The power of words

The spoken word, they say, is more powerful than most other modes of expression. To convince, defeat, argue, satisfy – any of these could be achieved with the skilful usage of the amazing art of speaking. And debating, is undoubtedly, one of its most versatile versions.

Illustrating some of its finer points, a couple of gifted young law students did Sri Lanka proud recently, "talking" their way through, right to the top, at a reputed debating tournament held last month. Organised by the National Law School of India University, the 5th annual National Law School Parliamentary Debate, which is India's largest and most prestigious debating championship, took place in Bangalore from November 22-26. Apart from the teams from Sri Lanka, there were teams from Madras, Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Pune participating.

With a total of 30 teams participating in the competition, two teams from Law Faculty and one from Royal Institute made up the three local teams going in. Defeating team after team, and getting through each preliminary, team 'A', the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, emerged the overall winners of the competition. Comprising five rounds of debate on various subjects, the participants had literally a few minutes to prepare their arguments.

Niran Anketell (23), Anisha Yasaratne (22) and Kumaravadivel Guruparan (21) made up team 'A,' which emerged the winners. "The parliamentary style of debating is what is used in competitions such as these and each round has an assigned subject for debate," said Niran, a final year student of the Faculty of Law University of Colombo, and the captain of the winning team. He is also the present President of the Moot Court and Debating Society of the Faculty of Law. According to him, the topics given for each preliminary round were based on various subjects, such as press, education policy, international affairs, sports and bribery and corruption. He added that they got just about 15-20 minutes to prepare for each debate.

All of the registered teams debated in the five rounds of preliminary competition based on the power matching system which pits equally ranked teams against each other. Each round had an assigned theme and at the end of the five rounds, eight of the highest ranked teams made it through to the quarter finals knock out stage. The theme for the semi finals was "Banking and Finance," and team 'A' from the Faculty won that round unanimously.

"This house would prefer open source software over propriety software," was the topic up for debate in the final round, with the subject being Information Technology. Going against Ramjas College of the University of Delhi, their panel of judges consisted of seven members. "The final result read five in favour of us and two in favour of our opponents," said Guru. A second year student of the Law Faculty of Colombo University and the treasurer of the Society, he explained that NLS was India's largest law school, and even has its own Moot Court hall. Guruparan was adjudged best debator at the final of the tournament and also in the fifth round, on Bribery and Corruption.

This being the first time the Faculty of Law had participated in the competition, according to him, their success was mainly due to the leadership of individuals such as Gehan Gunatilleke (24), the immediate past president of the Society and the rest of the committee. "Following the Asian debating competition in Malaysia held in May this year, the rigorous preparation with weekly practices and modules that we followed, helped immensely when it came to this competition."

According to Anisha, who is in his third year at the Faculty of Law and is the Secretary of the Society, Sri Lankan participants from the Faculty had performed well in prior debating competitions as well. "We fared quite well at last year's competition in India as well as at the Asian tournament in Malaysia, but this was the first time Sri Lanka emerged winners."

He also added that yet another noteworthy fact was that Hansa Abeyrathne, a second year student of the Faculty, who was selected to be amongst the only eight external adjudicators for the quarter final round. This selection was made based on debator feed-back and peer evaluation, the chosen eight being from a pool of over twenty entrants. The members of team 'B' of the Faculty of Law were Sanjeevani Perera, Dinushika Dissanayake, Mevan Kiriellabandara, while one other member Chaminda Jayasinghe, who was originally to debate in Team "A" had to decline from participating in the competition due to unavoidable circumstances.

Experience-wise the competition has been tremendously helpful for all three participants, giving them a great deal of exposure as in any other prestigious international competition. According to Guru, the culture in law school over there gives much more prominence to extra curricular activities, rightly giving these prospective members of the legal fraternity a glimpse of what to expect in court. "In the same way I feel that we too should give practical aspects such as mooting more importance and encourage more students to participate in such competitions."

"Participating in such competitions encourages students to read up in depth on contemporary issues and this brings about an interest in socially relevant areas," added Anisha. Realising the importance of mooting and debating as students of law, especially after the Asian debating tournament last year, the Faculty of Law organised the Open Debating Championship in August this year and also a Parliamentary style debating competition for schools in February.