Features

The early days, 1954-59: Gaining entrance to Cambridge

Published

4 years ago

2022/09/11

by Nimal Wikramanayake

Should I Write my Memoir? Like Winnie the Pooh, I thought a thought. Should I write my memoir and tell the world about the difficulties a brown-skinned man from an Asian country had to undergo in the legal profession in Melbourne? I abhor the use of the word “coloured”, for that would make my white Australian friends colourless. Would people be interested in what I had to undergo? Would they empathize with my annoyance, frustration and anger?

But as Tattersall’s declares when it sells its lottery tickets: “You’ve got to be in it to win it” I thought that unless I wrote this work and had it published, I would never know whether people would be interested in it or not. There have been many occasions when I have been angry with the way I have been discriminated against in Australia.

There have been many occasions when I have been frustrated at the way I have been treated in the legal profession as a whole. There have been many occasions when I have felt that a large mountain had been placed in my path. Like Sisyphus of Greek mythology, I have tried to push my rock up the mountain and on some occasions I have managed to clamber up over the top. But on these occasions, I have been pushed back down the mountainside, clutching my rock. I have tried as far as is humanly possible to keep bitterness out of this work. So without further ado, here is my story.

When I commenced writing this work I was in a quandary as to whether I should name the miscreants who did me much despite, as they say in the classics, but after discussing this matter with my friends I decided that I would not descend to their level. Therefore, save for the racists I refer to later in this work, they will remain nameless.

Coincidences

In 1983, my wife, Anna Maria, and I made one of our rare visits to the cinema to see the film Chariots of Fire. The film was about the exploits of the 1924 British team at the Olympic Games in Paris. One of the heroes of the film was Harold Abrahams, the son of a Jewish merchant, who had the temerity, as a Jew, to go to Cambridge University to study law and later became a member of the celebrated 1924 British Olympic team.

There were a number of coincidences between Abrahams’ life and mine, except that I was not a celebrated athlete. The first coincidence took place when, in the film, young Harold Abrahams was being dropped off at his college, Gonville & Caius (pronounced Keys), Cambridge University, on, I believe, Trumpington Street, but as Trumpington Street was too narrow to permit adequate filming, the beginning of the film commenced at Trinity Hall, the college where I studied law over 30 years later. Trinity Hall was situated behind Gonville & Caius at the bottom of Garret Hostel Lane.

The second coincidence took place when Abrahams met with racial discrimination at Cambridge and, on one occasion, frustrated and angry, he remarked to a friend of his that “the Anglo-Saxons would let me walk up to the trough but would not let me drink from it” For my part, I am fascinated by the use of the delightful word “Anglo-Saxon” The person who created this definition should be given a gold medal. It has a beautiful sound and is as dead as the races it depicts.

The Angles were an ancient race in England – long dead. The Saxons suffered the same fate under William the Conqueror. Abrahams added, “I will teach these people a lesson. I will run them off their feet.” I met with racial discrimination in Melbourne but I could not run the perpetrators of this discrimination off their feet, either literally or metaphorically.

I found this statement of Abrahams quite interesting for, at that time, Sir Rufus Isaacs KC, a member of the Jewish tribe, had been one of the leading lawyers of the English Bar. A few years earlier, he was a great rival of Sir Edward Carson and FE Smith, later Lord Birkenhead. Sir Rufus Isaacs, later Lord Reading, was Viceroy of India from 1921 to 1926 when Abrahams went to Cambridge.

I suffered no racial discrimination at Cambridge, and I often wondered whether, if I had migrated to England rather than to Australia, I would have received greater recognition in England than in Australia, being an Oxbridge man.

Apart from several incidents of racism in the courts and at the Victorian Bar, I must confess that I was accepted by some members of the Victorian Bar quite warmly. I will set out the incidents of racism later on when I recount my experiences at the Victorian Bar and in the Law Courts. However, just as Abrahams pointed out, for my part, in the legal profession in Melbourne, the powers that be had led me to the trough many times, but had not permitted me to drink from it.

Neither my dear friend and mentor, the late Louis Voumard QC, nor I were ever considered fit to be appointed to the Supreme Court in Victoria, although we were outstanding barristers, because we did not have the proper social and political connections. Many others far less able were elevated to that high office because they had the right connections.

When I finished writing this work, I gave it to my dear friend Ross Howie SC to review it. He reminded me of the sign that appeared on Olde English Inns -“Good wine needs no bush” He said that it was for others to talk about my ability.Nonetheless, I would like to tell you about some of the things I feel most proud of in my life.

