Universities and the modern intellectual

by Prof. Wiswa WARNAPALA

I am grateful for having been given the opportunity of speaking before this Convocation for the external degree graduands of the University of Peradeniya. A convocation of a University is a special event, and such an event, because of its singular importance, could be used to discuss questions of common interest to the universities in general and the academic community in particular.

Therefore, I would like to make use of this opportunity to examine certain issues pertaining to university education in Sri Lanka and propose a couple of corrective measures that are necessary and desirable to enhance the quality of university education, through which a vibrant intellectual culture could be established in our universities which, in the last two decades, witnessed a decline as centres of learning.

Several factors could be attributed to this visible decline in the learning culture of the universities.

Before I focus my attention on those factors, I would like to refer to the beginnings of university education in Sri Lanka as the legacies of the initial period still affect the system.

Sri Lanka is a free sovereign country which requires men and women with requisite qualifications to accelerate the process of economic and social development in a world which is rapidly changing due to the impact of both science and technology.

In the last decades, due to a variety of both local and global factors, the responsibilities of the people, specially those belonging to the intellectual community of the island, have grown in size and intensity.

Our educational institutions, primarily the universities as institutions of higher learning, need to make quick adjustments to fit the citizen for the great task of nation building.

Universities, as you are well aware, were undoubtedly one of the most significant creations of the modern world. It was the institution of the university which created modes of intellectual discipline and laid the foundation for a scientific, intellectual culture.

The rapid growth of universities in this country, as in other parts of the world, testified to the social and intellectual need which they were fulfilling.

They brought into existence an entirely new class of educated men and women-like the graduands who are present here today-academics and intellectuals as a breed of scholars and teachers who rather reluctantly or unconsciously changed certain aspects of our society. In this way, the universities, since the establishment of the university college in 1921 and the creation of the independent autonomous university of ceylon in 1942, came to occupy a unique and key position in our society as major catalysts for change. One major aspect of the system is that it is totally dependent on the State, and they, therefore, are first and foremost State institutions enjoying an enormity of intellectual power and academic freedom. It is from this great institution that liberal values and ideas emanate; they, within the framework of scholastic education, in the initial phase, discussed issues and problems of an intellectual nature with remarkable freedom and commitment.

The universities, during this phase, were national in character, and they functioned as national centres of learning, and the intellectual culture was very much national in orientation; they were able to establish a fundamentally useful link between the colonial university and the modern world.

The Colonial University, despite a few negative characteristics, was a national University which encouraged the students of all ethnic groups to make use of the University as a centre of learning.

During this particular period, the university of ceylon, for more than three decades, gave expression to both robust intellectual conservatism and progressive radicalism, and this, in my view, was partially due to the dominance of traditional disciplines within the University.

A liberal learning tradition had been created and the tensions, which we see in the system today, were not there to de-stabilise the system which has expanded in the last three decades. The Universities have unquestionably, from their inception, been the major contributors to knowledge, world culture and civilization. It is in this context that my concerns need to be expressed as I am addressing an intellectual audience. No university can develop without a certain standard of intelligence, public spirit, commitment and devotion to national interest, and such characteristics penetrate into a society through its intellectual community. In other words, it is the function of universities and other tertiary institutions to create an atmosphere in which the above qualities may be developed and imparted to the individuals coming under the influence of such institutions. It is in this context that I would like to import a couple of ideas from the celebrated German Sociologist, Max Weber who saw science as a vocation.

He, in fact, asked the following question - What are the prospects of students - here the reference is to the postgraduate engaged in research-who is resolved to dedicate himself professionally to science in University life? Both in Germany and America, the arrangement is that during his youth the academic man or the University’s young intellectual, is free to do scientific work. Max Weber, in fact, stated that in the field of science only he who is devoted solely to the work at hand has “personality”. It is up to the particular intellectual to lift the scientist to the height and dignity of the subject he pretends to serve.

There is a fundamental connection between the Universities and the development of scientific thought, for which the University intellectual largely contributed through both teaching and research, and this began in the mid-nineteenth century. Intellectual life of a university is enriched through scientific work and research, and the degree of specialisation, which is a very special aspect of Universities’ academic activity, increased research in the respective fields, thereby giving birth to a strong community of intellectuals. More often the arts man is more glaringly ignorant of science than the scientist is of humanities.

The mutual aversion and the dissatisfaction resulting from the traditional anti-thesis can perhaps be overcome by combining scientific and arts subjects in a wide ranging syllabus that will effectively blend the two into a coherent intellectual medium. It is my view that Sri Lankan academics, who still prefer to remain in established academic departments, should give thought to evolving a flexible university curriculum which could accommodate this principle. It is through such a scheme that useful intellectual, with a very modern and national outlook could be produced in this country. Any society, which aspires to pass from a state of economic development and traditional culture, into a modern society, depends on the intellectuals.

This has been the view of Edward Shils who has published on the role of intellectuals in society. Today the establishment of a modern society involves, fundamentally, a good system of education which is expected to produce special skills and a basic type of knowledge that are necessary for the development of the country. It is an accepted principle that the middle class has been the vital instrument of progress in any society and University intellectuals, for that matter, all intellectuals, belong to the middle class. In the developing countries like that of Sri Lanka, the intellectual community, which is a small segment of the society, has to take on many of the functions that have been performed by groups in modern Western countries.

The Sri Lankan intellectual community, which comes primarily via the Universities, is in a unique place, and it has been assigned a vital role in the affairs of the nation.

Therefore, what needs to be done is to produce the right number and the right kind of intellectuals for public and administrative and executive functions and also for the truly intellectual activities.

