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Point of View
The myth of 'Disenfranchisement' and 'Statelessness'Once again, a diabolical lie has been repeated by the racist Tamil lobby, Nirmalan Dhas of Colombo 3, writing to the ISLAND of 31.8.98 ('Fifteen years after the event...', page 8), makes the accusation - 'Members of the Indian Tamil community in Sri Lanka had been deprived of their citizenship rights by the very first government of independent Sri Lanka as far back as in 1949'.
The fact that 'disenfranchisement' and 'statelessness' were myths and lies cooked up by racist Tamil eelamists, have been explained at length by many reputed analysts (along with facts and figures) over the past few years. However, when repeated attempts are made to perpetuate such lies, it is very important that the truth is also repeated in parallel so that the public is kept aware of the Goebbelsian technique of Tamil racists.
It is essential that we accept the fact that Indian plantation labour were Never citizens of Ceylon at any time prior to 1948. Ceylon and India were British colonies at the time and Indian labour in Ceylon were treated as British colonial subjects (just as much as we Ceylonese were) and being temporary residents in Ceylon, they were granted Limited voting rights by the colonial regime since they were subjects of the British empire. Thus, they were never at any stage, citizens of Ceylon. This means they could not have lost what they never had in the first place.
Under Ceylon citizenship laws at the time, anyone whose antecedents were born here and had continuously lived here for over two generations, could obtain citizenship. Indian labour did not qualify under this law because they had not lived here for over two generations continuously. When in January 1949, the Indian and Pakistani Citizenship Act (IPC Act) was promulgated, it enabled all those Indians continuously resident here for Seven Years from 1st January 1939 to become Ceylon citizens. About 134,000 Indians qualified under this rule. Thus, there were two categories who had no problem in becoming citizens here:-
a) Those Indians who had antecedents who had lived here for over two generations continuously, and
b) Those Indians with continuous residence here for over seven years from 1.1.1939. (134,000 qualified).
The problems regarding citizenship was in relation to the vast majority of Indians who were actually migrant labour with no continuous residence here since 1939. It is a diabolical lie to state that these Indians had been resident here since the Coffee and tea plantation in the 1840's and 1860's respectively. Indian migrant labour (only males) came here on annual contract (like our Middle-East labour). They were never resident here for long and this is proved through annual immigration and emigration records which are available. Continuous residence commenced in 1939 with the beginning of the second World War when these Indians were unable to return to Indian due to travel restrictions. Hence the citizenship concession granted as stated above, under the seven year residence rule since 1939.
The next important issue is whether they became 'stateless'. To become so, they should have;
a) lost their Indian citizenship the moment they arrived here, and,
b) they should have been granted Ceylon citizenship on arrival, which citizenship they are purported to have lost in 1948 so as to end up as 'stateless' souls.
Neither of the above occurred. India never de-franchised them and they continued to remain here as Indian citizens. Also, the November 1949 post-independence Indian constitution, guaranteed continued citizenship to all Indian working abroad. This is confirmed by all discussions and exchanges of letters between Jawaharlal Nehru and D. S. Senanayake where this labour is clearly referred to as 'Indians'. This categorically confirms the fact that they never lost their Indian status. On the other hand, the Colonial government did not grant them Ceylon citizenship. Therefore, there is no way that they could have become either 'stateless' or some kind of floating population without a country.
The other two issues of importance are:-
a) Their voting rights after Ceylon became independent.
b) Their continued status here as migrant labour.
As Indian citizens, they naturally lost their right to vote in an independent Ceylon. They were no longer British subjects and neither were we. Thus, their limited voting rights automatically lapsed on February 4, 1948. It is absolutely mischievous to refer to this as 'disenfranchisement'.
All these Indians were required to register themselves for repatriation to India. Being illiterate, they allowed the Trade Unions to do the paper work. But the Unions and Indian officials had other ideas. Their hidden agenda was to keep all these people here. As a result, the whole registration operation was purposely bungled. The Indian government openly supported this move because they felt it was advantageous for them to plant a large Indian population in the heartland of this island. In fact, Prime Minister Nehru himself, openly supported this diabolical move.
