“I feel like an outcast,” says Suransith Gunasekan, as he prepares for a lecture at the conflict study center at Ruhuna University in the Sri Lankan city of Matara.
The 39 year old student says his conviction that peace only can be brought to Sri Lanka by peaceful means is far from a mainstream opinion. Matera, located at the southern tip of Sri Lanka, is the heartland of Sinhalese nationalism and the support for the government and president Majinda Rajakpaksa’s policy of all-out war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) remains strong. “People here really want to go to war. They all believe they can win,” says Gunasekan.
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE| By sharing their experiences and interacting with each other the Nepalese and Sri Lankan students at Ruhuna University say they are now able to look at the conflicts from a different perspective.
That is an opinion he and other students enrolled in a Master Degree Programme in conflict, peace building and development at Ruhuna University seriously contest. The programme held in cooperation with Tribhuvan University in Nepal, Sri Lanka’s Eastern University and the University of Life Sciences in Norway brings together students from Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese and Tamil communities, as well as students from Nepal. After spending one year in Nepal, the students have just started the second part of their programme in Sri Lanka. They have in different ways all been affected by conflicts in their countries, but by sharing their experiences and interacting with each other the students say they are now able to look at the conflicts from a different perspective.
That peace can only be brought to Sri Lanka by peaceful means is far from a mainstream opinion.
“Before I joined this course, I didn’t even know what was going on in Sri Lanka, but these studies have made me realize that the people of Sri Lanka have experienced the same things we have,” says Sanjita Koirala, a Nepalese student, adding: “But in Nepal the conflict was all about changing the social structure. Here in Sri Lanka, it is mainly an ethnic conflict”.
Polarized society
Sri Lanka’s civil war has left deep scars in a deeply fragmented and polarized society. The issue of higher education has not always been helpful in promoting peace or to ease ethnic tensions. On the contrary, it was instrumental in triggering the civil war. After independence in 1948, Sri Lanka’s predominantly Buddhist and Sinhalese majority gradually marginalized the Tamil population. Sinhala was made the official language and a new education policy made it harder for Tamil youths to get into the universities.
Sri Lanka’s civil war has left deep scars in a deeply fragmented and polarized society.
“Education is extremely important among the Tamil population,” says 25-year-old Menilankco Theiventhram, a student at the University of Colombo’s conflict, power and democracy project. “If you want to have recognition in your own society you should be educated. So when this standardization system came in to existence, people were not able to find a way for their careers to move ahead. Then they started agitating, and this was a breaking point in the whole Sri Lankan conflict”.
CHECKPOINT| A LTTE soldier is manning a checkpoint in the east of Sri Lanka.
Theiventhram is undertaking a Master Degree Programme in political science in democracy, conflict and governance studies at the University of Colombo. The programme, which is supported by both the NOMA and the NUFU programmes, is based on international collaboration between the University of Colombo, the University of Oslo and the University of Gadjah Mada in Indonesia. The students come from various backgrounds, some are lawyers, some journalists, and others are politicians or work in foreign embassies. “The programme has enabled us to work with a sizable group of young people in Sri Lanka from all ethnic communities to produce a critical knowledge base on Sri Lankan issues,” says professor and program director Jayadeva Uyangoda.
While there is no short-term solution to the current situation, Uyangoda argues this base of knowledge will be crucial for the country in the years to come. “Sri Lanka requires a long process of transformation and change, so it’s very important for us to work towards building communities of young academics, young intellectuals who can think beyond ethnic agendas, he says.
Not giving up
Suransith Gunasekan has no intention of giving up on his vision that Sri Lanka in future will again be prosperous and peaceful. To educate the population about the real situation is a first major step, he says.
More than 20 years of war is enough. We need a new mentality in society, and we need to use education as a tool.
“Today people are not conscious about what is happening, but scholars can convey the knowledge, and we as university students can convey our opinions,’ he says. “More than 20 years of war is enough. We need a new mentality in society, and we need to use education as a tool,” he says.
Twenty-three-year old Prathibhani Jayasinghe, another student enrolled in the programme agrees. “I’m completely against the war, I don’t think any part can win the war in this situation,” she says, adding: “We can’t change everything by this small group, but we can influence others, make people aware, and make them change their attitudes and their minds”.
See also: History of a bleeding nation