Midweek Review

Alienness within walking distance

Published

4 years ago

2023/02/8

Sahan Weerasooriya

(Text of a lecture delivered

by Rajan Hoole

at ICES, celebrating Malaiyaham 200 on 21 January 2023)

Citizenship was not originally a contested area. At the first session of the Ceylon National Congress, on 11th December 1919, where Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam was elected president, it was assumed without dissent that all communities in the Island would be represented. In 1927, the Donoughmore Commissioners, who proposed universal adult franchise for ordinary residents did not themselves envisage a distinction. But it was clear to the Sinhalese plutocrats that under the scheme of one man – one vote, the balance of power would shift to the labouring classes.

In 1928, W. A. de Silva, president of the Ceylon National Congress, wanted the most vulnerable Plantation Tamils denied the vote because ‘their highly deprived living conditions and isolation made their vote a danger to the ‘community.’’ Any outsider visiting them was legally an intruder and subject to prosecution. Asked by the Indian journalist, Sant Nihal Singh, why not remove the restrictive regime in the Plantations, including his own, and allow the labour freedom to mix freely? De Silva admitted that then, the chief reason for denying them the vote would be gone. Seeing such specious denial of the vote made universal franchise farcical, the British Administration settled for minimum five years residence as condition for the vote.

Proof of five years residence seemed reasonable in 1929 and the Plantation Tamils too exercised the franchise in the 1931 and 1936 elections, but were by 20 years of insult and administrative harassment based on small-minded technicalities, rendered voteless in 1949. In 1941 the Legal Secretary had told the Council that 80% of the Plantation Tamils were either born here or had resided more than 10 years. Any government with a meagre sense of justice would in 1948 have taken the five years’ residence for granted. But even though they were paupers at the backbone of the economy, they were denied citizenship and the vote, making them slaves, on the risible pretext that they were, as D.S. Senanayake put it, citizens of India.

During the 20 years of the Donoughmore era, education too followed the social hierarchy; in 1927 a teacher in an English medium school could earn Rs. 70 to 200 and in a vernacular school from Rs.35 to Rs. 60. But the estate children were nominally taught reading, writing and arithmetic by teachers paid almost a plantation labourer’s salary of Rs. 20 a month in 1948. The labour was totally unprepared for the challenges of contesting disenfranchisement in the courts by proof of five years’ residence, even when many judges were sympathetic. The Registration bill of 1941 aimed at the Plantation Tamils, showed Senanayake whom the British favoured for the transfer of power, with the Left opposition jailed, established a stranglehold over the House. Amazingly, with the Left behind bars, no Sinhalese voted against the Bill. When the independence bill was put to the State Council in 1945, no Ceylon Tamil was willing to face up to the tragedy in train.

In the process, we destroyed the trust and good neighbourliness within the country to the point of driving the Tamil minority to seek lethal weapons; and in the unfolding dynamic, the majority and minority sought to overcome internal dissent by terror.

In today’s reality, this was defending the unaffordable Army doubling up as archaeological experts; scouring the North-East for tokens that could be turned into grandiose monuments for the Sinhalese among non-Sinhalese; and in turn driving the starving Sinhalese to desperate measures.

Academic historians and archaeologists have from their dull enclaves been shot into stardom as their professions became politicised. Written history will be of value only if it broadly reflects truth, rather than confirms the reader’s bias. The writer must interrogate his writing to check the validity of his conclusions.

To prove that the Indian labourers came only for short stay, Prof. S.U. Kodikara argued from the comparatively low proportion of unemployable elderly persons on the estates in the early 20th Century, that the elderly generally returned to India. But, in truth, conditions were harsh and the relative death rate very high, so that few survived to return. The blackout of Indian labour’s crucial contribution which kept the economy afloat, during the second world war and long after, to the tune of 65 per cent of our foreign earnings until 1965, is an injustice committed by both Sinhalese and Tamil politicians. That began the move to devalue everything Tamil.

The systematic denial of the Pallava (namely Tamil) contribution to Buddhist Art was to suppress the Tamil role. With scant evidence, the credit was shifted further north to inspiration from Amaravati of the 3rd century. This necessitates suppression of an episode of Indian Tamil immigration in the 8th to 10th centuries that led to excellence in art, expansion of trade, identification and internationalisation of the port of Trincomalee and the coming of China, by invitation.

Movement between Lanka and India was there all along, be it religion, trade, war or peace

The political need for the citizenship Act therefore inserted an official culture of systematic falsehood. Lankan professor of archaeology, Sirima Kiribamune, in ‘Tamils in Ancient and Mediaeval Sri Lanka’ of 1985, says, passing over the Pallava era in silence: “the 8th century, which saw some dynastic stability in the country, appears to have been relatively free of Indian troop movements.” Of Manavamma’s return following more than 20 years in service of the Pallavas, K.M. de Silva, remarks that there was augmentation of royal authority and sophistication of administration.