In 1996, I published my work Voumard: The Sale of Land as a supplemental book and sent a complimentary copy to Mr Douglas Grahame QC, the Solicitor-General for the State of Victoria. I received a warm letter from him in which he stated that the Victorian legal profession owed me a debt of gratitude, not only for writing this work but for doing so to the same high standard maintained by the late Louis Voumard QC.

In 1999, I wrote Conveyancing Manual Victoria with Dan Fitzgerald, and asked Mr Justice Robert Brooking, one of the great commercial judges in the Supreme Court of Victoria, whether he would honour me by writing a preface for this work. His Honour agreed, and not only did he write a preface for this work but gave high praise of my knowledge of property law.

In 2008, Mr Justice Peter Young, the Chief Judge of the Court of Equity in New South Wales, and a few years later a member of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, caused a survey to be made of the top twenty legal books written in Australia, and had this survey published in the Australian Law Journal in July 2008. His Honour included my work Voumard: The Sale of Land in this list. It must be noted that none of the other works on property law were included in this list, although the authors of these works received judicial appointments.

In 2011, 1 was invited by the Chief Justice of Fiji to sit on the Court of Appeal in Fiji. A few years earlier, three distinguished Australian lawyers sat on the same court: Mark Weinberg QC, later Mr Justice Weinberg of the Court of Appeal in Victoria, Mr Justice Handley of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, and Mr Justice Mason, a justice of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales. Although I run the risk of repetition, I need only add that a number of writers of minor works on property law have all received judicial appointments.

I must state categorically that I am neither angry nor bitter about this, for I have learned to accept the fact there are certain things in life that cannot be changed. In Melbourne, at least, the legal profession and Victorian legal powers that be are still not colour-blind, for they will not recognize the fact that an Asian man or woman has any talent or ability. In Australia, things are upside down. In England I am a WOG – a Worthy Oriental Gentleman -which is not a term of approbation but a patronizing reference to people from the Indian sub-continent. In Australia, this word is used with reference to southern Europeans.

Here, people from China and the Far East, in deference to their American cousins, are called Asians although they come from the Far East and not from Asia. Columbus set off to look for the spice trade in Asia – India and Sri Lanka – not China and Vietnam. The Portuguese found these Asian lands in 1506 when Vasco de Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and arrived on the west coast of India. China and Vietnam are in the Far East.

And by the way, another coincidence with Harold Abrahams was the fact that a relation of his, Sir Sidney Abrahams, was Chief justice of Ceylon from 1937 to 1939. The British government did not believe that a Sri Lankan was capable of holding such a high office and never appointed a Sri Lankan as Chief justice of the Island of Ceylon.The fourth coincidence was an Australian connection that was thrown into this strange mix.

In 1936, a young Australian by the name of Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle arrived in Ceylon to work on a tea plantation and learn the trade of a tea planter. He went to the Relugas Estate in Madulkelle near Matale in Ceylon and began his life in Ceylon on that estate.

He was appalled at the inhumane conditions of the Indian Tamil labourers and collaborated with the LSSP (Lanka Sama Samaja Party), the Trotskyite Party in Ceylon (popularly known as the Fox Trotskyite party), to organize protest meetings against this inhumane treatment. These Indian Tamils were indentured labourers who were brought by the British from South India in the middle of the nineteenth century to labour on their plantations in Ceylon, as the Sinhalese refused to work on them.

The slave trade had recently been abolished in England as a result of the exertions of Wilberforce, and the British needed alternative cheap labour. These labourers had to walk from South India, then cross the Palk Strait to get to north-western Ceylon, and then walk several hundred miles from the north of the Island to the tea plantations in the hill country. During these marches, many thousands died along the way. The British took these South Indian ‘coolies’ to labour in Fiji, the West Indies and South Africa, and except in Sri Lanka, where they are still coolies, these labourers are now an integral part of the higher echelons of society in these countries.

The word “coolie” is what the British called them. The West Indies has produced some great cricketers from the descendants of these indentured labourers with the likes of Alvin Kallicharran, Rohan Kanhai, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, among others. They also have risen to social prominence in Fiji, South Africa and the West Indies.

