Dusk had fallen when the teenage sister of a friend of mine came briskly to where her brother and I were seated talking. I was surprised. It was hardly seven in the evening. Do you think anybody allows young girls to cycle alone after dark in Jaffna? Girls who step out of their homes after dark in Jaffna, do so, well aware of the risk they run. Only the direst necessity would compel them to go unaccompanied. What is the monster that lurks in the streets during the hours of darkness?
The army? The Tigers? Armed bandits? What serves to dissuade these young lasses from venturing out alone are none of these. The threat emanates from what appears to be an innocuous source, but whose menace has become so pervasive that it is causing grave concern to the public. The threat is simply β boys! Jaffna that was once famous as a strict, self-disciplined society is today facing herds of young men and boys who apparently have nothing to do but hang about and cast lewd remarks and even physically accost women β especially young girls.
What is worse, this antisocial behaviour seems to be linked to the stoicism and rigid code of conduct that characterised Jaffna society in the past, and an inability to cope with the tensions and demands of the contemporary world. Despite standardisation in education cruelly depriving the upwardly mobile, middle class youth in the s of their dream to enter university and that too for the prestigious professional courses such as medicine and engineering, these expectations are yet to be banished from Jaffna society.
The very people that suffered because of standardisation are forcing their children down the same straight and narrow path of university education. The ambition of most Jaffna students, even today, is to enter the University of Jaffna to read for a professional degree offered by that university, or go to universities elsewhere in Sri Lanka.
Entering such universities however remains a highly competitive exercise for the simple reason that there is insufficient number of such institutions of higher learning to cater to the demand. Sivanathan, associate professor, Department of Economics at the University of Jaffna.