D.K. Dohanian, however, points out in his paper ‘Sinhalese Sculptures in the Pallava Style’ in Archives of Asian Art Vol. 36 (1983), Duke University Press:

“Lanka’s awareness of Indian neighbours was never so dynamic than during the nearly four hundred years following the flight of the Sinhalese prince Manavamma to political asylum in [Pallava] Kanchi, to the court of Narasimhavarman I. In 684 AD he captured the throne of Lanka in the wake of naval aid from the Pallava monarch, which set off from Mamallapuram. Following his reign of about 35 years, he was succeeded by his sons Aggabodhi V (AD 718 – 724), Kassapa III (724 – 730) and Mahinda I (730 – 733). These sons of Manavamma both shared his exile and were born in the Pallava country. In consequence Pallava influence at the Sinhalese court was quite strong.

“Both the stability and prestige of the Government of Lanka were related to the unbroken alliance with the Pallavas that lasted until the extinction of the Pallava dynasty near the end of the 9th Century. During this time the kingdom of Lanka benefitted from the might of the Pallavas” – who in the late 7th or 8th Century AD turned Trincomalee into a throbbing port city, judging by its wealth from the seabed ruins of Koneswaram Temple, and Mahayana Buddhist remains all over.

The relevant history of Tamil Nadu – inspiration of Buddhism and Jainism

Tamil Nadu has a blank in its history, after the 3rd Century AD, up to about 550 AD. Nilakanta Shastri tells us in his History of South India: “This dark period marked by the ascendancy of Buddhism and probably also of Jainism, was characterised also by great literary activity in Tamil.” Though characterising it ‘the dark period,’ being the great historian he was, Shastri followed with the brighter side of what has been termed the Kalabhra era, a time that saw the golden age of Tamil literature. He added: “Most of the works grouped under the head, the eighteen minor works were written during this period as also the Silappadikaram, Manimekalai and other works. Many of the authors were votaries of the heretical sects.”

It was a period marked by pluralism, if not secularism. David Shulman is a citizen of Israel, who works actively for justice to the Palestinians, from whom we in the University of Jaffna were privileged to have a visit. In his book of 2016, Tamil – a biography – provides a solution to the Kalabhra riddle that avoids the fantastic: “The once prevalent notion of a dark interregnum in which a mysterious dynasty of ‘Kalbhras’ penetrated with devastating effect, into the Tamil country now seems rather exaggerated, if not, indeed, entirely fictive.”

The Kalabhra period had witnessed a social upheaval in which the Buddhists and Jains gained in economic importance. In dealing with a revolution, which was largely pacific, the Pallavas, the emergent power in the Chola country from 550 AD on, whose rulers in turn embraced Jainism and Hinduism, wisely chose to buy into the revolution rather than suppress it. Thus, the Pallava capital Kanchipuram became a city of Jain, Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist learning. The merchant marine of the time with Kanchipuram as headquarters carried Mahayana Buddhism and the Tamil language to East Asia. The social atmosphere of the time is captured in the Silappadikaram and Manimehalai, and in Anne E. Monius’ book ‘Imagining a Place for Buddhism.’

Amaravati or Pallava?

Senarat Paranavitana, the doyen of Ceylon’s archaeologists, in his Art of the Ancient Sinhalese (1971), advances the ‘overwhelming’ influence of ‘Andhra art on that of early Ceylon and a branch of that school in Ceylon, producing the sculptures on the frontispieces of the ancient stupas.’ This was speculative, given the censorship of Mahayana in the chronicles of Ceylon and the 400 years that separated Amaravati from the flowering of Pallava art. Nilakanta Shastri traces Roman influence in the ‘vigorous and supple realism, characteristic of all Indian sculpture, particularly from the days of Asoka and Sanchi to the Pallava sculptures of Mamallapuram … Roman influence in the art of Amaravati that foreshadows that of Aihole and Mamallapuram.’

Osmund Bopearachchi, from Sorbonne, one of our eminent archaeologists has pointed to the mass discoveries from the 7th and 8th centuries of statues of Bodhisattva Avalokiteswara, the protector of sailors, along the island’s ports, rivers, and overland routes. He also points to famous Mahayana Buddhist statues in the southeast of the island, as in Budurugala, from this period. But he remarkably fails to make the crucial Pallava connection and leaves these facts as curiosities hanging in the air. The Amaravati claim is focused on one instance. Paranavitana quoted the authority of Ananda Coomaraswamy on the well-known statue in the Abhayagiri grounds [in Anuradhapura], ‘dignified as are the Buddhist statues of Amaravati, the great Buddha at Anuradhapura surpasses them in grandeur.’