When I returned to Ceylon in 1958, my father and two of his friends owned a 900-acre tea plantation in Maskeliya called “Theberton Estate.” Maskeliya is 3,000 feet above sea level and has a cool temperate climate somewhat akin to Melbourne in May. In 1963, the Indian Tamil labourers on the estate struck for better living conditions. I was briefed to go up to Maskeliya to appear in a mediation in an attempt to settle this industrial dispute. I visited the “lines”, the living quarters of the estate workers, and was appalled at their living conditions. They were living in corrugated iron sheds, with many families to a shed.

There were no beds for them and they slept on the cold cement floor with no blankets or sheets. The families were separated from each other by wooden partitions which offered no privacy at all. There was no heating and no hot water. There were a few taps of cold water and a few latrines in each shed.

I was intent on improving their working conditions and made a number of concessions at the mediation but, to my surprise, my concessions were rejected by the directors, including my father. One of the other owners, who was a senior lawyer, appeared at the next mediation and rejected my recommendations. The strike was broken and no change was made in the living conditions of the workers.

To return to my story, the British inhabitants of Ceylon were furious that their standing in the country was being damaged by a fellow “white man”. They prevailed upon the British Colonial Governor, Sir Reginald Stubbs, to have Bracegirdle deported. He agreed and signed the deportation order on April 22, 1937, giving Bracegirdle 48 hours to leave the island on the SS Mooltan. The LSSP hid Bracegirdle from the police, but he was located and arrested a short time later. A Writ of Habeas Corpus was served on the Colonial government by Bracegirdle’s lawyers.

The case came up for hearing before the Chief Justice, Sir Sidney Abrahams, and two Burgher judges of Dutch descent, whose ancestors had migrated to Ceylon from Holland many years before. One of the Dutch Burgher judges was Mr Justice Maartensz. Ceylon’s leading lawyer. H V Perera KC, who was instrumental in shaping the law in Ceylon for nigh on 50 years, was briefed to appear for Bracegirdle.

Mr Perera was Ceylon’s equivalent of Sir Owen Dixon in Australia. He opened his case by informing the judges that Bracegirdle had renounced his Australian citizenship and if he was deported by the Colonial government, he would have no country to go to and would have to roam the world as a stateless person.Hearing this statement, Mr Justice Maartensz piped up, “What you are saying, Mr Perera, is that he will be like the wandering Jew.”

Quick as a flash, Sir Sidney Abrahams came back with the retort: “Or the flying Dutchman’

The court ordered Bracegirdle’s release, holding that there was no merit in the deportation order. In 1938 he left Ceylon to live out his days in England. After the war, Bracegirdle qualified as an engineer and settled in Gloucestershire. He died on June 2, 1999. The case is reported in (1937) 39 New Law Report at 193.

Sir Sidney Abrahams returned to England in 1939. Although I run the risk of repetition, in colonial Ceylon the Chief Justice was always an Englishman, because the Colonial government believed that the natives weren’t competent enough to hold such a high appointment.

The beginning

My tale is a long one and, as Maria said in The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning”. Let me go back to the month of August 1954 when I was 21-years old and was letting life slip through my fingers. I was not interested in studying and spent my evenings at the Sinhalese Sports Club running up expensive club liquor bills which, surprisingly, my father paid.

About this time, my father met a friend of his, Sir Ivor Jennings, who had been the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ceylon and who had recently been appointed Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Sir Ivor promised Dad that if I passed my GCE A Level and the Trinity Hall entrance examination, he would give me a place at Trinity Hall.

This was well-nigh impossible for someone like me who had not, at the age of 21, passed the GCE A Level which was a two-year course. I then had to to sit for a place at Trinity Hall, the most exclusive college in Cambridge, and compete with more than 300 of the best students in England for one place in a 100. Trinity Hall had only 300 students for the three years of its graduate courses, compared to Kings College and Trinity College which had more than 1,500 students in each College.

We arrived in England in September and I enrolled at the University Tutorial College in London to prepare for the GCE A Level. The exam was at the end of November; I had just over two months to prepare for it. Two of the subjects were completely new – Economics and Economic History. It was then that a miracle happened. When I enrolled at the college, I was assigned a tutor. We hit it off straight away. He was a former Polish fighter pilot who had flown Spitfire planes during the World War II, a Mr Matuczeski. Not since my kindergarten days had I met a teacher who was interested in my welfare and been kind to me. I looked forward to my twice weekly tutorials with him, and with his guidance, I passed the examination in December.

