local merchant class and middle class of professionals and administrators now looked for leadership in a confrontation with the colonial establishment that allowed them only second class citizenship.

There was also an unexpected impetus from outside the country.

"In 1875 Colonel Henry Steele Olcott an American lawyer and journalist, and Helena Blavatsky a Russian, both of whom had liberal and radical ideas opposed to established Christian beliefs, founded the Theosophical Society in New York. Colonel Olcott and Helena Blavatsky came to Sri Lanka in 1880. They proclaimed themselves Buddhists at a public meeting in Galle."

Confrontation

Thus began the Buddhist Theosophical Society in Colombo providing the leadership for confrontation with the Colonial establishment with the entry of the Western educated elite to the Buddhist movement.

The rest is well known. Olcott was joined by C.W. Leadbeater and the young Anagarika Dharmapala. Ananda College was established in Colombo with Leadbeater as principal.

It became the model on which other Buddhist schools came up in many parts of the island. Olcott activated the people to design the Buddhist flag and put pressure on the Colonial Government to declare Vesak a public holiday.

The Buddhist schools "strongly represented the culture of the country and the movement against colonial dominance. The products of these schools taught at times by Western liberal Theosophists such as Musaeus Higgins at Musaeus College, Fritz Kunz at Ananda College, F.L. Woodward at Mahinda College, Galle and later on by national leaders and scholars sustained by Buddhist liberal teachings were receptive to liberal and socialist ideas."

Though by the 1920s a few of the now well-known buddhist girls' secondary schools had come up in Colombo and the towns on the South West coast there was still no girls' Buddhist secondary school in the hill capital and the romance of the movement for the founding of Mahamaya Girls College in Kandy in the 1920s and 1930s is the main theme of this book, A Fistful of Rice.

The funds were raised by determined women of all classes, the middle class emanating from the low country merchants who had ventured into the british plantation areas, the Kandyan aristocrats and the peasants, putting aside a fistful of rice from the grain taken from the family cooking each day, a slow and modest but steady accumulation of funds for the Kulangana Samithiya which was set up to found a buddhist Girls' School in Kandy.

The prime movers in the Kulangana Samithiya were the Bikkhu Karandana Attadassi who was already active in the Buddhist Theosophical Society, the Soysa's a merchant family in Kandy, and the Ratwattes from the Kandyan aristocracy.

The Kulangana Samithiya was able within the space of the few years of transition from the 1920s to the 1930s to organise the setting up of Mahamaya, the first Buddhist girls secondary school in the entire Kandyan region.

The author gives us valuable information on the social structure and relationships in the Kandyan districts. The key factor was the comparative freedom enjoyed by Kandyan women traditionally as well as under Kandyan law, to organise themselves for social advancement.

Thus the Kulangana Samithiya had no barriers to overcome except that of raising funds and this they did so successfully that Mahamaya Girls' College was formally opened in August 1932.

The story of the founding and progress of this school is the story of the coming of modern education to the old Kandyan region and the author has cleverly unravelled its sometimes unexpected links to almost all the venerable and colourful personalities of the national revival, Anagarika Dharmapala whose Spacious bungalow, West Cliffe House by the Kandy Lake became the first schoolhouse for Mahamaya, D.B. Jayatillake leader of the Buddhist Theosophical Society which was the key factor in the creation of a system of national education, Cuda Ratwatte who sacrificed his own chance of becoming Minister of Home Affairs in the Legislative Council to give his casting vote to D.B. Jayatilake, giants like D.S. Senanayaka, C.W.W. Kannangara, Ponnabalam Ramanathan, G.P. Malalasekera, W.A. de Silva, and Helena Wijewardene, whose names conjure up the wonderful legend of those times. We do not think that any other school in the island is so romantically enmeshed in the story of the national revival.

The actual story of the school especially in its early years is a story of vision, human endeavour, trials, triumphs, tragedies, the romance of personal as well as historical events in the lives of the founders and the school heads, Sarah Soysa, Chitravo Katugaha Ratwatte, Hilda Kularatna, the first Principal of Mahamaya, who as Hilda Westrook had read Modern Languages at Cambridge, Bertha Rodgers Ratwatte who had a post-graduate degree in Education from London University, who served as Principal from 1937 to 1948, Soma Pujita Goonewardena, a niece of Munidasa Cumaranatunga, Principal from 1951 to 1972.

There were conflicts too within the Kulangana Samithiya, on policy, administration and ownership of the school, which took it through the depression of the thirties to the 2nd World War and on to Independence from Colonial rule.

Educational reforms

Actually the great liberation of the Kannangara educational reforms came even before release from British governance. The importance of Capitalism against recession and war, the guilty-conscience of the West over the horrors of the Anti-Semitic holocaust, and the terrible nuclear sadism and genocide of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had opened the eyes of the civilized majority of Western populations even briefly to the satanic greed and violence of capitalism and the urgent need for welfarism instead of exploitation and brutality. Our State Council too was shaken out of its mercantile complacence.

C.W.W. Kannangara was backed by the National Reform Society, "with activists like P. de S. Kularatna, Susantha de Fonseka, G.P. Malalasekera, D.T. Devendra, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, W.A. de Silva and Ananda Mivenapalana." The National Reform Society was a follow-up on the Ceylon Social Reform Society founded by Ananda Coomaraswamy for the regeneration of National Culture and Education.

The Central Schools provided Post-primary education for groups of primary schools. They were also linked to the village primary schools by a system of fifth grade scholarships which provided boarding facilities with food and sometimes clothes for the bright but less privileged rural child, changing the existing policy directed at the urban centres to the detriment of the rural areas.

The Kannangara reforms followed by the Government take-over of assisted schools like Mahamaya in 1960 brought the immense resources of the State into the funding of provincial secondary schools and they expanded beyond recognition, with land, massive school buildings, laboratories and other facilities that placed them on par with the Colombo schools and brought their students to the forefront of achievement under able school heads and staff.

Thus the period from the 1960s to the 1980s was one of rapid growth and specialization for Mahamaya bringing her to the status of a National school in the State educational system.

Unfortunately this story of 'A Fistful of Rice' which should have a happy ending is marred by the post 1977 developments when Sri Lanka adopted open economic policies and retrogressed to the 'laissez faire' capitalism of a neo-Victorian variety promoted by the World Bank as 'globalization' on the orders of the global multinationals.

The globalization scenario reversed welfarism with anti-social covert techniques of growth, accumulation and transfer of capital world-wide, perpetuating the pauperization of the old colonial regions of the world with a Neo-Imperial mandate.

The mandate followed servilely and relevant to our story being the disguised privatisation of education by drastic cuts in the percentage of GDP for State funding of Education under various labels of hypocrisy like restructuring of Education and systemic reform.

Since a brave story like 'A Fistful of Rice' must not end sadly may I suggest that Indrani Meegama in her frank and fearless style with additional research if necessary transform it into a doctoral thesis on Post-Colonial education and the neo-Colonial world order (Reaganomics and Thatherism now being old-hat on Adam Smith's tail).

In this venture too we are sure she will have 'the indispensable research assistance' she acknowledges, of the Editorial Committee of this publication, Lalitha Fernando, Chandra Perera, Githa Gunetilleke, Sakuntala Kuruppu, Pearl Kodithuwakku, Chandra Abeysekera and Savithri Brady.

- U. Karunatilake

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