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Selected Writings by
Sachi Sri Kantha
On Academic
Politics and Religious Zealotry
16 April 2006
On March 19th, the Sunday Observer (Colombo) carried an editorial which was
rather interesting to read. The theme of the editorial, entitled �Wisdom and
learning in Jaffna� was related to the controversial appointment of
Prof.Ratnajeevan Hoole as the new Vice Chancellor to the University of Jaffna,
by President Mahinda Rajapakse.
The mistaken identity of one Hoole to his sibling makes this editorial as a
peculiar kind which blares something about the leaky process of facts-checking
by Colombo journalists. Either the editorialist has been living in a cloud, or
that the President Mahinda Rajapakse didn�t care a hoot about the name of his
nominee. For the benefit of those who missed the editorial, I provide the
verbatim text below.
�Sunday Observer� Editorial �Rajan Hoole hails from an illustrious Jaffna family that churned out men of
almost intimidating intellectual stature. His appointment as Vice Chancellor of
the Jaffna University has been greeted with howls of protest, not entirely
surprising since this chap Hoole, as the rest of his family, is a man belonging
to that intimidating Hoole family tradition.
Hoole lives but his intellectual peers such as Rajini Thiranagama had their
lives snuffed out. Hoole's appointment as VC is now being resisted in
trouble-enveloped Jaffna which has been identified more than any other Sri
Lankan city save perhaps for Peradeniya with intellectual and scholarly ferment.
It would have been comic if it wasn't so tragic that its in this city that
Hoole's appointment is subject to a rather boorish challenge by various elements
who identify themselves as being pursuant of the Jaffna intellectual tradition.
They say that Hoole is a fool who turned his back on Jaffna's paramount concern
of the age and everyone knows what that's supposed to be, correct? But it was
second nature for Hoole to protest when Jaffna's intellectual life came under
heavy cannon-fire from the various party sycophants hacks and soap box orators
who were in their estimation upholding any Jaffna man's credo which was for
independence from the bonds that tied them to the Sri Lankan Sinhala state.
Any other form of domination or intimidation has to be tolerated until the final
emancipation from this bondage was accomplished, or so went the theory. It was
the most egregious kind of linear thinking that those who grew up in Jaffna's
intellectual tradition such as Hoole could not relate to or identify with.
Rajini Thiranagama resisted this kind of apostasy with a spirited vehemence that
transformed her into a bicycle riding irrepressible and irreverent sadhu-like
legend in her own time.
Before she or her intellectual compatriots knew it, they were deemed to have
crossed the line. Their intellectual life came under scrutiny of the crosshairs
of Jaffna's moral police and anyone who would knows anything about Jaffna's
conflict culture would know what that means. But, Hoole stubbornly persisted in
his scrutiny of human rights violations in Jaffna, and in so doing he kept faith
with the highest intellectual traditions that all of Jaffna has sworn by for
generations.
It's this same Rajan Hoole who has now been appointed Vice Chancellor of the
Jaffna University under the hand of the President. Ostensibly the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam are not hysterical about this exercise of Presidential
prerogative. What we hear is the regular fairy story that the �people of Jaffna�
not to mention its student population are rankled by the fact that Hoole was
appointed.
So here we are, hearing the same litany that Jaffna needs to be saved from its
most illustrious products, which we are told is the opinion of Jaffna's
scholarly student population which grew up adoring the same heady intellectual
culture in which their mentor, the Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna university grew
up and was nurtured.
We take it then that there is some anti-learning bug that has bitten the Jaffna
student populace, which should be scary to the LTTE, which fiercely protects the
Jaffna Tamil heritage of scholarly pursuit as an end in itself. We would have to
believe that the LTTE is scared, going by what the organisation's theoreticians
have written by way of defending the culture and ethos of the Tamil majority
North and East and of Jaffna.