Dohanian (ibid) adds: “Perhaps the most celebrated Sinhalese sculpture in the Pallava style is the stone Buddha of the Outer Circular Road in Anuradhapura [cited by] Coomaraswamay … Though originally from the Mahayanist shrine at Abhayagiri vihara, with three similar, if not identical Buddha images, it has been given space in virtually every publication on Buddhism and Buddhist art in modern times. The stone sculpture isolated from its shrine has been much commented upon, and has been placed within dates, ranging as a rule from the 2nd century A.D. to the fifth; there have been some attempts to date it much earlier … The shrine of which this image is a component has been dated within the first half of the eighth century, and I have demonstrated elsewhere, that the sculpture was contemporary, in manufacture, with the shrine.

“Although most scholars have been content to see ‘Gupta’ qualities in it, this image most convincingly resembles the figures carved on the face of the great rock at Mamallapuram, the ancient city of the Pallavas.”

No Lankan scholar seemed to have commented on Dohanian’s paper of 1983. At a seminar in University College London on 6th July 2005, Bopearachchi, repeated Paranavitana’s thesis on the ‘overwhelming’ influence of Amaravati-Nagajunakonda art on the earliest Buddha images in Sri Lanka as having ‘gained unanimous acceptance.’ This he partially retracted on 30th December 2014, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts:

“D.K. Dohanian sees a parallel between this type of ascetic Avalokiteśvara and Śiva of the early Pallava style depicted … in Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram). If this hypothesis is correct, the stone Avalokiteśvara images cannot be dated before the 7th century because the Pallava sculptures at Mamallapuram are generally dated to the reign of Narasimhavarman (630–668 CE).”

But Dohanian’s case on the actual origin of the Statue and its date to 8th Century AD went unanswered. All the while local archaeological publications have tried to protect the State’s ideological positions on the East of the country, particularly Trincomalee.

(To be continued)

All News Advertisement

Related Topics:Tea state workers Tea state workers in sri lanka

Up Next

Scripted, prompted, spellchecked and Emojied

Don't Miss

Lanka warned of Extraterritorial jurisdiction

Click to comment

Midweek Review

Legacy of enforced disappearances: Vital facts conveniently forgotten to whitewash LTTE and India

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

One-time child soldier Jesuthasan Antonythasan poses with actresses Claudine Vinasithamby and Kalieaswari Srinivasan during a photocall for the film "Dheepan" at the 68th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes. The movie won the Palme d'Or in 2015. Antonythasan fought for the LTTE terrorist group before fleeing Sri Lanka and reached France in 1993. Of those categorised as missing, perhaps he is the most famous.

Those demanding accountability from Sri Lanka for war crimes allegations are strangely silent on atrocities committed by the LTTE. On the orders of its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE killed hundreds of members belonging to rival terrorist groups. It assassinated President Ranasinghe Premadsasa, almost succeeded in assassinating President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and made attempts on President Mahinda Rajapaksa. But, the indiscriminate use of children as cannon fodder went unnoticed. How many children, forcibly recruited into their ranks, perished in fighting? And, lastly, shouldn’t the Tamil community hold the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led now defunct Tamil National Alliance, that recognised the LTTE in 2001 as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people, responsible for death and destruction caused since 2001?

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) representative Ana Lorena Delgadillo Pérez, and head of the Association of Relatives of Enforced Disappearances (ARED) Yogarasa Kanagaranjini, on 30 August, opened an exhibition at the Thanthai Selva Auditorium in Jaffna. The exhibition, appropriately named ‘Long Road for Justice,’ coincided with the International Day for Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

Pérez later addressed a conference held therein where the responsibility on the part of Sri Lanka was stressed.