My next hurdle was in February 1955: the Trinity Hall entrance examination. My first paper on General Knowledge was a complete failure, or so I thought. I had to answer five questions and I spent nearly two hours on one question, writing a long dissertation on one of my heroes Salah al-Din or Saladin as he was known to the Occidentals. I went into raptures about this magnificent Seldjuk Turk leader. It was only later that I learned that the professors were astonished that a young Sinhalese boy from the East knew so much about Saladin.

Next I had to go for a viva voce examination. It was held by a distinguished gentleman who sat at a desk taking notes. On the side of the table sat a jolly old gentleman. I was laughing and chatting with the old man and very obsequious towards the gentleman at the desk. It was only later I learned that the jolly old man was the great Tell Ellis-Lewis, the editor of Winfield on Tort, and the distiguished gentleman seated at the desk was his assistant. Anyway, I passed the entrance examination and got my place at Trinity Hall.

(To be continued)

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Features

Human dignity comes centre stage in Afghan refugee deportation crisis

Published

3 hours ago

2026/09/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Afghan refugees in bordering countries: ‘Long-suffering’ . Copyright: AFP or licensors, Credit

The mounting mute and unmitigated suffering of the ordinary people of Afghanistan is coming to the fore once again in ongoing efforts by some neighbouring states to deport tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to their country of origin. As in the case of the majority of refugees the world over the Afghan refugees too are caught up in cataclysmic wars and conflicts not at all of their making.

International reports indicate that some six million Afghan refugees have been virtually pressured, to date, to return to Afghanistan by Pakistan and Iran, for instance, on the basis apparently of stringent policies on refugees adopted by the latter. Many refugees are on record that although they are officially identified as of Afghan origin this is the first occasion on which they are seeing the inside of Afghanistan, since thus far they have been living, particularly in Pakistan, as virtual natives of the latter.

‘They are part of the biggest cross border movement of people in recent history, a UNHCR source was quoted saying. However, barring the latter UN agency and a few well wishers, the refugees are being seen as a virtual parasitic and unwanted presence by sections of the publics who have thus far been compelled to have the refugees among them.

The refugees’ haplessness is compounded by the fact that they have been reduced to almost destitution. Having possessed virtually nothing by way of material assets they are getting back to Afghanistan a dis-empowered, dispossessed people.

For well over a century Afghanistan has been at the centre of the big power rivalries of South Asia. The country has been intensely coveted by the majority of major extra-regional powers from the turn of the last century primarily on account of its strategic geographical location, besides some of its natural resources.

Those powers that gain a military foothold in the country would be enabled to bring the majority of Afghanistan’s neighbours within their sphere of influence and power. Some of these are, China, Pakistan, Iran and India. Besides there are the one time Soviet Central Asian Republics, control over whom would be of considerable value, from a number of viewpoints, to expansionist powers.

These attractions account for the appeal Afghanistan has continued to exercise over the majority of extra-regional powers whose presence has proved decisive in the shaping of international politics over the decades. Those powers who have featured majorly and are continuing to do so are, the US, Russia, China and the UK to a lesser degree.

However, the Afghan refugee issue or the ‘Long- suffering’ of the ordinary people of Afghanistan could be considered as having gained exceptional prominence with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of 1979.

The latter event needs to be seen as a notable turning point in the last century’s international politics. The initial disintegrative cracks in the Soviet Union were beginning to appear and Islamic fundamentalism was seen by the Soviet authorities as making divisive inroads into their Central Asian Republics.

The influence of Islamic fundamentalism had to be stymied following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and Afghanistan came to be seen by the Soviet authorities as a potential hotbed of such religious revolutionary fervour. Thus came about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its subsequent degeneration into a military quagmire for both the Soviet Union and the US.

Thus it was only a matter of time before Afghan refugees began to swell in numbers in neighbouring states. They were haplessly caught up in the ‘cross-fire’ between the Soviet backed Afghan security forces and the Afghan militant resistance which evolved into the Taliban.

As is known, the Afghan resistance came to be armed and backed by the US subsequent to Afghanistan being over-run by the Soviet Union. Thus, Afghanistan became the last proxy war theatre in the long -running Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. More than a decade of blood-letting convinced the Soviets that there was no choice but to quit Afghanistan.

Thus, to a considerable extent, the Afghan refugees are the victims of big power armed rivalries which are continuing to render the world a most ‘dangerous place’ for ordinary people. The UN agencies seem to be doing their best for the refugees of Afghanistan and most other refugee categories but the continued humiliation of such victims of war would need to be mitigated by the international community to the extent possible. Forcible deportation of refugees in particular may need to be eschewed and outlawed.

