Men of Stone: A Reflection on Thomia

Priyan Dias, Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, presents a detailed assessement of Thomia from an Old Boy’s point of view (orig. pub. in the Island, 14viii25)

Richard Simon’s monumental two-volume history of S. Thomas’ College runs into 869 quarto-sized pages, inclusive of endnotes but excluding front matter and indices of subjects and persons. The book is extremely well written in a very erudite but engaging style, and is unique in that the history of the school (founded in 1851) is interpolated with that of Sri Lanka (i.e. its political, economic, ecclesiastical and educational landscape), covering the 200 years from 1801 to 2001. In fact, the book is subtitled, “The entangled histories of Lanka and her greatest public school”. I cannot, in this article, hope to be truly representative of Simon’s magnum opus, but will focus on aspects and themes that struck me. Apart from being purely illuminating and both sobering and inspirational, history can serve as a critique of the present and I make some attempts at this, too.

One of the chapters in Volume I is titled “Men of Stone” – referring, of course, to the Thomians fashioned by Warden William Stone. But all Thomians, as well as S. Thomas’ itself, are often described by the term ‘grit’ (the title of a chapter in Volume II) – literally small pieces of stone, but used metaphorically to characterise the trait of perseverance. SWRD Bandaranaike himself is portrayed as displaying this attribute through his calm demeanour on his deathbed, after being fatally shot down while in office as Prime Minister.

The chapter on Warden Stone is titled “The Cornerstone”, reflecting his central role in the school, not only in shaping its values but also in overseeing its transition from Mutwal to Mt. Lavinia. I recall my grandfather saying that early Thomians were called Gal Palliye’ Kollo (boys from the stone church), making the attribution through by analogy with the Anglican cathedral that stood on their Mutwal premises. As you may have guessed, the above serves to justify the title of this article.

Simon identifies four key wardens of the school, giving the chapters on them appropriate titles – Rev. Edward Miller (1878-1891) is “The Paragon”, Rev. William Buck (1896-1901) is “One of the Boys”; Rev. Stone (1901-1924) is dubbed “The Cornerstone” and Rev. Reginald de Saram (1932-1958) is hailed as “The Defender”). The author speaks highly also of Neville de Alwis (“The Pragmatist”, 1983-1998), who is credited with a restoration of the college after somewhat of a decline. As you may gather, the titles of Simon’s chapters are as intriguing as their contents.

The difficulty of finding both funds and suitable headmasters, or “wardens” as they are known at S. Thomas’) were serious problems in the early years of the school, with the Bishop of Colombo having to intervene from time to time to remedy these deficiencies. Edward Miller’s tenure finally put the school on a firm footing after a near-bankruptcy brought about by the collapse, in 1880, of the coffee industry on which Ceylon's economy was critically dependent. The patience, humility and fortitude of the Paragon would have been a key factor in the stabilisation of the school. We should marvel at the commitment of these early pioneers of modern education in Sri Lanka, and, indeed, try to emulate their willingness to leave the comforts of the familiar for service in the uncomfortable.

Although the youthful William Buck was warden for only six years, he is probably immortalised for his statement on the tension between a public school’s intra- and extramural activities: “A public school does not exist only, or chiefly, for the culture of the mind – there is a nobler culture even than this, the culture of character. The first and primary object of a school is to turn out men, and so long as there is an advance in the manliness and honour of our boys, I care but little what happens in other respects”. The tension exists to this day, with Buck’s sentiments preserved, literally in stone, at the school – the trick, however, is to ensure that there is, in fact, a tension, rather than ‘one-way traffic’ (to change the metaphor) in one direction or other. It is also interesting that the Buck House motto is “Mens sana in corpore sano” – “A healthy mind in a healthy body”.

We come next to William Stone, whose chapter title could well have been “The Enigma” (a title that Simon allocates to a separate, short-lived warden). For one thing, Stone came from a working-class background; the author conjectures that he was only able to complete his Cambridge education with the help of an unrelated benefactor. The author wonders whether this is why Stone preferred Ceylonese company to that of his compatriots during his sojourn in this land. This warden was, however, one of the most erudite the school has ever had – a Greek scholar of considerable repute who later served as Classics lecturer at the University College in Colombo. This did not prevent him introducing, while warden, a ‘Commercial’ stream of study to promote the kind of practical education that was readily supported by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce; clearly he was attuned to the realities of the future (in his time). He also ensured, after the relocation to Mt. Lavinia, that the limited funds available were used first for constructing a science laboratory, while the Chapel had to wait its turn. Stone’s churchmanship, too, was of the non-ritualistic ‘low church’ form, somewhat at variance with the ‘high church’ tradition that has dominated the college Chapel. So, although he may have been the greatest warden the school has had (“The Cornerstone”, according to Simon), William Stone did not easily fit into the mainstream of sentiment that the school represented; and there is surely a lesson in that.

By the time Reginald De Saram became warden, the school needed a “defender” against populist sentiment. With nationalist feeling running high, there were many who felt that British-public-school-style education, as offered at institutions like S. Thomas’, had at least outlived its time – if it was not actually inhibiting the establishment of a more ‘grassroots’ educational system for the country. Much of Volume II (covering the years 1948-2001) is devoted to this fascinating tension, which was heightened by feelings engendered by Ceylon’s independence from British rule. De Saram is portrayed as fulfilling his ‘defender’ role admirably, in some cases even ‘going on the offensive’ (to remain with the metaphor) and stealing a march on other nationalists. In particular, he responded to the official decree that ‘vernacular’ education be made compulsory at all schools by recruiting an enviable staff of Sinhala teachers from the activist “Hela havula” movement (which sought to ‘purify’ the Sinhala language), which thus found a home at the college. The son of one of the Hela teachers is today Professor of Sinhala at the University of Colombo, having studied at S. Thomas’ himself before gaining his doctorate from Cambridge University.

