Chomsky’s criticism of PM in PhD proposal: Sri Lankan envoy flagged concern over SAU action against professor

The notice issued to the research scholar also flagged a private YouTube video of an interview with Chomsky, cited in the scholar’s proposal, in which the linguist is heard saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes from a “radical Hindutva tradition” and is attempting to “dismantle Indian secular democracy” and “impose Hindu technocracy.”

SAU is an international university sponsored by eight SAARC countries, and Sri Lanka is a member state of its Governing Board. Perera, who taught sociology and was a founding member of the department at SAU, left the institution after an inquiry was initiated against him. He was the only Sri Lankan professor on campus. There are about 55 teachers at SAU, of whom roughly six, including Perera until recently, are foreign faculty.

The action against Perera prompted Sri Lankan High Commissioner Kshenuka Senewiratne to intervene on April 23 in a meeting with SAU President KK Aggarwal, in which she is learned to have expressed her “concerns” regarding “an intended inquiry” against Perera.

During this meeting, the High Commissioner is learned to have conveyed that she hoped the matter would be “resolved in a fair and amicable manner in the spirit of academic freedom safeguarding the reputation of the person and the University,” and suggested that “the research project could be easily rejected at that juncture, as it remained a mere proposal.”

Following the April 23 meeting, Senewiratne wrote to Aggarwal on May 12, to state: “With Sri Lanka being a member state of the Governing Board of South Asian University, you would appreciate that as its Government representative, this situation is extremely disconcerting. I am constrained to observe that to date there has been no detailed response regarding the status of the inquiry, which is understood to have taken place. In fact, there was a paucity of information even when I originally broached the subject during the meeting (on April 23)…”

She further wrote that she would be “thankful to be informed of the present status and relevant details of the inquiry…”

The letter also mentioned that the “intended inquiry” against Perera, apart from the research proposal, was also related to the “screening of an award-winning Sri Lankan movie ‘Whispering Mountains.’”

The screening of the film, which is about young people in Sri Lanka committing suicide en masse and the government blaming it on a supernatural virus, was organized by the professor for a limited number of students on April 9. One student is learnt to have complained about the selection criteria for attending the screening.

The Sunday Express reached out to Perera, who declined to comment.

The university did not respond to this newspaper’s questions on the issue, especially the meeting and letter written by the High Commissioner.

When contacted, a spokesperson for the Lankan High Commission declined to comment saying this was an ongoing inquiry. The spokesperson said: “The High Commission’s association with this matter is based on Prof Sasanka Perera being a Sri Lankan national and the only Sri Lankan academic at SAU.”

A cultural anthropologist, Perera holds a Master’s and PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been Chairman of the Department of Sociology (2011-2014), the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences (2011-2018), and the Vice President of SAU (2016-2019).  Prior to that, he was with the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, for 20 years. Perera was also the Founding Chairman of the Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture (2003-2010).

Perera is known to have taken voluntary retirement from the university and July 31 was his last day on campus. The PhD scholar, who was also issued a show cause notice, has apologised to the university administration.