Being subjected to an acid test at this juncture is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is the latter seminal convention that made the protection of human dignity a cardinal value for the world community.

All those sections that subscribe to international humanitarian law and democratic opinion world wide need to come together, may be under the aegis of the UN, to work out how primacy could be attached to the UDHR and its principal mandate of protecting and perpetuating human dignity and worth.

This is no easy challenge to meet but it needs to be addressed urgently before currently rampant ‘international disorder’ grows well out of control.

The US and Russia are especially obliged to go to the rescue of the Afghan refugees since the Afghan crisis is of their making to a considerable extent but no help could be expected from them because their governments are strongly right wing in orientation. It would be far-fetched to expect of them a strong social conscience.

However, the UN and like-minded organizations need to dialogue strongly with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with a view to bettering the well being of Afghan civilians. No longer could the lot of the latter be allowed to be dismissed by the Taliban government as ‘an internal matter.’

If the Taliban regime is being assisted by the UN, the former is strongly obliged to be accountable to the international community. The UN would need to non-obtrusively convince the Taliban government that it cannot ignore the essential needs of its civilian populace and the empowering of women forms a central component of this broad programme of work. The UN’s diplomatic finesse needs to come to figure here in a major way.

Refugees everywhere should ideally be re-accommodated in their countries of origin or native lands. However, unless and until their dignity is ensured by governments and other quarters that matter such endeavours would prove to be self-defeating.

Features

A Defence Minister after 38 years: Partnership without capture

Published

3 hours ago

2026/09/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake with Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s arrival in Colombo is not a ceremonial call. It is the political face of a security relationship that has been rebuilt, layer by layer, since 2024. Sri Lanka should take the capability on offer, and keep the right to say no.

by Mahil Dole
Senior Superintendent of Police (Retd.)

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is in Colombo for a three-day official visit, the first by an Indian Defence Minister in 38 years. The last such call was by K. C. Pant in 1988. That long silence itself tells a story. For nearly four decades, defence business between the two neighbours was handled by service chiefs, training colleges and quiet staff talks. New Delhi has now chosen to put a political minister at the centre of the relationship, and to do so immediately after a dense sequence of Indian visits and against a harder contest in the Indian Ocean.

The visit will be read, in Delhi, Beijing and Washington, as a signal. Our task in Colombo is narrower and more serious: to convert the signal into national capability without converting the island into a platform.

Not an isolated visit

Singh’s programme is the latest layer in an unusually concentrated Indian engagement since President Anura Kumara Dissanayake assumed office in September 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit in April 2025 was the first by any foreign head of government after the new presidency. Seven documents were signed. Among them was the first comprehensive India–Sri Lanka Defence Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding, a five-year umbrella covering joint exercises, training, port calls, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, information exchange and possible defence-industry cooperation. Either side may terminate it with three months’ notice. That exit clause is not a detail. It is the difference between a structured partnership and a treaty alliance.

What followed was a rhythm, not a one-off. The eighth Annual Defence Dialogue was held in Colombo in June 2025. The Indian Navy Chief called in September 2025. After Cyclone Ditwah, India arrived as a first responder and later announced a reconstruction package of some 450 million US dollars; External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar came as Special Envoy. In January 2026 the Indian Army Chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, handed over vehicles and training aids, opened a friendship corner at the Defence Services Command and Staff College, and laid a wreath at the IPKF memorial in Battaramulla. The Indian Vice-President visited in April. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri was in Colombo on 5 August with rupee lines of credit for railways and other priorities. Later that month, Sri Lanka’s Navy Commander, Vice-Admiral Damian Fernando, made his first overseas visit in command, to New Delhi, and met the Chief of Defence Staff, the Defence Secretary and the Navy Chief.

Singh therefore arrives not as a stranger opening a file, but as the political seal on work already in motion. He met President Dissanayaie, who holds the defence portfolio, the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary. The itinerary also takes in the IPKF memorial, the Defence Ministry, the parliamentary precincts, Gangaramaya Temple, a likely reception on an Indian Navy ship, the National Defence College, and the Sita Amman Kovil in Nuwara Eliya. Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha has said relations have “never been better” in decades. The visit calendar, at least, is not an invention.

What already stands on the defence floor

It is important to be precise about what already exists, so that we do not mistake institutionalisation for a sudden tilt.