Over the last several decades, most of these Indians have received citizenship. Some, voluntarily went back home to India. Under the 1988 citizenship law, all remaining here are entitled to citizenship. In fact, any alien is entitled to Sri Lankan citizenship simply by swearing an affidavit which cannot be contested. It is said that there have been about 230,000 bogus affidavits submitted and non-existent persons have become citizens. Several lakhs of illegal immigrants who arrived in the 1950's, 60's and 70's have been planted in the Wanni region. There is no question of granting them citizenship.
Citizen-D
Implications of the Common General Paper of the GCE (A/L) examination for selection to Universities
by Dr. Tilokasundari KariyawasamIt has been announced that, beginning September 98, the Government will introduce the most important of the Reforms of the General Education System. These changes target the General Certificate of Education A/L Examination.
It opens with an admirable statement that must be tested. 'It will be designed to assess a pupil's potential for Independent Higher Learning and Thinking. Questions will assess a pupil's ability to understand, analyse and synthesise, to solve problems, to follow instructions to build upon a given information base. In short the CGP will assess a pupils innate potential to bloom in a 'Stand Alone' learning environment in the Halls of Higher Learning (Ceylon Daily News 27.8.98). It is claimed that it is not a general knowledge paper.
It is announced in a hortatory tone raising the voice at points where the author should be strengthening his argument and as we shall see, there are some surprising gaps in the reasoning. It should be read, studied and debate for it raises profound questions. In my opinion this lacks systems exposition of concepts; we are led back and forth over a confusing array of ideas. It is meant to provoke and provoke it does.
They are only 'sloganised thinking'. It provides a sceptical analyses of Higher Thinking Abilities in its implementations. The name of the paper is a misnomer. It is named Common General Paper-common and general imply the same thing. But is said to be neither General Knowledge Paper nor an option test. Then what is it? It is claimed to be a Test on Thinking Abilities.
The reformers' definition of C.G.P. suffers again in its failure to define terms. This time, the terms badly in need of definition are 'Common General. It was stated that 'aptitude test' is a complex term. Hence it was named G.C.P. simply for simplicity's sake (ITN Discussion 1.10.98). It follows that any argument for such a subject definition, on the argument of simplicity will not benefit the students.
We need a more measured analytical approach to assessment in education. We need to stop the tendency to think in simplistic terms about one particular form of assessment being better than another. Consideration of form without consideration of purpose is wasted effort.
The onus of defining thinking skills rest firmly on those who wish to use the authoritarian influence of the officers to secure it. We can reasonably demand that they classify their terms, unless they do this, the quality of their discussion is in danger of being swamped by 'sloganised thinking'.
We should examine this examination in context of development in the economic and cultural spheres within and outside Sri Lanka and in relations to its deeper significance to the individual and society.
Expressive Ability
Analysis of 1972-1995 examination papers suggest that in each years papers mainly Part 1 over 90 percent items could be classified as knowledge i.e. recall or recognition. There were hardly any divergent questions. Few questions tested the application of knowledge and none assessed affective outcomes. The questions employed which were multiple-choice in format, inhibited expressive ability. Pupils were only interested in studying for the examination. Teachers concentrated on facts and discarded thinking abilities. Tuition reinforced note learning. The questions did not adequately reflect the curriculum objectives. The quality of the educational process entirely became examination centered.It is correct to state that any proposal on education should take account of these factors. The reformers, argument is not complete until they give us a comprehensive policy in relation to the C.G.P. It moves simultaneously on three or four levels, continuously jogging backwards and forwards. It exhibits no competence on the discussion of thinking skills, but makes sporadic criticism of existing system. Then C.G.P. is identified as the ideal test on thinking skills. The name of a paper normally suggest what it means. It is acclaimed as a test of Higher Thinking Abilities. Thirty percent of the questions are on general knowledge. Here confusion is worse compounded. The rest of the items do not test high grade, thinking abilities, a High Grade tests on thinking abilities have to be devised with imagination and produced with skill and painstaking care. To call A.C.G.P. as Higher Level Thinking Ability Test is absurd You should call a spade a spade.
