Dr. E. W. Adikaram - a unique educator

BY MAHINDA Palihawadana, Professor Emeritus, Sri Jayawardanapura University

MARCH 29, 2005 marks the birth centenary of Dr. E. W. Adikaram, a unique educator of 20th century Sri Lanka. The event was commemorated at Ananda Sastralaya, Kotte, scene of his activities as a school principal for 11 years and at Ananda Balika Vidyalaya, Kotte, where Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse unveiled his statue and chaired a public meeting in his honour.

Born on March 29, 1905, the early life of Edward Winifred Adikaram was marked by devotion to the practices of Theravada Buddhism and willingness to live strictly by its principles. At age 14 a talk at the Dhamma school aroused his naturally compassionate disposition and caused him to give up meat-eating.

He became vegetarian not in order to acquire religious merit, he later explained. It had one and only one meaning: it is because flesh invariably came from the killing of animals. Kindness to animals assumed legendary proportions in his life.

Anecdotes about this, as about other traits of his character, are abundant. Some of these stories border on the incredible and some are actually fictitious, but they all show how non-conformist he could be in acting according to his convictions.

As a young man, he entered Colombo University College and offered science and mathematics at the first examination, but later switched to the study of Pali and Sanskrit.

After graduation, he went to England on a government scholarship and entered the London School of Oriental Studies and obtained an M.A. degree in 1931 and in 1933 a Ph.D. based on the thesis "Early History of Buddhism in Ceylon", hailed by the likes of I. B. Horner and A. K. Warder as a model of careful research.

Returning to Lanka, he reverted to his position as assistant teacher at Ananda Sastralaya, Kotte. Though armed with a Ph.D. from London University, he preferred this modest job in a grant-aided school to service under the British government in a more remunerative capacity.

Documents at the British Museum Library had convinced him of the grave injustices perpetrated by the colonial administration of Ceylon. He was therefore keen to join forces with others who worked for the overthrow of the imperial yoke.

A personal friend of leading leftists like N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva and Leslie Gunawardana, he would have joined them in the LSSP, but for the fact that he could not agree with its policy of end justifying the means.

He did not believe that a peaceful society could be built through the use of force. He preferred a non-violent approach to political and economic independence, and for a time collaborated with Mr. Jayawardhana (Jayaramdas) of Wellampitiya, who was a leading Gandhi-inspired movement and advocated the wearing of home-spun cloth and consumption of local food.

In 1934 the Colombo Buddhist Theosophical Society, elevated Dr. Adikaram to the Principalship of Ananda Sastralaya, one of the oldest schools under its management. Dr. A lost no time to create in his school what he regarded as essential aspects of a Buddhist atmosphere.

He made the hostel vegetarian and strictly prohibited tobacco and alcohol in the school premises. When he held a fun-fair to raise funds for the school, he advertised its special features as 'no drinking, no dancing, no gambling'.

Many people complained that he was an 'extremist', nevertheless Dr. A became a very successful principal, earning the A Grade College status for his school within a few years, according to the official grading prevailing at the time.

He championed the cause of Buddhist education at national level and campaigned against Christian missionary activity, although Jesus Christ was a person he profoundly respected. Within a short time he became widely known as a powerful Buddhist worker.

His school was a unique institution brimming with high enthusiasm for the principles he espoused. Those who passed through its portals imbibed at least a little of the Adikaram spirit. Many considered it a privilege to be part of his team.

In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, the British military authorities commandeered the premises of Ananda Sastralaya. Dr. A was compelled to operate his school from 'branches' at Battaramulla, Udahamulla, Matugama, Ruwanwella and Hathagoda.

After the war, Ananda Sastralaya, Matugama, became an independent assisted school and the other four branches became leading government schools in their respective areas.

Around this period Dr. A also founded Vidyakara Vidyalaya, Maharagama (1937) and Anula Vidyalaya, Nugegoda (1940). The latter, starting under the distinguished principalship of Mrs. P. B. Fernando, soon became the premier girls' school in the Nugegoda area.

Dr. Adikaram did all this in pursuit of the principle of 'Buddhist education'. If he was 'extremist' in going all the way with his principles, he was no less uncompromising when he suspected the validity of the very same principles.

He began to be uneasy about many of his own assumptions after reading the works of J. Krishnamurti, the famous Indian religious philosopher, who invited people to question every belief, every pre-conceived notion and every habit of thought.

At this time Krishnamurti had broken away from the Theosophical Movement (which nurtured him and hailed him as the future 'World Teacher') and was proclaiming a message of inward liberation by observation of the ways of one's mind, rejecting the rituals and other paraphernalia of organised religion.

He also rejected nationalism as a fatally divisive force in the world. To Dr. A all this seemed to be very much in tune with the teachings of the Buddha seen in some of the oldest Buddhist texts. He began to lose interest in the trappings of organised religion.

With misgivings about the religious establishment, he naturally began to ask himself if it was proper for him to remain as Principal of a Buddhist school.

In 1945, in a move that took friends and admirers by surprise, he took leave from the Principalship of Ananda Sastralaya and proceeded on a 'spiritual pilgrimage' to India.

The Theosophical Society hosted him at its sprawling headquarters by the beach at Adyar, then the suburb of the city of Madras. He in turn helped the Society by producing a Catalogue of Pali and Sinhala Manuscripts in its library, a well-known centre for Indological research.

After this he undertook an extended tour of India, visiting famed religious gurus like Ramana Maharshi and yogis at Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas. Returning to Lanka after these experiences, he resigned from his prestigious post - at age 41, and at the height of his popularity as a dynamic leader and a man of unimpeachable moral stature.

