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Wisdom and learning in Jaffna

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 daresay 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.

The newspapers

Rupert Murdoch, press-baron at large, says that the media has to change with the technology or die. That's the Murdoch-endorsed truth, but in Sri Lanka we find that the media is not changing, and neither is the technology.

Well, that is not strictly true, but technological change in this country is so eerily slow it makes one wonder if we are on the information super highway or on the gravel road that is leading to it. At some press offices, we are told, or maybe we can be sure, the technology still caterwauls at cartwheel pace.

But, the technology outside is moving. That's outside the country, and on each individual's laptop or desktop. If press barons here do not keep pace with this movement of technology, we including those in this newspaper can be obsolete sooner than Murdoch can utter the word 'takeover.'

Creeping obsolescence is not a pleasant feeling; but need we be intimidated or cowed by the marauding heft of the electronic age? That will be like resisting the wave, and crashing with the surfboard. We can surf the technology wave and enjoy it, or perish. But, could the Sri Lankan media take that challenge?

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