Civil society activist Sunanda Deshapriya, in an article titled ‘Sri Lanka’s Disappeared: Where Do We Go from Here?’ carried in Jaffna Monitor, dealt with missing persons issue. Deshapriya focused on the North-East war (https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/sri-lankas-disappeared-where-do-we-go-from-here/)

The ICRC, Colombo, issued a statement regarding the International Day of the Disappeared. When the writer sought the number of missing persons in the country, Ruwanthi Jayasundare, Head of Communications, said that they had a caseload of 15,000 registered tracing requests (1983-2009) but she asserted that the actual number of missing was far bigger (https://island.lk/icrs-sustained-and-collective-efforts-critical-to-address-issue-of-missing-persons/)

Perhaps, many people wouldn’t know that the ICRC arrived here in 1989 during the second Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) terror campaign in the wake of Indian military intervention here. The much discussed issue of disappearances must be appropriately dealt with, taking into consideration the relevant factors. At the time of their deployment here, President Ranasinghe Premadasa had been engaged in direct talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Geneva-headquartered body never expected a gruesome outbreak of violence. It would be pertinent to mention that within weeks after the ICRC’s arrival here, the JVP was crushed with brute force as it, too, resorted to senseless violence. The counter violence unleashed by the state apparatus was such that the then Marxist group’s top leadership was killed, except for Somawansa Amarasinghe, who escaped, with Indian help, in February 1990, and remained in exile till late 2001.

The ICRC deployment took place in mid October, 1989, and JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera was captured in the second week of November, at Ulapone, and shot in custody, and was allegedly cremated alive at the Borella cemetery.

In fact, at the time the ICRC arrived here, the JVP was on its last legs. The UNP government never bothered to hand over the bodies of slain JVP cadres to their families. Those who had been listed missing at that time were no longer in the land of the living, by the time the ICRC brought its operation in the South to an end.

What the country never expected was a fresh flare-up in the northern and eastern regions. The LTTE resumed large-scale hostilities, in June, after the Indian Army pulled out from Sri Lanka in late March 1990. Interestingly, some of those demanding justice for the missing/disappeared are conveniently silent about the disappearances during the Indian Army deployment here (July 1987 to March 1990).

Soon after hostilities erupted in the northern and eastern regions, following a 14-month truce between President Ranasinghe Premadasa and LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran (May 1989 to June 1990), the ICRC was invited to open offices in that region. There had been excesses on the part of the military and law enforcement authorities as the government battled the LTTE, the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation as assessed by none other than the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Yet Sri Lanka must earnestly address accountability issues and take meaningful measures to compensate the families of the innocents.

However, the Tamil community must come to terms with the reality that the vast majority of dead were members of the LTTE. The LTTE enjoyed considerable firepower as it literally wielded a conventional fighting capability, which even included a fledgling air force and directly challenged the government, and the armed forces had no option but to fight back. Obviously, the LTTE, that achieved significant battlefield successes over the years, never expected the almost non-stop three-year-long offensive that brought the war to an end in May 2009. Disappearances became exceptionally an important issue in the overall agenda pursued by the Tamil Diaspora and Tamil speaking political parties here only after the LTTE’s eradication.

Multiple reasons

In September 1990, several months after the Indian Army was literally forced to pull out from Sri Lanka as Tigers fought back the mighty IPKF to a standstill, while President Premadasa, too, made it clear that they were no longer welcome here, Amnesty International (AI) documented 43 cases of disappearances. According to the London headquartered AI, the majority of these disappearances happened in the Jaffna peninsula, following the outbreak of fighting in October 1989. The Indian Army launched ‘Operation Pawan’ meant to disarm the LTTE in line with the Indo-Lanka Accord, signed on 29 July, 1987.

During the Indian Army deployment here (1987 July to 1990 March), the Sri Lankan armed forces were confined to their barracks in the North and East. The AI accused the Indian Army of torture, extrajudicial executions and disappearances. The deaths of nearly 1,500 Indian officers and men, and injuries to approximately 3,000 others during the Indian deployment here, underscored the ferocity of the situation.

The Indian Army carried out reprisals, following LTTE attacks in both provinces. The Indian Army was also accused of sexual violence. Perhaps, the August 1989 Valvettithurai orgy of violence, during which Indian soldiers killed civilians, tortured detainees, committed sexual violence, and systematically destroyed homes and businesses, while the town was under curfew, was the worst case.

In October, 2025, the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) presented a detailed reparations claim, in association with the Valvettithurai Citizens’ Committee, to the Sri Lankan Office for Reparations, requesting USD $15 million (LKR 4.5 billion) for victims of a 1989 orgy of violence committed by the IPKF where at least 66 civilians were killed and 34 injured.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of a comprehensive compensation claim for such a wartime crime. Thousands of LTTE cadres, some of them trained in India, and civilians, perished in Indian Army action. The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) earned such a bad reputation it came to be dubbed the Indian People Killing Force.

The war in Sri Lanka, or whatever one chooses to call it, should be examined in the context of a high profile Indian destabilisation project ordered by Premier Indira Gandhi. Over a year after the Indian Army pullout, the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, by then out of power, but he was the person Velupillai Prabhakaran held responsible for the Indian Army deployment in Sri Lanka. Following Gandhi’s assassination, India hunted down the LTTE team, involved in the operation, carried out by a female suicide cadre.