Any proposal on education should take account of economic factors as well. Selection pressure is associated with economic factors. In Sri Lanka there was a slow annual average growth of 1.3 per cent between 1970-1977. From 1977 to 1987, the annual growth increased to 4 per cent. This was replaced by a national growth of G.N.P. of 8 per cent between 1992-1993 and 5 per cent in 1993-1994. The annual growth of the labour force declined between 1971-1990 from an annual growth of 2.5 per cent.
It was 2.2 per cent between 1980/81 and 5 per cent from 1980-1996.
The population became more educated and qualified. Serious imbalances between the number of job sectors and job opportunities. Existed, despite economic and educational gains. GCE O/L students increased from 300,000 in 1973 to 501505 in 1997. GCE (A/L) candidates increased from 48,000 in 1995 to 142,236 in 1997.
The reformers claims that CGP in the solution for this grave problem. It is affirmed that it will solve the unemployment problem prevailing in the country. One should be sceptical about in the inaugural of the real benefit of the CGP. The reformers disqualify all psychomotucians. As policy makers look for quick fix solutions to domestic economic problem beyond national boundaries they should attempt to understand and context of assessment, before selecting those which might boomerang. Reformex ostensibly are concerned with the adverse effect of examination as an argument for introducing CGP. By doing so they are heading gradually for a qualified denial of studied rights.
Rat race
The dominance of the selection role of assessment in Sri Lanka, its apparent grips on the educational experience of the Sri Lanka child is deplorable. One need not comment on the stress and anxiety experienced by the young students as they participate in the examination rat race.It can be predicted that the effect of the paper will definitely intensify the examination fever in Sri Lanka, as it is definitely not a paper on 'thinking skills'. It will have adverse effects on the formal system of education and the shadow system of private tuition. Learning will be a commodity to be exchanged in the market of record sheets, mark sheets and grades.
The purpose at any new assessment system must be clearly defined. Different users require different procedures and different techniques. The decision here is to provide for high stakes on entrance, decisions about students. A national examination programme carries with it enormous potential benefits or hazards. To venture on assessing thinking abilities for selection purposes is not attempted even in advanced countries where psychometry is so advanced. It is too ambitious a project as it calls for high ingenuity, patience, time and professionalism. Satisfactory test of thinking abilities have not yet been devised. Thinking skills was a new approach to the teaching of science using activities designed to promote higher level thinking. It was developed through the cognitive acceleration through the Science Education project by Adey P and others in 1991 by the Centre for Educational Studies, King's College, University of London. This research suggest that the achievement of ordinary pupils in ordinary schools can be raised through a programme to develop the intellectual ability of pupils. It was tried out in a few schools. The researches noted a profound and permanent effect on the children's ability to learn new material not only in Science, the subject of the research but also in Mathematics and English. These thinking skills are achieved through the Curriculum. Eventually better thinking makes an important contributions to raising levels of achievement. Nispot says 'By the beginning of the twenty first century, no curriculum will be regarded as acceptable unless it can be shown to make a constitution to the teaching of thinking'. This research study demonstrates how thinking abilities could be achieved through the curriculum.
What has been tried as an expanding research for a learning/teaching situation in England is introduced for severe selection purpose in Sri Lanka (supposition). But the ignorance of the reformers is reflected in the consistent of the test. The content does not include thinking skills. It is a violation of student rights. Assessment does not stand outside teaching, learning but stands in dynamic interactions with it. We must develop a system which supports multiple methods of assessment, but at the same time make sure that each one is used appropriately. None of these has been achieved by this paper.
The essential purpose of an examination is to differentiate among pupils. Pupils performance in high stakes examinations directly affect their chances of being recruited for the most desirable opportunities of higher education, for employment and hence can have a substantial impact on their long term life chances. In Sri Lanka, Egypt and S. Africa education assessment policy has been visibly entangled with major political issues and struggles.