In that context, we dare say that this organisation, rebellious in the grain,
would applaud the appointment of Hoole, as the man has been unwavering in his
pursuit of his ideal in life, as much as the LTTE hierarchy has been steadfast
in their pursuit of their own ideals which they swear by.�
My response to the editorial
It is revealing from the text that the editorialist is a pretentious
exhibitionist of his vocabulary. He had thrown around phrases like,
�anti-learning bug�, �linear thinking� and �moral police�. But the exhibitionist
couldn�t get the name of President�s appointee correctly. I sent an e-mail to
the editorial desk of Sunday Observer, mentioning the goof of the editorialist
on April 4th, for which I have yet to receive an acknowledgment. The punchlines
of my e-mail were as follows:
�I just read with a sigh, the editorial 'Wisdom and learning in Jaffna'
[Mar.19], relating to the appointment of the new Vice Chancellor for the
University of Jaffna. You should be a fool, to mis-identify the individuals. It
was not Rajan Hoole-who was not appointed-, but his brother Ratnajeevan Hoole�The
real appointee, is merely a political sycophant and a carpet-bagger [to use the
American political phrase] who got himself nominated by his sin-eating
techniques.�
Should the coolie hacks be faulted?
On after-thoughts I inferred that I shouldn�t have been too hard on the
Sinhalese editorialist of Sunday Observer. Though the nominee for Jaffna
University�s Vice-Chancellorship denies this for public consumption, since the
identities of Hoole siblings � Rajan Hoole and Ratnajeevan Hoole � have blended
and merged to form a composite, the editorialist couldn�t be faulted for his
lapse. Also, it would be too much to expect from coolie hacks of Sinhalese State
to comprehend why this particular selection to the top dog rank of the Jaffna
University had raised such a resentment from Eelam Tamils. To put it in a
nutshell, (1) The published paper trail of Ratnajeevan Hoole demonstrates that
his popular writings border on anti-Hindu religious zealotry, which is rather
unbecoming of an enlightened scholar. (2) The past professional record of this
academic also shows, he is a carpet bagger and he has yet to pay his
professional dues to the University of Jaffna, in comparison to his two
competitors.
Grades of Tamil academics
Why is it that Ratnajeevan Hoole�s appointment has raised animated criticism
from Eelam Tamils? Non-Tamils, like the editorialist of the Sunday Observer,
deserve to know. Based on the criterion of contributions to community welfare,
the the Tamil academics could be ranked in three grades; memorable, mediocre and
menacing.
In the past, Eelam Tamils have produced excellent academics who were Christians.
These include Fr.Xavier Thaninayagam,
Prof.Christie Eliezer and
Prof.Jeyaratnam
Wilson. These academic icons served the then two primary universities of Ceylon.
Apart from their exemplary credentials in their chosen disciplines, their
contributions to the community welfare have also been memorable. In 1960s and
early 1970s, these intellectual giants left the universities when they faced
covert political intimidation from sin-eating sycophants. A few Tamil Christians
like Prof.K.D.Arudpragasam had formidable credentials in their chosen
disciplines, but their contributions to the community welfare have been somewhat
mediocre.
I knew Prof.Arudpragasam personally since I was one of his students at
the Dept.of Zoology, University of Colombo between 1972 and 1976, when the
media-wise standardisation was implemented by the then ruling coalition
consisting of Sinhala-chauvinist SLFP, Trotskyist LSSP and the emaciated
Communist Party. Ratnajeevan Hoole represents a third category, who while
possessing bragging credentials about their academic expertise, have myopic
vision burdened by religious zealotry. The paper trail of this third category of
academics have been rather menacing to the Tamil community welfare. It is not a
coincidence that Ratnajeevan Hoole replaced Prof.Arudpragasam in the University
Grants Commission (UGC) panel, for the �token Tamil� member, following
Prof.Arudpragasam�s death on Aug. 7, 2003. Hoole was anointed into the UGC panel
on Oct.14, 2003.
A Peep into the Past
Lets have a peep into history; even the very first top administrator appointment
to the then University of Sri Lanka (Jaffna Campus) in Aug.1974 was
preferentially based on local politics than on seniority or other merits. This
was in the aftermath of the 4th International Tamil Conference Seminar held in
Jaffna in January 1974, which was timidly �boycotted� by the coterie of Tamil
Marxist-Communist Progressives�.