The LTTE forgot the Indian role in the transformation of the Tamil separatist terrorist movement to a deadly conventional threat. If not for the despicable Indian action, Sri Lanka wouldn’t have been hauled up before the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). That is the unpalatable truth.

How many Sri Lankan Tamils disappeared during weapons training in India? Did India investigate such disappearances as well as deaths caused by fighting among rival Tamil terrorist groups operating in India at that time? Among the groups that had been armed by India were PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam), EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front) and TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation) responsible for quite a significant number of killings and human rights violations.

India never accepted responsibility for the PLOTE raid on the Maldives on a contract to topple the then Maldivian PM Gayoom’s government given by a domestic rival in early November, 1988. Shouldn’t New Delhi at least apologise for the sea borne raid on the Maldives that resulted in deaths of Maldivians, as well as raiders? The Indian Navy sank a ship commandeered by the attackers fleeing the Maldives after air borne Indian troops brought the situation under control.

The Indian and global media praised swift Indian intervention but ignored two key factors, namely (i) the operation targeting Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was mounted by one of the groups trained, armed and deployed by India and (ii) two trawlers carrying the raiding party left the northern part of Sri Lanka, at that time held by the Indian Army.

The writer had the opportunity, in November, 2011, to interview the Maldivian businessman, Abdullah Luthufee, who convinced the PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran to carry out the operation. (Male plot leader speaks out 3 November, 2011, Rajiv saved us from Gayoom-Male coup leader 4 November 2011 and How Luthufee moved SAARC venue from Male to Addu 11 Nov 2011) dealt with the operation that should have drawn international attention to the Indian destabilisation project. Let me stress that some PLOTE cadres perished when the Indian Navy sank the vessel commandeered by the fleeing PLOTE cadres. They were among those who had been listed missing during the conflict.

Australian and US interventions

One-time top JVPer Kumar Gunaratnam secret arrival in Sri Lanka as an Australian Citizen Noel Mudalige, in early September, 2011, emphasised the issuance of foreign passports in assumed names to Sri Lankans under controversial circumstances. The writer exclusively reported how the head of the breakaway JVP faction, known as the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), arrived here. The Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka acted swiftly and decisively when Gunaratnam disappeared after entering the country, using Australian passport bearing number N 1016123 on September 4, 2011 (https://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/?p=43914). The writer dealt with the same issue again in August 2016 (https://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/?p=47936).

Among thousands of Sri Lankans, now having foreign citizenship, there can be many people listed here as “missing/forcibly” disappeared. Western governments never helped Sri Lanka to establish the real identities of Sri Lankans living abroad, under assumed names. If Gunaratnam never acted in a manner inimical to the JVP, he could have easily lived a comfortable life in Australia as Sinhala Buddhist Noel Mudalige.

There had been many interesting stories of those categorised as missing/dead turning up in the West, under new identities. One of the most intriguing ones, is about an ex-LTTE terrorist turned Frenchman Antonythasan Jesuthasan, the lead actor in Dheepen that won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Internationally acclaimed Jacques Audiard directed the movie about three Sri Lankans who formed a fake family to escape the war and to secure asylum in France. Antonythasan Jesuthasan’s performance in Dheepan earned him a Best Actor nomination at the 2016 César Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars). Jesuthasan is the only ex-LTTE terrorist to receive international acclaim as an actor.

In an interview with Tom Seymour (Dheepan’s Antonythasan Jesuthasan: from Tamil Tiger to star of a Palme d’Or winner in The Guardian) posted online on March 31, 2016, transformed Frenchman Jesuthasan, unwittingly revealed how he deceived the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to secure political asylum. Seymour reported that Jesuthasan, after having shown him a dense lattice of scars on his forearm, declared: “I did those to myself. I was 22, and I had spent years trying to come to the west. I wanted to get a fake French passport, but I had to be accepted as a refugee. I went to the UNHCR [the UN High Commissioner for Refugees], but they wouldn’t believe my story. So I cut myself, and held up my arm, and said to them: ‘Look at my blood. This is my word.”

Jesuthasan is just one among thousands who obtained political asylum on false claims. Jesuthasan ended up as the star of Dheepan, directed by Jacques Audiard, possibly France’s most celebrated modern director. There cannot be a better example than Jesuthasan to highlight the web of deceit pertaining to the vast majority of those who successfully secured political asylum. But, the Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry never bothered to set the record straight. Born in Allaipiddy, on the Velanaitivu islet, Jesuthasan claimed he fought the Sri Lanka Army in August 1990 and subsequently fled the country and managed to reach France.

