In youth we learn, in age we understand
 

University unrest has become common issue in this country and we have been experiencing it for a good 40 years now.

The irony of this unrest however is that when you evaluate this in comparative terms with our neighbouring countries, the acerbity and regularity of this unrest is more in this country and that is despite the fact that Sri Lanka has provided more opportunities on education for its people than its neighbours in the region. Does this mean that our youth are more exuberant than those in our neighbourhood or is it because that when valuable things are offered free, the recipient fails to appreciate its significance.

University students

Youth however is the stage in life where your body is full of energy and your heart is full of passion. It is the stage where you sincerely desire to change things for the better with more justice and fair play. This reminds us of that song composed and sung by the late Vijaya Kumaranatunge, Danga gey daduwam siyumeli vedinam, alugosuwaney ellapang!

There a young man spews out his vision for a better world and complains against the system thus.

"Only crime we have committed is to stand by what is right and the authorities will soon realize that they cannot stop the spring by cutting down flowers?"

This may sound passionate and sincere but the issue again is, to what extent are the youth prepared to compromise on passion and sincerity to reach a practical way out?

The point to ponder here is the 'standing by what is right'. How will one know that what he considers 'right' is the right thing for the country? After all, what is 'right' and 'wrong' are perception and what one may consider right may not be so from another's perception. It is here then we have the problem; what the University students think as right and justifiable is not necessarily right and justifiable from the Government's point of view. The thinking of the students is confine to one area, the facilities in the Universities and therefore is parochial whereas the Government has to have an overall view of all the problems the country is facing and hence prioritize the competing issues.

Hostel facilities

For instance when the University students feel that it is right to agitate for hostel facilities, the Government may be evaluating avenues to accommodate about 100,000 students who gets shut out of the Universities due to competition in entry marks every year. As a result the Government shuts out more eligible students than they take in as the Government is unable to provide facilities for them at the University level. Thus the irony here is that while those who are lucky enough to enter have made the University a forum to agitate and protest for hostel facilities while those who are completely shut out have no forum to air their protests. Hence in such a context can the University students say that they are 'standing up for the right thing' from an overall context? This is just one example of how the perspective of an interest group will differ from that of the Government.

JVP activist

Thus when what you advocate with all that force something that eventually turns out to be improper, you become 'wrong' to the extent of your obduracy on the matter. Hence the University students finally end up doing a wrong thing much against their conscience but due to their inability to understand. This explains the widely held notion about the 'generation gap' that is said to exist between young and old when all what is there is a 'gap in age of wisdom and understanding'.

The other aspect of this University unrest is that, the period over which we have had this in this country now has been long enough for those who first started agitating (about 40 years ago) to come to power and do something about it by now. There are so many Ministers in the present Cabinet who have taken part in student rallies while at the University but they now have no compunctions about condemning student rallies. Some justify those in a context they say is different then but the reality is that it is those very ministers who have had University experience that see this as an anti thesis in education. I personally know of a former 1971 JVP activist from Kegalle who is presently a UNP MP and a prominent supporter of Ranil's neo liberal capitalism. Is it because with age they have begun to understand?

Senior engineer

Then there was yet another instance where I rescued an Engineering Faculty student of Peradeniya in the heady days of 1989 JVP siege when as an activist the man was cornered in a remote village outpost hunted by the Police. I was drawn in to his because his elder brother who was a Bank executive at the time pleaded with me to help him. Today he is a Senior Engineer attached to the Moragahakanda project and he often ruminates how foolish he had been in taking so active part in JVP activity.

All this points to the necessity of teaching the University students the cycle of life and the passions associated with that cycle, as the first lesson in their University career. We could cite example of bright young men whom the country has lost due to their overzealous but often misplaced advocacy on 'justice' and 'fair play'.

Everybody wants to live in a world that is equitable and fair but can the man make the world a fair place when all the universal laws of nature behave with no respect for fairness and justice. What is fair about a cyclone; about tempest; about tsunami; about floods; about fire; about famine and about poverty and richest themselves? These may also be called the acts of God. Thus how could we make this world 'fair' when all its laws are designed to make it unfair?

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