Twenty nine years ago almost to the day, Prof Ashley Halpe,
then Head, Department of English, University of Peradeniya, addressed about 400
first year students of the Arts Faculty. This was at Ratnayake Hall, Dumbara
Campus. I can’t remember everything he
said. In fact I remember only the following.
‘If 100 children enter
Grade 1 in this country, only one of them will go on to enter university. This is not because the other 99 are
foolish. It is because the (social and
economic) structures don’t permit it.
So, you have a responsibility to those other 99 students. You have to do whatever you can to make sure
that in the future, these numbers are changed for the better.’
There’s no law of course to force anyone to expend effort to
correct such structural flaws. It is a
responsibility that one either accepts or ignores. There are always undergraduates who not only
take it as a personal responsibility but try to foist it on others as
well. Some of it flows less from a
sense of social responsibility than from making plays for political
projects. It is always interesting to
look around and check what the loudest idealists are up to now. I’ve done this exercise many times over the
past three decades and come up with an elaboration of Prof Halpe’s ‘project’.
‘If 100 first year undergraduates decided they’ll devote
their lives to altering the structure in favor of the “99” only one would
remain committed to the project by graduation time. It is no indictment on the other 99 of course
– there are structural and other reasons for “fall out”. If 100 graduates determined at
graduation-point to dedicate the rest of lives to the project, only one would
remain committed at life-end. Again,
that’s no indictment on the other 99 and for similar reasons. That one individual would be bearing the
responsibility of 99x99x99.’
I don’t know if Prof Halpe gave that speech every year. I know one person who wasn’t there that day
because he entered university one year later.
T.M.S.K. Malwewa was not just another wide-eyed undergraduate. He was one of those one-of-a-hundred young
men. He was in the thick of student
politics in the latter half of the eighties.
Unlike others who had some say in the student movement, Malwewa never
lost his cool. He wasn’t into debate and
discussion. He held his views and didn’t
hold personal grudges against those who disagreed. He was, to me, someone on ‘the other
side’. ‘The other side,’ I felt then and
still feel, was mostly made of those who would slip into the ‘Group of 99’ on
graduation day. There was no reason to
believe that Malwewa would be an exception.
I ran into Malwewa more than 25 years after leaving
Peradeniya. He was following a mass
communications course conducted by the Sri Lanka Foundation. I had been roped in to teach English and was
pleasantly surprised to find one face that was familiar. His. He had got a teaching appointment upon
graduation. He was also the school’s
scout master. He kept in touch and a
couple of months ago wanted me to write the foreword to a book he had written, ‘Let
us create a production-oriented education’.
I didn’t meet the deadline and that saddens me. He didn’t badger me to write it. ‘If you have the time,’ he said in a voice as
soft as it was the first time I met him way back in 1986 and through those
antagonistic us-them years that followed.
It’s not that Malwewa aspired ever to be judged
positively. I doubt if he ever wanted to
inhabit other people’s versions of his reality or that he strived to live up to
someone else’s expectations, but to me he is ‘exception,’ one of those ‘1/100’
people. Well, one who carries without
complaint 99x99x99 fellow citizens in heart and mind.
Malwewa was not a slogan-shouting, picket-holding,
speech-making kind of student leader. He
was quiet but there was no doubt that he was a decision-maker. There were many like that. Most of them were killed. Reading this book and talking with him
confirmed once again that this country is so much poorer because it lost the
best men and women of an entire generation.
We should be thankful that a few, like Malwewa, survived and lived lives
in ways that help alter equations. Quietly. Effectively.
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