Training is the deepest bond. India is the largest foreign trainer of the Sri Lankan armed forces, offering on the order of a thousand to twelve hundred vacancies a year. One naval accounting records more than two thousand Sri Lankan naval personnel passing through Indian courses over nine years. Shared classrooms produce shared language, shared drills and personal networks that outlast any single government. Reports ahead of this visit point to three new memoranda, one likely on air-defence guns, one on cadet-corps links, and one on cooperation between the Sri Lanka Defence College and Indian defence institutions. If signed, those instruments would push the relationship into the next generation of officers, not only today’s operators.

Exercises are now routine rather than ceremonial. The twelfth edition of SLINEX, the bilateral naval exercise, was held in Colombo from 14 to 18 August 2025, with a harbour phase of professional exchanges and a sea phase of gunnery, boarding, replenishment and communications. MITRA SHAKTI, the army exercise with air elements, held its eleventh edition in Belagavi last November. A fourth bilateral diving exercise was conducted in Colombo in April 2026. The two navies and coast guards continue International Maritime Boundary Line meetings. An Indian Navy Dornier was based here for maritime surveillance from August 2022 to August 2025. A Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre was commissioned with an Indian grant of about six million dollars. INS Vikrant and INS Udaygiri took part in the International Fleet Review marking the Sri Lanka Navy’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

None of this is trivial. None of it, by itself, is alignment. Hardware, hours at sea and staff-college seats are instruments. What they become depends on command, data and political purpose.

National security questions that matter

Three questions should govern Colombo’s handling of the Indian Defence Minister’s visit.

The first is maritime domain awareness. Sri Lanka’s core security geography is not a land frontier. It is the exclusive economic zone and the sea lanes that pass our shores. The live threats are narcotics, people-smuggling, illegal fishing, and the possible relocation of cyber-fraud compounds. Conventional naval war is not on this year’s operational list. Indian help with sensors, hydrography, diving, boarding drills and search-and-rescue is therefore rational. The test is who owns the picture. Shared awareness is useful. Exclusive dependence on one partner’s fusion centre is a vulnerability. Australia’s Disi Rela programme against irregular maritime movement, Japanese passage exercises, and the United States capacity support, cutters, aircraft, humanitarian exercises, already exist. They should remain in the mix. Maritime security should be a Sri Lankan-led coalition of convenience, not an Indian franchise.

The second is the air and coastal defence gap. Talk of Indian air-defence guns is not abstract after the 2026 conflict in West Asia reached our own waters, the sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Galle, and later Iranian hulls lingering near the exclusive economic zone. The government’s public line was the correct one: no combat use of our territory, airspace or waters by any party; humanity first; sailors rescued. That posture only works if the state can see, and if necessary contest, its approaches. Accepting guns, radars or training is compatible with an independent foreign policy if command, basing and rules of engagement remain Sri Lankan. Integrating them into another country’s kill-chain would not be.

The third is internal security. Easter Sunday accountability, narcotics networks that run through ports and prisons, and communal peace are not separate from geopolitics. Partners price political risk. A state that cannot govern its harbours, its financial system and its extremist ecosystems will be offered “help” that looks like tutelage. India’s interest in counter-terror coordination and drugs overlaps with genuine Sri Lankan needs. The discipline required is the same as in any sound intelligence relationship: cooperate on targets; do not outsource the service.

The wreath at the IPKF memorial will be watched, as it was when the Indian Army Chief stood there in January. The years 1987 to 1990 remain raw in our political memory. The only stable line is professional honour to the dead, not a political rehabilitation of an intervention that divided this country.

How the region will read Colombo

India’s motive is not mysterious. Sri Lanka sits on the approaches to India’s southern seaboard. Chinese commercial and dual-use presence at Hambantota and Colombo Port City, and continuing engagement with the People’s Liberation Army Navy, is the backdrop. Pakistani naval units calling at Colombo, including a Chinese-built Hangor-class submarine earlier this year, only sharpen New Delhi’s preference for a denser security habit with us. Neighbourhood First and MAHASAGAR, Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions, are the language. The operational aim is that extra-regional navies do not treat Sri Lankan harbours as a default logistics base against Indian interests.

Our motive should be equally clear, and different. Geography makes India the permanent neighbour. Crisis behaviour, liquidity and fuel in 2022, the cyclone in 2025, the energy and remittance shock of 2026, has already shifted public sentiment. That is a political fact. It does not require Colombo to adopt India’s threat picture of China, or to freeze other relationships.