But, the case of Kathiravel Thayapararajah is one of the most controversial cases. Thayapararajah had been involved in a Tamil Diaspora funded project in Kilinochchi during Eelam war IV. He couldn’t have secured the Diaspora assignment without the approval of the LTTE and remained in the Vanni during the war. He disappeared in September 2009.

His disappearance prompted a section of the media, as well as some international NGOs, to accuse the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) of executing him. No less a person than the then US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs and one-time US Ambassador in Colombo, Robert O. Blake, inquired about the missing person.

The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), the Australian Government Refugee Review Tribunal, Tamilnet and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights among others blamed the Sri Lankan intelligence for the disappearance. However, the Indian media, in May, 2014, revealed Thayapararajah’s arrest though they didn’t know at the time that he was the person who was supposed to have been killed by the Sri Lankan Intelligence. At the time Indian police apprehended Thayapararajah, at Arichamunai off Dhanuskodi, after arriving there in a boat from Sri Lanka, he had been with notorious female human smuggler Uthayakala. She claimed Thayapararajah was her second husband.

That chance detection exposed a blatant lie propagated over the years. The then Head of Missing Persons Commission, retired High Court Judge Maxwell Paranagama, is also on record as having called for international cooperation to trace persons living overseas under new identities. Paranagama told the writer that at that time both the international community, including the ICRC, had declined to help Sri Lanka identify those taking cover behind new identities.

Chemmani mass graves

Sri Lanka needs to investigate war crimes allegations, particularly the high profile Chemmani mass grave. The country cannot ignore the continuing accusations with the international media taking advantage of the situation to tarnish the country, especially the Rajapaksa rule. It must be a way of the West taking revenge from the Rajapaksas for going against their wish to save the bold thirsty Tigers. It is like their logic that Israel can do no wrong!

The CNN dealt with the Chemmani issue while the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), in July last year, called for what it claimed as victim-centred investigation into the alleged mass graves in compliance with international law and standards.

Tamil political parties, too, repeatedly demanded tangible action against the perpetrators. The Chemmani mass grave site drew national and international attention in 1998 following the confession of a soldier implicated in the rape and murder of schoolgirl Krishanthy Kumaraswamy. Chemmani has become a powerful and painful symbol of the country’s war-torn past.

Krishanthy Kumaraswamy was raped and killed by soldiers on the 7th of September, 1996. The same group of soldiers later killed her mother, her younger brother and a family friend who went out searching for the teenager.

An excavation, in 1999, led to the recovery of 15 sets of remains, and then the matter was allowed to rest for about a quarter of a century. On the orders of the Jaffna Magistrate’s court, a fresh excavation was ordered last year, following the chance recovery of some skeletal remains and so far nearly 600 sets of human remains have been found, among them children and infants. Tamil media have declared Chemmani as the largest mass grave found in Sri Lanka.

It would be pertinent to mention that some time back the Army was accused of the Mannar mass graves but investigations undertaken by the Office of Missing Persons (OMP), with international expertise, proved the claims false. Bone fragment samples were submitted to Beta Analytic, a specialised US radiocarbon-dating laboratory. This happened during the Yahapalana administration (2015-2019) Later, the lab indicated that the tested bone samples dated back to the period between 1499 and 1719 AD (the 15th to 18th century). That brought an end to the Mannar mass graves hoax.

Whatever the circumstances, the government cannot remain silent regarding the Chemmani mass graves. The area that had been under Security Forces Headquarters, Jaffna continues to receive public attention, both here and abroad. The Army will have to address the issue without further delay. Let me stress the importance of investigating the atrocities perpetrated by others, namely the Indian Army for which the responsibility lies with the government of India as well as the LTTE, and over half a dozen other terrorist groups that subsequently entered the political mainstream.

The formation of Tamil National Army (TNA) by India before the Indian Army pullout by March 1990, too, must receive the attention of Sri Lanka as well the concerned international community. Having totally destabilised the smaller neighbouring county by arming scores of terrorist groups, New Delhi went a step further by the formation of the TNA meant to protect Varatharaja Perumal’s North-East provincial administration.

In spite of President Ranasinghe Premadasa drawing strong criticism for arming the LTTE against the Indian Army, in hindsight, if not for his controversial decision, India’s proxy, TNA may have taken root. Whatever various parties say today, the TNA had been formed to ensure the continuation of the deeply unpopular Perumal’s administration that went to the extent of forcible conscription. India can never absolve itself of responsibility for what it did in Sri Lanka. The destabilisation project, largely influenced by the then Premier Indira Gandhi’s concerns over the developing situation in Tamil Nadu, caused massive death and destruction. No less a person than J.N. Dixit, who served as their High Commissioner in Colombo (1985 to 1989), and later appointed National Security Advisor (2004 to 2005) disclosed in his memoirs ‘Makers of India’s Foreign Policy: Raja Ram Mohun to Yashwant Sinha’, Indira’s Gandhi’s intervention. The late Dixit in no uncertain terms blamed her for Indian intervention in Sri Lanka.

