Minister for Kajupuhulan Professor Dharmistha Fernando

By Usvatte-aratchi

(August 25, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) One of the curious and even trivial aspects of the resplendent 2000 year old culture of this land is the usage Minister Professor (say) Fernando. We are not the only land in which university professors have been elected or appointed to ministerial office. Dr. Manmohan Singh in the land next door, was a distinguished Professor of Economics long before he became the Minister Of Finance in India and later Prime Minister. So was Prime Minister Narasinghe Rao, although in a different discipline. Yet I had not read of them as Minister Professor Manmohan Singh or Minister Professor Rao. In China I had not come across that expression, although it is likely that some university professors were appointed as Ministers, although the number there is a small fraction of the number in our country. (If we add up all the ministers including those in Provincial Councils in our country, there is one minister per every 180,000 people compared with about one per one million people in US and several million in India and China.) In US, well known university professors have held high ministerial office, yet I do not recall any one being called Secretary Professor: Henry Kissinger was Secretary Kissinger; Jean Kirkpatrick was Secretary Kirkpatrick; Lawrence Summers is Secretary Summers. Then why do we have the usage Minister for Kajupuhulan Professor Fernando?

I do not have a good answer but let us speculate. In our land ministers are not only immeasurably wealthier than university professors but also infinitely more powerful than university professors. How misters or other holders of high public office become so rich is something unknown, except among those who gossip. Ministers travel in high powered BMW limousines, are protected by 20 or so soldiers, travel overseas first class frequently and stay in the best hotels during their sojourns and their incomes from government are a high multiple of professors’ wages. Professors often travel by bus locally, and in coach class if they ever go overseas .They would stay with friends or acquaintances, as what the government pays professors as subsistence barely suffices to eat two meals a day. They have no protection even from their marauding students. If a minister appears anywhere in this land, hundreds of people would fall at his/her feet and attend to every whim of his, no matter how unreasonable. They would listen with rapt attention to whatever rubbish a minister speaks. And they speak a lot of rubbish. A university professor would be lucky if anyone so recognised him, nobody would listen to him politely whatever his intellectual achievements, no matter what he had to tell them.

It is peculiar that people insist on calling themselves professor even several decades after ceasing to perform the functions of a university professor several decades ago. Professor is a job title in the university, just as much as registrar or clerk Grade II is. In our country, they call themselves professor long years after they ceased to do that job. Some of them get a designation professor emeritus, but it is rarely used. There is no minister who carries that usage, Minister Professor Emeritus Dharmista Fernando. Further the term professor varies in its usage among societies: in France, ‘professeur’ is a teacher wherever, school or university; in US, all university teachers are professors, some assistant, some associate and some full. A very select few of extra-ordinary distinction and erudition like Amartya Sen at Harvard and Edward Taub at Alabama are designated university professor. In our country professors are appointed on the basis of their work including teaching, administration and research. They become Senior Professors with the efflux of time. Serving time is so paying in our country.

Yet why do ministers keep the title to which they are not entitled tagged onto their magnificent title minister? As you know, there are many professors who became ministers but hardly anybody who was a minster who became a professor. So the ranking seems clear: a minster’s job is far more desirable than that of a professor. The public wouldn’t care less if a minister were formerly a professor or failed at the GCE O’Level Examination. All they care for is the wealth and the power of the minister, which Minister for Kajupuhulan Professor Dharmista Fernando would have In plenty whether no matter whether kajupuhulan were completely out of season. Our ministers are men and women for all seasons.

-Sri Lanka Guardian