A workable posture is polyalignment with a spine. India is the deepest security and connectivity partner, domain awareness, disaster response, training, Trincomalee energy cooperation, grid links and rupee credit, on the condition that ports, exclusive economic zone access and intelligence fusion remain under Sri Lankan law. China remains a major economic and infrastructure partner; new exclusive strategic footholds should not be created, and debt and operational control must stay visible. The United States, Japan, Australia and Europe matter for markets, green shipping, extra training pipelines and non-traditional maritime threats. Ordinary naval diplomacy with Pakistan and others is manners, not signalling.

The government’s stated doctrine, an independent policy that does not favour any country, and territory that will not be used against a third party, is the right public frame. This week will test whether that frame can coexist with deeper, more structured Indian defence cooperation. It can, if the new memoranda are capability contracts with exit clauses, not political alignment documents.

Take help. Keep the choice

Colombo should treat the expected instruments as a capability audit.

On air defence, welcome sensors and guns that Sri Lanka can man, maintain and switch off. Reject any arrangement that requires foreign crews, foreign rules of engagement, or data that only flows one way. In cadet corps and staff colleges, take the training and keep a parallel pipeline with other professional schools so that the officer corps is not a single-source product. On the 2025 Defence Memorandum, measure implementation by Sri Lankan readiness, hours of maritime coverage, time-to-rescue, interdiction rates in the exclusive economic zone, disaster lift, not by the number of Indian ship-days in harbour.

Joint training should emphasise humanitarian assistance, counter-narcotics, hydrography, diving and lawful boarding. Those are the missions that serve the public and do not lock us into someone else’s contingency. Scenarios that only make sense in an India–China or India–Pakistan crisis should be declined politely and firmly.

Defence talks must also be bound to the prosperity agenda. Trincomalee as an energy and industrial node, electricity interconnection, port productivity and cyclone reconstruction are where security cooperation either pays the citizen or looks like militarisation. A Defence Minister’s visit that produces only wreaths and signed paper will be read in the region as alignment. A visit that also moves energy storage, disaster systems and maritime safety will be read as statecraft.

I write as a former police officer who spent a working lifetime on intelligence, counter-terrorism and the unglamorous work of keeping a multi-religious island in one piece. Geography gave us a seat at the table of Indian Ocean commerce and security. Institutions, energy policy, port performance and social cohesion will decide whether that seat produces prosperity, or merely more invitations to other people’s contests.

Singh’s visit should be received with courtesy, used with discipline, and remembered for what it adds to Sri Lanka’s ability to stand on its own water. Take the neighbour’s hand. Keep the island’s choices. Make sure every exercise, every gun and every training slot leaves us more able to say no the next time a great power asks to use our sea, our air or our soil. (18 sources)

This analysis is offered in the interest of national security, institutional reform, and public safety)

The writer is a retired Senior Superintendent of Police. He served as Deputy Director in charge of the Counter Terrorism Desk, State Intelligence Service, and later as Intelligence Coordinator to the Inspector General of Police. He is the author of Security Beyond Enforcement: Practical Approaches for a Safer Nation.

Features

Lost for 90 years: Rare Goby resurfaces in Jaffna

Published

3 hours ago

2026/09/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Discovery site Karainagar, Karaitivu Island

Rediscovery highlights rich, unexplored aquatic biodiversity in Northern Province

By Ifham Nizam

A small fish that vanished from Sri Lanka’s scientific records for nearly 90 years has resurfaced in the waters of Jaffna, providing researchers with a remarkable rediscovery and fresh evidence that the Northern Province still holds significant, unexplored aquatic biodiversity.

The Yellow-stripe Goby, Mugilogobius chulae (Smith, 1932), was recently found in the Karainagar area of Karaitivu Island during a biodiversity survey, almost nine decades after it was last scientifically recorded from Sri Lanka.

The discovery is particularly significant because the species had previously been known from the country only through a single historical specimen collected from Pedduru Thuduwa, Jaffna.

Discovery moment

Research scientist Janamina Bandara, a member of the team that made the discovery, told The Island that the fish was not initially identified as the long-lost species.

“We came across an unidentified Goby during our fieldwork, and it was only after a detailed examination of its external morphology that we were able to establish its identity as Mugilogobius chulae,” Bandara said.

“For us, it was an exciting moment because this species had not been confirmed from Sri Lanka for almost 90 years.”

The fish has a particularly interesting history in Sri Lankan ichthyology.