Continued tomorrow
From the book 'The Palm of His Hand' by E.C.T. Candappa's book
He had very few real friends
About the author
E.C.T. Candappa was one of Sri Lanka's been feature writers in the mid-fifties till the seventies. He was an outstanding journalist at Lake House and distinguished himself as a reporter and feature writer. He is now domiciled in Australia but still very much interested in his country of origin. He visited Sri Lanka last year and interviewed many of the personalities featured in this book.
Continued from yesterday
He shied off from new acquaintances fast on the first signs of insensitiveness, crudeness, vulgarity, extra inquisitiveness, belligerence, racism, bigotry of any sort, from bores, braggarts and bounders. He had very few real friends. He could, however, be very civil with anyone.
He took to the newcomer, a recent widower with three sons two of whom worked in the same firm; the other was an army officer.
It was hard to imagine that this gentle person could have bred a man of the khaki.
He was an ardent Buddhist but not a virulently chauvinistic one. The latter was indeed a contradiction. Buddhistic compassion recognised no distinction or exclusiveness.
Sins had been committed in the name of this as of most other religions, Raj reflected. Demagogues perverted every noble sentiment for personal gain and advancement. The memory of arrant hypocrites who had used religion to win the favour of the masses sent a shiver down his spine.
Santiago was like an over-wound clock. One more turn of the key, these were well before the digital and electronic era, and he would have snapped inside. He never stopped talking about his business, his home, his appointments...he could not imagine a world running without him.
The ripples of agitation spread outwards from his bed. Other patients avoided him.
The mandatory urine and blood samples had to be taken. Dracula took the first, and the handsome Amazonian nurse with the ebony skin and red lips came for his blood. And this man succeeded in transforming this gentle nurse into a callous person, even momentarily.
She came with the syringe.
Santiago looked at her nervously.
"What is this for, eh, what are you trying to do. My God, what is this?"
"Now you just relax, Mr Santiago. It’s a very small matter."
"What small matter? Tell me, tell me."
"We only want to get a sample of your blood."
He turned away from her abruptly. "Blood. What for?"
"Now kindly turn this way and give me your arm. There. It won’t take a minute."
"Why do you want a blood transfusion from me? I am a weak man. I don’t know my blood type. Is there an emergency?"
The nurse sighed audibly.
Then without any further comment she jabbed a needle into him, holding his arm down by force.
"My God," he screamed.
"Be quiet," she ordered him. "You are not a child. You’re a disgrace."
He sulked in silence, while she drew the blood. Then she withdrew the needle.
He saw the half filled syringe.
"Blood, my blood," he said in a pained voice.
"Yes," snapped the nurse, "your blood, and there’ll be a lot more of it soon."
Chapter 28
The following morning the tea was brought in by Dracula.Oh, Lord, groaned Raj, the strike is over.
There was no point in trying to strike a conversation with this attendant at any time, and at this hour of the day and immediately after the so called industrial action, he would be more than taciturn. The tea tasted different and the memory of the passed note came back with a blush. Oh, what would she have thought of it? Would she think less of him now? Had he frightened her away? Stupid fool that he had been. What had possessed him to do a thing like that?
The tea would not go down his gullet.
He saw a miserable day ahead of him.
As with most young men who begin a courtship, if this timid and tentative entry into an amorous field could be honoured by such a term, Raj suffered the tortures of suspense.
Even the main event in surgical wards, patients’ operations, in this case, those of Jayawardene, the schoolmaster and the village headman, diminished in importance in his estimation.
They were trundled out more or less inert swathes of nervousness and trundled back quite inert bundles of frozen fear and delirium.
They slept through the afternoon while Raj kept a vigil though not for them but one of palpitating expectancy. Every footfall outside spurred his heart to a gallop.
He could not divert his mind to the tasks of reading or writing although at different times he gave pretence of doing both.
With the visiting hour came the usual hordes but this afternoon a special pageant was staged.
Tradition still held sway, and when the village schoolmaster and the village headman spent time in a hospital, other key village personalities came to offer solace, support and homage.
There were two sets of Buddhist monks and various local government officials who came and bestowed their patronage on the yet-sedated and still-recumbent figures, delivered themselves of platitudes, unasked for advice, dire warnings (that would be disregarded) simply because their position demanded it of them.