Midweek Review

A street where Sri Lankan stories found their readers

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

Margaret Richardson and Asanka de Mel / Ashok Ferrey

By Ifham Nizam

Pictures by Nishan S Priyantha and Kamal Bogoda

Ashok Ferrey took readers into an older Colombo through Colpetty People. Vivimarie Vanderpoorten opened the door to the personal stories behind her poetry. Andrew Fidel Fernando brought cricket, culture and the distinctive world of Sri Lankan school cricket into the conversation, while Ramya Jirasinghe spoke candidly about the long and often difficult road from writing a manuscript to seeing it published.

Then came Margaret Richardson and Asanka de Mel, whose conversation moved from literature to the question of where Sri Lanka should be by 2048.

These were among the voices that gave life to Fairway Street of Stories, a new initiative that sought to bring Sri Lankan English-language writers closer to their readers.

But behind the gathering of authors, readers, books, children, book clubs and aspiring writers was a bigger idea—the brainchild of Amendra Haputhanthri, Director of Sarasavi Bookshop (Pvt) Ltd.

For Haputhanthri, Fairway Street of Stories is not merely another literary event. It is part of a much larger attempt to create a marketplace for Sri Lankan talent and to persuade readers to discover stories that are unmistakably their own.

“Usually, when we have exhibitions, such as the Colombo Book Fair, we always think about what sells the most. Here, we wanted to create a niche market for people who want to read Sri Lankan writing,” she said.

And the first event demonstrated just how wide that literary world can be.

Stories from a Sri Lanka we know

Haputhanthri believes one of the greatest strengths of Sri Lankan English writing is its sense of place.

A thriller set in an unfamiliar foreign city may be entertaining. But a thriller unfolding at the Galle Face Hotel or Mount Lavinia Hotel carries another kind of intimacy for a Sri Lankan reader.

“You have familiar words and actual real-world places that we have been to. There will be a connection with the book,” she said.

That connection can be even more powerful when the story takes readers into places and experiences that are disappearing.

This is one reason she admires Ferrey’s work.

During his Fairway session, Ferrey, together with Tanya de Mel, offered readers an engaging glimpse into the world behind Colpetty People and the Colombo it captures.

Amendra Haputhanthri (extreme left) with winners

For Haputhanthri, Ferrey’s writing is also a record of a rapidly changing city.

“Even Sri Lanka is changing very rapidly. Within Colombo also, the environment is rapidly changing, and that is being addressed nicely in the books of Ashok Ferrey,” she said.

Literature, in that sense, becomes more than entertainment.

It becomes memory.

The stories behind the poems

Vivimarie Vanderpoorten offered a very different literary experience.

Haputhanthri describes her as one of the country’s outstanding contemporary talents, particularly because of the personal histories embedded in her poetry.

A poem on a page may be only a few lines long. But behind those lines can lie an entire life.

Vanderpoorten spoke about those experiences at Fairway, including deeply disturbing events she had witnessed during her university years.

For Haputhanthri, hearing those stories transformed the poems.

“All her stories, there is a back story. All her poems, there is a back story,” she said.

She believes such conversations are precisely what literary events should create—a space where readers can move beyond the printed page and understand the human experience that produced it.

She also encouraged people to read poetry, even if only one poetry collection a year.

Poetry, she believes, forces readers to think beyond what is immediately presented.

“It gives you the ability to think out of the box,” she said.

Cricket is more than a score

Andrew Fidel Fernando brought yet another dimension to the event.

For someone who writes and comments on international cricket, his work naturally takes readers into the world of the game. But Haputhanthri noted that Fernando’s writing also captures the culture surrounding cricket in different countries.

And Sri Lanka has a particularly richstory to tell.

Andrew Fidel Fernando / Dr. Vivimarie Vanderpoorten

For Haputhanthri, the island’s school-cricket culture is something the world should know more about.

“We are the best in the world when it comes to having a culture for school cricket. It is something very unique to our country,” she said.

She even suggested that writers interested in Sri Lankan cricket should explore this largely distinctive phenomenon in greater depth.

Because literature can sometimes reveal what statistics cannot.

A schoolboy walking onto a cricket ground carries with him a school, a city, friendships, rivalries, family expectations and an entire culture.

