Response to Dr. Hoole's Recent Article

by K.S.R.

Ratnajeevan Hoole’s letter addressed to the editor of the Ilankai Tamil Sangam, and published in a little known website (http://www.independentsl.com/cgi-bin/newsscript1.cgi?record=1215) warrants a response. Perhaps the editor didn’t respond because the letter didn’t meet minimum decency standards, but I feel that a response is needed to expose the falsehoods in the letter.

Prof. Hoole’s anger is understandable, considering the fact that the articles he objects to call into question his fitness for the post of Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna University. He feels that he deserves the position, and frankly, I too was of the opinion that he was at least academically qualified. After reading this letter, however, I now doubt his moral fitness for the post.

The first article he objects to ("A Tale of Two Tamil Vice Chancellors") is a political satire on the ‘plight’ of two Tamil Vice Chancellors caught in the murky political climate of Sri Lanka. The second article ("On Academic Politics and Religious Zealotry") is on some factual errors in an editorial in the government-owned Sunday Observer.

These articles were published in two ‘politically oriented’ websites (www.tamilnation.org and www.sangam.org), which are thematically dedicated to exposing the racist majoritarian rule in Sri Lanka. The Sinhala-dominated governments do favor those Tamils who serve them in their racist agenda, and punish those who don’t. If Professor Hoole personally benefited in this clime, it is something that deserves exposure.

My comment about his letter is not about these issues. It is about the style of Professor Hooles’s response. Firstly, I found his tenor distasteful. Second, while he questions the veracity of the facts in the two articles, he slings mud with his own set of concocted lies. This I find to be ungainly for a Vice Chancellor of a University, with a ‘Higher Doctorate’. I expected much more decorum.

The lies this Professor has written with his poisoned-pen are mind-boggling.

Mr. Nadesan Satyendra

Dr. Hoole calls Mr. Satyendra a ‘failed-chemist’ (meaning that he was a chemistry student, when in fact Satyendra studied physics), at the Peradeniya Campus (he was never a student there), and in the 1960s (he was at the Colombo campus in the early fifties).

I know this for a fact, because he was my Principal at the Colombo Hindu College in 1957-58, when I was a student there. This was after his graduation not only from the Colombo campus of the University of Ceylon (with Honors), but also after a stint at Cambridge (physics) and at the Inns of Court in London for his Barristers. As to where Hoole got the information that Mr. Satyendra attended the Peradeniya campus in the 1960s is a mystery.

The lies get even more astounding. The non-existent ‘failed chemist’, who attended a campus that he didn’t attend, and in a ‘concocted year’, Hoole says, Satyendra cheated at an exam and was suspended for a year!

He says: “His Senatorial father could not influence the Senate of the university to let the son off. Usually after an incident like that employment is difficult. But not for this man, with his Royal College background and his Senatorial father.” The fact is, Mr. Satyendra’s father was a senator in the parliament and not the university. Mr. Satyendra did not study at the Royal College – he went to St. Thomas. What a lot hogwash this learned professor produces in his lab!

I probably should stop right here, because Professor Hoole already stands fully exposed in this matter alone. But I want to continue to make sure that he doesn’t do similar damage to decent human beings in the future. So I wish to take on some of the other issues in his letter.

Dr. Sachi Sri Kantha

Hoole questions Dr. Kantha’s professional qualifications and scientific publications. He says, “[a] search in Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com), which captures articles in any journal of repute, reveals his “singular contributions to science – one letter to a journal! Not even a single proper article!”

“Try it. It’s free”, he said.

So I did, using different variations of the author’s name (Sachi Sri Kantha, S. Sri Kantha, SS Kantha, etc.), and came up with 400 publications and citations to the publications credited to his name. Interestingly a search of ‘S.R.H. Hoole’ produced 371 publications and citations to the publications. Obviously this learned professor doesn’t even have the skill to do a proper database search!

Hoole’s arrogance and conceit in denigrating others has no bounds. The superiority he claims for himself with his ‘higher doctorate’ against inferior beings with ordinary doctorates is shameful. He calls the entire expatriate Tamils: “Sick Overseas Tamil Community”. The higher ground he arrogates to himself with such conceit is simply staggering.

However, when it suits his needs he is capable of humility and meekness. For example, in March 2006 he spoke differently to a Tamil Newspaper Uthayan (15 March 2006). He was then publicly pleading for the LTTE’s approval of his appointment as VC. Roughly translated, he said: “I would like to serve the Tamil people with the co-operation of the leadership of the Tamils, the Tigers… In my political journey, if I were to do any good to the Tamil people, it has to be under the authority and co-operation of Liberation Tigers…” But, when the LTTE refused take a stand on the matter (neither endorse nor oppose), Hoole has reverted to his supercilious self. As they say in Tamil, ‘the Vethalam has climbed the moringa tree again.’

It is worth noticing in passing that, in his message to Uthayan, he also distanced himself from his brother Rajan, who has been doing immense damage to the Tamil people. He said: “I am not an enemy of Tamil independence. I am not a member of UTHR(J). I have never written a report for them. Nor will I ever…”

Hoole now says, “[the] massive trauma as we Tamils have suffered can lead to ill mental effects on the entire community – I think it is what we now see as the collective psychiatric sickness of the nationalist sections of the overseas Tamil community.”

What he says about the overseas Tamil couldn’t be a better description of himself. He is so delusional that he claims that he “was Editor [of Sangam] in 1983 when Dr. S. Nagendra was President and the Sangam stood for higher principles…” The truth is, Dr. Nagendra was president in 1985-86 (not 1983) and Hoole was never the editor of the Sangam at anytime. He sees a ‘terrorist’ in Sachi Sri Kantha, because his name was on the TSA no-fly list (so were names of the former US Vice President Al Gore, and US Senator Ted Kennedy). So much for the TSA-NO-FLY list, and this learned Professor’s conclusions.

The tenor, the language, the falsehoods, the grandiosity, and the paranoia in his letter is quite revealing of a man who is in need of serious help with his mental health. The least he can do is a public apology to the two people who he so viciously maligned in his letter.

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