They were, after all, the village elders of great weight and substance, and their public expected ponderous statements of them.
They who came to pay homage were in turn fawned upon. The relatives of the patients, thus honoured by the visits of the sage and honourable ones also grew in esteem and importance. They would return to the village and brag about the visitors who had come on the very day of the operation and not, as in the case of lesser dignitaries, on the following day or a few days later.
In the case of Mr Jayasinghe who was a city-born, city-bred Sinhalese, and a member of the western-educated, western-oriented, bureaucratic gentry, he enjoyed at the same time a superiority and contempt among his rural brethren.
Knowing someone in a government department, or even knowing someone who knew someone, was a great advantage in an environment where hardly anything moved unless some palm was lubricated. So there were, apart from his small and loving family, a large crowd of self-seeking well-wishers wanting to mark their attendance. There were also his official subordinates, temporary clerks, quasi clerks, office orderlies called peons, arachchis or the upper crust orderlies who were entitled to wear a red sash and a solemn expression. It was difficult to bribe these minor dignitaries but once their stern exteriors were punctured they settled for larger bribes in keeping with their exalted positions. In some instances it was possible to avoid parting with cash by investing the title arachchi to underlings, such being the magnitude of human vanity.
That night, too, while the regular attendants were not in evidence and the special attendants slumbered Raj became a sort of urinary hero, bearing a pan or pot where Nightingale bore a lamp.
With the coming of the dawn and the passing of the fluid of tension, once again in the d three more patients were indebted to Raj. And three more highly durable bridges of racial harmony were thus built between the Sinhalese patients and the Dravidian Samaritan.
By seven the morning was well begun. The night attendants shuffled off their sleeping tables, the nurses trooped in from their quarters, all powdered and starched, the laundrymen bore their sordid burden of linen, soiled with the malodorous excretions of the maladied horde, the sweat and the drippings and droppings and sputum and vomit and gore, unto the last tear-drops of the dying.
The day began well for Raj, too. At eight, a powdered and starched Miss Hapangama bustled in preceded by a heavy smell of talc and cologne and returned the book he had ‘lent’ the previous day.
And bustled off without a word or a smile.
Raj felt his heart would burst.
He swept the room to check for witnesses but there were none, not even the wily Jayawardene was still deeply asleep, thank goodness.
So Raj took the book to the place where such communications could be read without being discovered, the toilet. And as he opened the book the page opened where a blue folded paper nestled. And with fumbling hands and blazing face he opened it, and in a tiny, awkward, crab-like hand he was to recall in anguish twenty years later, long after she had disappeared from his life he knew not where, she had written an equally bland note to the effect that she thought he was a real gentleman and that she hoped he would keep in touch with "us" after he left the hospital.
But there is in the telegraphy of such notes coded messages. In the very fact that she had responded and that by letter, that she had revealed even a little of her feelings, that she had expressed the hope that they would meet meant, in the highly complex situation in which they were placed, that this nurse who could not marry for four years by a State fiat, that this village damsel from an ultra conservative family, that this Sinhalese Buddhist even wanting to meet a Tamil unmarried and desirable young man, indicated the beginnings of a romance.
In that euphoria Raj thought of the young Ajantha. He went across to see him. Words were now redundant. The lad’s eyes were alight with affection. Well, what had he done? Sat beside the lad while he was asleep and held up an urinal for him. My God, he thought, there were people placing their lives on the line for others, traversing great distances, giving up years of their lives, sometimes a whole lifetime in the service of others. He marvelled at the power of a little love.
Surely, he thought, the combined love of many people committed to a cause, like racial or industrial harmony, is capable of doing so much? He held the boy’s hand and called him malli, as the lad had earlier called Raj aiyya older brother. He also noted, in parenthesis, the versatility of Sinhalese and Tamil languages to meet linguistic needs not covered by English. There was no single word for older brother, or older sister or younger brother or younger sister.
(c) E. C. T. Candappa
(Contd. tomorrow)