Nationalist alumni

The story of the Hela havula reminds us that while S. Thomas’ is often identified with an ethos of Westernised education, it has also produced several nationalists of more or less radical hue – among them SWRD Bandaranaike, Anagarika Dharmapala, Ediriweera Sarachchandra and Devar Surya Sena (who provided the musical setting for the Sinhala Anglican liturgy), to name a few. Arisen Ahubudu, one of the Hela havula teachers, is today a household name among Sri Lankan Buddhists. And in passing, the book describes how Thomians were victorious at the All-Island Inter-School Sinhala Debating Championships of 1978 – almost 50 years ago now, to be sure, but then only 30 years after Independence and on the 50th anniversary of the Sinhala Literary and Debating Society.

Today, at the 175th anniversary of the College, various competitions are being held on English essay-writing and oratory, open to students all over the country. That is a certainly a good way to celebrate Thomian contributions to Lankan English-language competence over the years – but maybe the school should follow this with corresponding competitions in Sinhala as well, highlighting her contributions to that language, too.

The school’s contributions to Tamil culture are not so evident, maybe because institutions in Jaffna had a monopoly on this. Yet it did produce SJV Chelvanayakam, who is referred to in the book as having been a master at Mutwal under Warden Stone (in Volume I). He was thus contemporary of SWRD Bandaranaike both in school and in politics, and their “Banda-Chelva” pact of 1957 and its outcome are discussed in Chapter 57 of Thomia, which is titled ‘Flashpoint’. Perhaps, S. Thomas’ should take greater cognizance and “ownership” of “Chelva” as they do of “Banda”, for while the latter is either consigned to the pages of history or blamed for all our current ills in some quarters of the South, the former is still treated with respect and affection in the North as “Thanthai (Father) Chelva”. Maybe that could have been another chapter title for Simon to write on! It is rumoured that Banda and Chelva were members of the same College debating team as well; perhaps S. Thomas’ could think of adding Chelvanayakam’s name to its English inter-school debating competition, named after Bandaranaike.

Westernising influences

Schools such as S. Thomas’, which were established in nineteenth-century colonial Ceylon, were Western in orientation because their principals or headmasters came from the West. It was an unwritten rule at S. Thoma's that her wardens should be graduates of Oxford or Cambridge (and also ordained Anglican ministers). Although this was not always possible after the middle of the twentieth century, many of the wardens appointed later had overseas exposure. It was this exposure that bestowed upon the colonial missionary schools both a link to the outside world and a global perspective.

There were other masters from overseas who contributed to this process. Special mention is made in Thomia of W.T. Keble, who was the first Headmaster of the Kollupitiya branch school, and R.L. Hayman, a scientist (and more pertinently an ‘outdoorsman’) who was Headmaster at the Gurutalawa branch school. Earlier at Mt. Lavinia, these men had joined forces in fostering The Literary, Scientific and Historical Society – “an exclusive club for the brainiest boys, membership being by invitation only, which met every Friday evening to listen to lectures and discussions on assorted highbrow subjects” such as readings from Chaucer, recordings of Elizabethan madrigals, lectures on ‘heavy hydrogen,’ etc.

In our own time, the school has tried to broaden the horizons of A Level students through the introduction of a current-affairs class, but the concept of an intellectual and cultural exclusivity to which boys can aspire (similar, in a way, to the esprit de corps of a crack sports team) could well provide an impetus to spur the best students on to greater heights of intellectual achievement. This was possible in the 1930s because S. Thomas’ had teachers with relevant expertise and global exposure. The like are hard to find in our country today – but if elite Lankan schools are not backward in seeking overseas expertise when it comes to sports (recruiting, for example, rugby coaches from abroad), might they not also do the same for such cultivators of the mind? Another expatriate, Rev. Roy Bowyer-Yin, was to music at S. Thomas’ what Keble and Hayman were to science and culture; he was responsible for transporting the much-loved Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Cambridge to Mt. Lavinia. He also helped a few boys to present their musical talents on the world stage. Such men were not merely adding to the cultural stock of the S. Thomas', but to that of the whole country.

Associate institutions

Schools that have long histories develop strong traditions. Tradition will of course be tested against current relevance, but will also serve to critique the superficial motives of fashion and expediency. S. Thomas’ had two associate institutions that are specifically mentioned in its Board of Governors Ordinance, namely the Divinity School and the Orphanage. The former has long been relocated to the Cathedral premises in Colombo; the latter was closed down in 1940. I am not calling for a re-establishment of these institutions at the school, but their presence at Mount Lavinia must have surely shaped the character of the school and its boys. Perhaps today’s school could consider the setting up of some contemporary structure for serving the poor, presumably in nearby communities, and exposing the boys to the process too. A possibility, meanwhile, for religious education (in its broadest sense) may be the model adopted by King’s College, London in the Associateship of King’s College (AKC) – a programme conducted in parallel with its other courses, and described on the College website as being “at the heart of the ... commitment to an international, interdisciplinary, and innovative curriculum … [seeking] to foster an understanding of different beliefs and cultures that can be taken into wider society”.

To read Part II of this article, click here