Affiliating Trinco university campus with Anuradhapura: civil society calls for protest

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2013, 12:33 GMT]
In one of the worst moves of educational genocide of Eezham Tamils, efforts are now being undertaken to affiliate the Trincomalee Campus of the Eastern University with the Rajarata University of Anuradhapura, informed sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet on Thursday. The university-level educational institutions of Tamils in Jaffna and Batticaloa, started by the missionaries in the 19th century, became secondary schools when the British rule transferring power to the Sinhalese towards its closing days, encouraged only a Colombo-centric education. Later, when the Tamils demanded a university after the so-called independence, they wanted it to be based in Trincomalee. Affiliating the Trincomalee Campus with the Sinhala University at Anuradhapura is the height of educational genocide, said, Tamil academic and civil circles in the East.

Will the powers that are interested in conducting ‘military exercises’ in Trincomalee in partnership with the genocidal Sinhala military will at least stop the educational genocide, asked the civil and academic circles in the East, who have called for intense agitation in unison by all Tamil-speaking people in the island and outside.

In the post-Mu’l’livaaykkaal years, Colombo was systematically conspiring to Sinhalicise the Trincomalee Campus of the Eastern University. First it started sending more number of Sinhala students to the Trincomalee Campus. Even Tamil students from Trincomalee were sent to Batticaloa. Later, the fellow Sinhala students with the backing of the occupying Sinhala military often intimidated the Tamil students who became ‘minorities’ in the university of their own land. Now Colombo wants to affiliate the campus with the university in Anuradhapura.

The Trincomalee Campus should evolve into Trincomalee University. It cannot be snatched away from Batticaloa and be affiliated with Anuradhapura, the civil-academic circles in the East said.

The long educational traditions of Trincomalee will totally lose their identity if the university campus goes affiliated with Anuradhapura. The Eastern University in Batticaloa has a responsibility in waging the struggle and in developing the Trinco campus into a full-fledged university. The struggle has to be waged by all the Tamils concerned in the island and outside, the civil-academic circles urged.

Trincomalee was long been a centre for Tamil scholarship and education. In the 19th century, when the Tamil classics in the palm leaves were brought to the light of print in Tamil Nadu, many of the manuscripts, including the manuscript of Chilappathikaaram, have gone from Trincomalee.

Some years ago, catering to the requirements of Tamil-speaking Muslims, Colombo was agreeable to create the South Eastern University in the Ampaa’rai district of the East. When it comes to the Trincomalee Campus, rather than making it Trincomalee University, why Colombo wants to affiliate it with Anuradhapura that too by delinking it from the Tamil university in Batticaloa, ask the civil-academic circles in the East.

This is a struggle that has to be waged at international level, especially addressed against Washington and New Delhi, whose competitive interest on Trincomalee is prepared to abet genocide to any extent, commented diaspora activists calling for responses in Tamil Nadu and in the diaspora.

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