Prof.K.Kailasapathy then received the nod from
the then prime minister Srimavo Bandaranaike, since he sported the political
label of �Marxist -Progressive Academic�. Then the Communist Party and the
Trotskyist LSSP cohabited with the Sinhala-chauvinist SLFP. The by-election to
the Kankesanthurai constituency was long overdue, and the Communist Party cabal
who were influential in the selection process preferred Prof.Kailasapathy over
Prof.S.Vithiananthan whose stock had risen high among the Tamils because of his
defiance to the then ruling Government and near-successful handling of the
International Tamil Conference in Jaffna.
As historian K.M.de Silva had noted in his overview of the Sri Lankan university
system,
�The [Jaffna] campus was established for political as much as for
�academic� reasons. Perhaps the former � a desire to show a concern for the
welfare for the Tamil minority � was the prime factor. The financial resources
for the establishment of the new university were obtained by the simple device
of using for this new venture funds allocated to the Colombo campus.� [source:
Minerva, 1978 summer; vol.16, no.2, pp.251-272]
When Prof.Kailasapathy�s first three-year stint came to an end in July 1977,
following the General Election held in that month, the Communists had been
thrown out by the people and his chances of receiving a re-appointment turned
out to be nil. Then only, Prof.Vithiananthan was nominated as the Second
President of the Jaffna Campus from Aug. 1977. Nevertheless, Kailasapathy was
able to save his name and retain his stature as a respectable academic until his
premature death in 1982, despite his allegiance to the �Marxist-Progressive�
label, because he did not offend the religious sentiments of Tamil populace.
In
this sense, Ratnajeevan Hoole is at a disadvantage. His past as an anti-Hindu
driveler, combined with his sin-eating credentials to the ruling Sinhalese
politicians, serve as impediments for the Tamil populace to look up to him as an
independent-minded academic leader, who places community welfare ahead of his
selfish and convoluted motives. This indeed is a pity.
American revolutionary history teaches a little about the pathetic plight of
collaborators, even among the academics. Count Rumford (aka Benjamin Thompson,
1753-1814) was a scientist of merit in colonial America. But he was chased out
from the newly independent United States of America because of his (1) insidious
role as a collaborator with the British forces, and (2) abrasive personality.
Parallels between the careers and plights of Count Rumford and Ratnajeevan Hoole
are glaring.
Why the Hoole Hypothesis was not tested?
For the past 15 years or so, Hoole siblings [Rajan and Ratnajeevan] had spent
much of their energy foul mouthing Eelam Tamil nationalism. In their projected vision, the Sinhalese Sri
Lankan state has been more reasonable and more rational than the LTTE. Here is
an excerpt from a paper co-authored by Ratnajeevan Hoole with his wife, which
propagates this jaundiced hypothesis:
��in Sri Lanka, there is new hope. A new generation of academics admitted since
the late 1980s without communal preferences, are moving into important positions
and they appear to be more impartial. A new government elected in December 2001
has embarked on a peace initiative with the Tamil militants, and many of the
hurdles faced by Tamils from the government side have been removed from early
2002�� [source: Current Science (Bangalore), 25 December 2003, vol.85, no.12,
pp.1680-1684]
The validity and truth in this sun-shine version of Hoole hypothesis could have
been tested, if Ratnajeevan Hoole had come forward to contest the vice
chancellorship of either the University of Peradeniya (where he had worked for
the past decade) or the University of Moratuwa (which was his alma-mater). These
are two Sri Lankan universities where he has reasonable claims for aspiring for
the top administrator rank, if one assumes (as per Hoole hypothesis) that
elections/selections are not based on partiality and anti-Tamil racism is
nothing but a fallacy in Sri Lanka. Rather than achieving this objective,
Ratnajeevan Hoole�s carpet bagging run for the vice chancellorship of the
University of Jaffna was nothing but a demonstration on the fallacy of his own
hypothesis.
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