In 1936, renowned Sri Lankan zoologist P. E. P. Deraniyagala described a new fish from Pedduru Thuduwa in Jaffna in his paper,

“Two New Fishes from Ceylon”, published in The Ceylon Journal of Science.

He named the species Vaimosa valigouva. Subsequent taxonomic revisions established that Vaimosa valigouva was a synonym of Mugilogobius chulae, the currently accepted scientific name of the Yellow-stripe Goby.

However, no further confirmed records emerged from Sri Lanka for decades.

With the species absent from subsequent surveys and inventories, it eventually disappeared from the country’s national fish lists and from much of the scientific literature relating to Sri Lankan fishes.

The prolonged lack of records was also closely linked to the difficulties of conducting biological research in northern Sri Lanka.

Yellow-stripe Goby, Mugilogobius chulae

For decades, the civil conflict, restricted access, security concerns and limited opportunities for field surveys prevented scientists from systematically investigating many of the region’s aquatic habitats.

Consequently, while considerable advances were made in documenting biodiversity elsewhere in the island, northern Sri Lanka remained comparatively poorly explored.

Bandara said the rediscovery should, therefore, be viewed in a much wider context than the finding of a single fish.

He told The Island: “An absence of records does not necessarily mean that a species is absent. In the case of northern Sri Lanka, there have been enormous gaps in field data because large areas could not be studied systematically for many years.”

“This finding demonstrates how important it is to return to these habitats and carry out detailed surveys. There could be many more species, range extensions and rediscoveries waiting to be documented.”

The research team’s findings did not end with the Yellow-stripe Goby.

During the same study, the researchers also documented the Black-spotted Snubnose Goby, Pseudogobius melanostictus (Day, 1876), providing what they describe as the first confirmed northernmost record of the species in Sri Lanka.

The species had previously been reported mainly from lagoonal and brackish coastal environments in the western part of the country, while recent verified records were limited.

The new finding consequently extends the known geographical range of Pseudogobius melanostictus and adds an important northern record to Sri Lanka’s fish fauna.

Together, the two findings significantly expand the known distribution of both Goby species within Sri Lanka.

They also highlight the importance of small and often overlooked coastal, tidal and inland aquatic habitats in documenting the island’s biodiversity.

Goby species are generally small fishes that occupy a variety of marine, brackish and freshwater environments. Their habitats can include rocky shores, tidal pools, lagoons, estuaries, mangroves and other transitional aquatic ecosystems.

Black-spotted Snubnose Goby, Pseudogobius melanostictus

Because of their small size and preference for habitats that are often overlooked during large-scale biodiversity surveys, some Goby species can remain undocumented for long periods.

The latest research is, therefore, particularly relevant to understanding the aquatic biodiversity of the Jaffna Peninsula and surrounding islands.

According to Bandara, the discovery also demonstrates the importance of combining historical scientific literature with modern field research.

“The old records gave us an important historical reference, while the current fieldwork allowed us to connect that history with what is actually present in these habitats today,” he said.

The rediscovery of Mugilogobius chulae effectively reconnects modern Sri Lankan ichthyological research with Deraniyagala’s 1936 record.

It also establishes the new finding as the westernmost known occurrence of the species in the Indian Ocean, according to the researchers.

The study’s authors — Janamina Bandara, Sahan Randeniya and Aravind Manoj — say their findings underline the need for continued biological surveys in northern Sri Lanka.

The region’s aquatic ecosystems remain insufficiently studied, particularly in areas that were inaccessible or difficult to investigate for extended periods.

Bandara said the team expected that further exploration could produce more unexpected findings.

“We should not assume that we have a complete picture of Sri Lanka’s fish diversity. Particularly in the north, there are habitats that have received very little scientific attention,” he said.

“Every field survey can potentially change what we know about the distribution of a species. That is why continued exploration and proper documentation are so important.

The researchers have expressed particular concern about the need to document such species before changes to their habitats make future identification more difficult.

Coastal development, changes in water quality, habitat degradation and other pressures can affect small aquatic ecosystems, making baseline biodiversity information increasingly important for conservation planning.

The latest study, therefore, provides not merely two new distribution records but also a reminder of the value of maintaining and updating national biodiversity inventories.

The researchers thanked Dr. Helen Larson, Rohan Pethiyagoda, Madhura de Silva, Dr. Kasun Bandara and Neluka Fernando for their assistance with various aspects of the study.