Leaving Ananda Sastralaya, Dr. A effectively parted company with the social/religious establishment. (However, rather uncharacteristically, arguably also inconsistently, he returned to it later for a few short forays).

A decisive event was his first personal meeting with Krishnamurti in 1947, soon after the latter returned to India since the start of the Second World War.

From then on until 1982 he met Krishnamurti regularly during his annual visits to India. He also organised three Krishnamurti lecture tours to Sri Lanka.

For most of this time, Dr. A was mainly engaged in a process of self-examination - which by its very nature is simultaneously an examination of how religious and social forces condition the psyche of any human being.

From around 1950, he began to hold public discussions about this self-exploration and its significance. He was a skilful communicator whose style of speaking was simple and logical and completely devoid of sentimentally and rhetoric. That he drew audiences shows the attractiveness of the unadorned truth.

The few exceptions to this major pre-occupation must be mentioned. The first was the single-minded support he gave to the Free Education movement of Mr. C. W. W. Kannangara.

In the company of a few similarly inclined activists, Dr. A addressed meeting after meeting in various parts of the country, advocating the adoption of the Kannangara reforms.

The public opinion this campaign generated was the driving force that made the then State Council to accept the Kannangara plan for free education in Sri Lanka from the kindergarten to the university.

Again, in 1954, on a disagreement with the Buddhist Theosophical Society over a matter connected with Ananda Sastralaya, Dr. A entered the fury of BTS politics and offered himself for the post of General Manger of Schools in that organisation. In a keenly contested election, he defeated P. de S. Kularatna, the incumbent manager.

Typically, his two-year tenure as GM/BTS was also marked by controversy. He tried to ban cadeting in BTS schools, saying that military training was incompatible with the tenets of Buddhism. This move provoked furious opposition, and was abandoned by his successors in the BTS who did not share his pacifist ambitions.

Yet again, in 1966, when I. M. R. A. Iriyagolla, a close friend, became Minister of Education in the Dudley Senanayake government, Dr. A accepted nomination to the National Council of Higher Education, precursor to the UGC.

He remained in it as long as Mr. Iriyagolla was Minister of Education. Later, in the early 1970s, he also served for three years as Chancellor of Sri Jayawardhanapura University.

These interventions in educational management remind us of another role that Dr. A played. After his early training at Colombo University College, he remained a keen follower of developments in the world of science.

He was also an ardent observer of the dynamics of nature in its varied aspects, sometimes spending the better part of a morning watching the blossoming of a flower, or the growth of a tendril on a creeper, or the activities of a family of birds or a colony of insects.

All this and his eminent training in languages made him an effective writer on scientific and environmental subjects. He produced a series of textbooks in General Science and edited a news magazine on science for a considerable period of time. In this way he became a pioneer in developing a scientific lexicon in Sinhala.

Based on his talks and discussions with people in various meetings and assemblies, Dr. A published 58 booklets dealing with issues ranging from the ill effects of smoking and meat-eating to complex religious and philosophical topics like meditation, the idea of the self and the teaching of impermanence.

This was a kid of intense communication and was in reality another facet of his role as an educator. His life-long desire was to plant the seeds of a compassionate and sane society.

To this end he established three institutions that he hoped would lead people to an understanding of the causes that make us confused and callous and divisive. The Young Thinkers' Club, the Vegetarian Society and the Krishnamurti Centre are these institutions.

He devoted a great deal of attention to the Krishnamurti Centre because he saw in Krishnamurti's teachings a beacon of much needed light to our confused and embattled minds.

As noted above, he did not see any contradiction in the basic approach of the Buddha and Krishnamurti to the human predicament. His mind too was ardently dedicated to that same approach.

He was essentially a man of religion, convinced by his own explorations that change can come about in the human mind, that primal sensitivity could be restored and selfish desire and consequent suffering eliminated.

It would be correct to say that his faith in the human ability to waken to truths beyond mundane experience remained unshaken to the end.

Casual readers of his later writings there may be who regard him as a rationalist fighting superstitious beliefs or a left-leaning free thinker and social reformer with a scientific bent of mind. Perhaps all these were aspects of his many-faceted personality, but it would be a mistake to regard him as a liberal modernist.

To understand this, one should read what he says on subjects like motherhood and work, abortion, birth control and the modern pre-occupation with economic advancement. Neither was he an indiscriminate follower of Krishnamurti.

He was a social activist having his own way of doing things and his lifestyle was very different from that of Krishnamurti. Rationalist-Buddhist, modernist, Krishamurtian - one of these labels would exactly fit. Like all great persons, Dr. A defies easy description.

With his intervention the Krishnamurti Centre acquired from the UDA a block of land in a scenic location at Beddagana, Kotte. He planned to construct a study centre here for people to read the writings of Krishnamurti and follow audio and video tapes of his lectures and conversations.

It was also meant to be a quiet place for interested people to exit from the hurly-burly life for a few days and take a fresh look at things - a place where you studied yourself rather than other things. Unfortunately, Dr. A did not live to see this dream fulfilled.

It was left to his friends and colleagues in the Krishnamurti Centre of Sri Lanka to build its headquarters here and open it to the public some years after his demise. This chaste Study Centre (208, Beddgana North, Duwa Road, Kotte) on the banks of the Diyawanna Lake stands today as a fitting monument to a unique educator that Sri Lanka produced in the 20th century.

Dr. Adikaram - author, scholar and teacher, founder of schools and institutions, humanist and environmentalist, activist for private and public morality, and above all, explorer of the eternal verities of life - passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of December 28, 1985.