The universities, therefore, must see to the adequate production of intellectuals and they must be equally equipped and capable of tackling the various issues and problems faced by the country. On the other hand, the State, through the disbursement of resources, should make adequate provision of conditions that will help them to effectively perform functions that are required of them.

According to the English historian, Eric Hobsbawm, the word “intellectual” is being understood to mean anyone who earns or looks forward to earning his living in an occupation which is chiefly recruited from those who have passed a certificate of some kind of academic education or its equivalent.

The definition used here by Hobsbawm converges with the more familiar conception of the intellectual as someone using his or her intellect. It again is fundamentally and integrally related to the occupational aspect.

Nobody denies that a modern country can function without a community of intellectuals, from whom the politicians, administrators, businessmen, economists, judicial officers, physicians, engineers and teachers emerge as the agents of change in a given society. As Edward Shils says, a country needs a body of intellectuals who are creating, thinking, discovering and performing those tasks that are at the heart of the intellectual process and they, as Yogesh Atal says, should not be servile to the ideas and traditions of the metropolis from which they have gained political independence. It is in this context that we need to look at the interpretation of Yogesh Atal who put forward a strong case for the growth of an autonomous indigenous intellectual tradition to emancipate the “captive mind” in our part of the world.

In making this suggestion, he is not advocating an overthrow of all knowledge emanating from the West. This means that the intellectual tradition must promote an indigenous approach to research and scholarship.

It, therefore, means that the modern intellectual needs to derive inspirations from the indigenous tradition and this needs to be converted into a creative fusion of the indigenous tradition with the modern intellectual tradition. The national intellectual tradition, instead of remaining embedded in the indigenous tradition, should pave the way for a fusion of both ancient and modern ideas to help the country to move towards advancement. The indigenisation of both research and scholarship is a vital necessity, for which the country needs a national intellectual tradition.

The question is whether this tradition could be promoted through the existing network of universities which, to a certain extent, is based on ethnicity. The first Unitary University of Sri Lanka, established in 1942, came to be organised for all communities of the island.

In 1942, the University of Ceylon was started with 904 students, and they included 519 Sinhalese, 289 Tamils, 54 Burghers, 25 Muslims and 17 others. This was the composition of the student community in 1942. In terms of their religious background, the following figures are given for the year 1946; 64.5% were Buddhists, 19.8% were Catholics, 1.5% were Christians and 6.6% were Islam.

The change in the ethnic representation can be explained by the changes in the educational system which expanded the equality of opportunity in education. The argument which I want to put forward is that all ethnic communities were represented in the annual intake and this fostered a student culture based on understanding, unity and harmony. Unfortunately, to-day, due to the nature of the ethnic conflict, the universities in the North and East, are functioning as universities confined to a single ethnic group and they serve parochial and regional interests, and this, in my view, is not at all in the interest of the national identity of the University which is expected to promote an intellectual culture which, again, is national in character. It is up to the intellectual community of the respective University to play the role of a truly national intellectual institution without getting itself influenced by fundamentalist and separatist ideas and parochial interests. This has happened primarily because of the fact that student intake came to be confined to a single ethnic community and the reason was the security consideration which prevented the authorities from sending students of all communities to the Universities in the North and East.

The medium of instruction was yet another factor.What needs to be noted is that Tamils and Muslims have been given placements in all the universities in the country. According to the intake in 2006/2007 academic year, the entire system had 13,356 Sinhala students, 2,488 Tamil students, 1047 Muslim students and 34 in the others category.

This shows that the universities in Sri Lanka, except for those three universities in the North and East, are primarily national Universities which are multi-ethnic and multi-religious in character. In my view, we do not propose to encourage universities based on ethnicity, and the Ministry of Higher Education, through the UGC, proposes to implement a policy to maintain the national character of the universities through the intake of students as well as through the recruitment of the academic staff.

There are 3,117 Sinhalese, 562 Tamils and 171 Muslims. The entire academic staff of the University of Jaffna is Tamil; all the 274 members of the staff are Tamils.The Eastern University has 143 academic staff members, out of which 143 are Tamils; there are seven Muslims.

The situation with regard to the South Eastern University is quite the opposite; it has an academic staff of 91, out of which 76 are Muslims; in addition there are 4 Sinhalese and seven Tamils.

This kind of composition of the academic staff needs to be changed immediately in order to restore a national intellectual culture in the universities of Sri Lanka. Any attempt to build an academic staff strictly on the basis of ethnicity needs to be condemned; it was the ethnic conflict and the need to promote a separatist ideology which has resulted in this situation, the dangerous dimension of which needs to be rectified through a broad policy of recruitment. At present, there is an over-supply of intellectuals with parochial and regional agendas; their outlook is not national as they have not inter-acted with intellectuals of all communities.

In such an environment, equal opportunities do not exist for fostering creativity in the intellectuals of the university. It does not mean that all intellectuals need to be creative; what is needed is an environment for creativity and interaction with other intellectuals, a fundamental requirement for one to develop vistas of knowledge. It is in this context of the matrix of interaction that the intellectuals can generate their own individual interpretation of the traditions, issues and problems of the given environment.

Then only a robust national intellectual culture can be restored in the universities which are now emerging as global centres of learning. Through such a set of realistic policies, an indigenous intellectual elite, committed to national unity and harmony, could be created in this country. An Intellectual community needs indigenisation so that they can contribute their best to the development of this country. An intellectual, in the modern sense, needs to be guided by intellectual detachment, and this is a requisite condition of the type of influence that any modern society must allow for, not only for the pursuit of intellectual ends, such as scientific truth but for the consolidation and improvement of the polity.