From manuscript to book

Ramya Jirasinghe’s contribution was particularly relevant to aspiring writers.

She spoke about her own journey and the realities of getting a book published.

Her experience demonstrated that literary success rarely happens overnight.

Winning recognition is one thing. Turning a manuscript into an internationally published book is another.

For emerging writers listening to her, the message was clear: writing requires patience, revision and persistence.

Haputhanthri knows that process well.

Writers, she said, can be rejected repeatedly—even at international level.

And translations create another layer of difficulty.

Sometimes an author reads a translation of his or her work and says: “This doesn’t have my voice.”

That, Haputhanthri acknowledged, illustrates how complex the journey from an original manuscript to another language can be.

A speech from the future

Carmel Miranda

Asanka de Mel and Margaret Richardson brought another perspective to Fairway.

De Mel’s 2048: A Speech from 2048 looks towards the centenary of Sri Lanka’s independence and asks why the country has not yet become a developed nation.

But his message, as Haputhanthri interpreted it, was not one of resignation.

Sri Lanka should not allow its small geographical size to become a psychological limitation.

De Mel’s own journey—from two decades in Silicon Valley to returning to Sri Lanka and embarking on entrepreneurial ventures—was offered as an example of what persistence and confidence can achieve.

For Haputhanthri, it reinforced one of the central lessons of both writing and life.

“There is no shortcut in life,” she said.

Stories that preserve a country

Fairway Street of Stories also reflected Haputhanthri’s belief that literature can preserve aspects of Sri Lankan identity that are increasingly vulnerable.

She spoke about Angampora, Beeralu weaving, traditional culture and historical stories.

Even the country’s royal heritage can become a gateway for a new generation to understand the island’s past.

She recalled seeing foreign visitors browsing books about Sri Lankan kings.

Those books were doing more than recounting history. They were presenting the story of a country with a long and complicated heritage.

Haputhanthri believes Sri Lankan literature can perform a similar role internationally.

“Our stories should also reach people in the same way our food and cultural experiences have reached the world,” she said.

She recalled meeting two foreigners who had visited Sri Lanka around 156 times.

Their extraordinary attachment to the country reminded her that Sri Lanka’s culture has an ability to attract people repeatedly.

The stories of the country, she believes, deserve the same reach.

The problem is not the e-book

Ramya Jirasinghe (third from left)

Yet while Haputhanthri is passionate about books, she is equally concerned about the future of reading.

She does not believe e-books are necessarily the enemy.

“If people are reading an e-version, as long as they are reading something valuable, that will add something to you,” she said.

The bigger threat, in her view, is the endless scrolling culture of the smartphone.

“Scrolling on the phone reduces your attention span and you can’t do any sort of deep work,” she said.

She has observed this challenge among young people entering the workplace and believes sustained concentration is increasingly difficult.

But her answer is not to blame young people.

It is to begin much earlier—with parents and teachers.

“Whatever the parents read, the children also will read,” she said.

‘Readers Are Not Born, They Are Created’

That belief is now developing into another initiative.

Haputhanthri is working on a programme titled ‘Readers Are Not Born, They Are Created’, which she hopes to take from school to school and community to community.

The target will be parents as much as children.

The message is that reading habits are cultivated. They are demonstrated, encouraged and nurtured.

She also hopes to involve children who have themselves developed through reading, allowing them to share their experiences with others.

For Haputhanthri, the issue is deeply personal.

“I would credit everything that I have today, and everything I am today, because of reading,” she said.

She believes avid readers develop empathy, creativity and critical thinking—qualities that are increasingly valuable in a world dominated by information but often short on attention.

Beyond one literary weekend

Fairway Street of Stories, therefore, is not intended to remain a once-a-year literary celebration.

Haputhanthri wants to see activities connected with reading and books continue throughout the year.

A bargain book sale is among the ideas being considered, making use of books from Sarasavi’s extensive network of branches that may have suffered minor damage or discolouration while remaining on shelves.

The next major event will be the book fair, followed by further initiatives.

But the larger ambition goes beyond sales.

It is about discovery.

A reader discovering a Sri Lankan writer.

A child discovering poetry.

An aspiring author discovering that rejection is not the end.

A foreign visitor discovering that Sri Lanka’s stories are as rich as its food, landscapes and traditions.

And a country discovering itself in its own books.

That is perhaps the most significant contribution of Fairway Street of Stories.

Because the authors who gathered there did more than talk about their books.

They demonstrated the many ways in which Sri Lanka can be written, remembered and imagined.

And behind that gathering was Amendra Haputhanthri’s conviction that these stories deserve not only a place on a bookshelf, but a place in the minds of readers—and eventually, a place in the wider world.