Midweek Review

Alborada: Dawn Song or Dawn Rape?

Published

4 years ago

2022/03/9

By Carmen Wickramagamage

Ashoka Handagama’s latest film, Alborada, introduces itself as “the poem that Neruda never wrote.” What is this poem? Released on February 14 to coincide with Valentine’s Day, the irony of the timing is hard to miss for Alborada culminates in the horrific rape by Neruda, the great love poet, of a female latrine cleaner during his brief stay in Ceylon as the Chilean Consul. Hardly a subject that lends itself to poetry though the recitations in the film, in the original Spanish, of poems that Neruda did write are mesmerizing. Perhaps this explains why Garcia Marquez chose to characterize Neruda as “the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language”. What is Handagama’s intention in the film?

In interviews, Handagama has spoken of his film as a challenge to Western hegemony that he claims operated to push this ignominious act under the carpet. But he has made it clear that unearthing a little-known fact about a poet hailed today as a critic of capitalism and champion of the oppressed is not his only intention. He sees his film as making an intervention into the contemporary discourse on women’s right to bodily autonomy in the age of #MeToo. Handagama is clearly well-intentioned. It is therefore necessary to examine how Alborada intervenes, through its representation of the scene of rape, in the rape culture that naturalizes masculine privilege and feminine vulnerability.

Source of the story

The source of what we know about the incident is Neruda himself. While he may not have composed a poem about the rape, he did “confess” to it in his memoirs translated into English by Hadley St. Martin as I confess I have lived: memoirs (1977). Written some forty years later, one page of the eleven pages (out of three-hundred fifty) that he devotes to his Ceylonese sojourn concerns itself with this incident. Though it created hardly a ripple in Sri Lanka, in Chile, Neruda’s admission stirred up a storm when the Chilean Parliament voted in 2018 to rename the airport in Santiago after him, with women and human rights activists vociferously protesting against the plan citing this incident. Not that the incident was completely unknown in Sri Lanka but the rumour that was doing the rounds was more along the lines of “something” between Neruda and his “domestic”. Handagama has said that he first read about it in a book by Tissa Abeysekera which, according to Sarath Chandrajeewa, went this way: “the great poet, the Nobel prize winner who loved a scavenger woman in Wellawatte”. No mention of rape there. Transferring a brief reference in Neruda’s memoirs into film and making it the pièce de résistance of a visually powerful medium is a radical gesture but how radical is it in its contribution to the ongoing conversation on rape?

Handagama has tried to distance himself from Neruda, calling the film his “creation” just as Neruda’s memoirs were his but the film is in large measure faithful to Neruda’s recollections of his stay in Ceylon, highlighting the theme of solitude that runs like a refrain through the young poet’s account and offering a sympathetic portrait of a man ill at ease in the “narrow colonialism” of the British but intrigued by the sights, sounds and people of Ceylon. Just as Neruda is the subject of his memoirs, so is he in the film. In only one respect is there a significant deviation: the representation of rape.

The Incident

In Neruda’s account, his interest in the woman begins with his curiosity about the mysterious workings of his latrine. When he finally sees the woman who cleans it, he is not repulsed, calling her instead the “the most beautiful woman I had yet seen in Ceylon” (p. 99) and elevating her above the rest through appellations such as “queen” and goddess”. But, when she disdains his tokens of love in the form of silks and fruits, he exercises his white male prerogative over native women’s bodies by raping her: “One morning , I decided to go all the way. I got a strong grip on her wrist and stared into her eyes. There was no language I could talk with her. Unsmiling, she let herself be led away and was soon naked in my bed. Her waist, so very slim, her full hips, the brimming cups of her breasts made her like one of the thousand-year-old sculptures from the south of India. It was the coming together of a man and a statue” (p. 100).

Neruda plays down the violence of the encounter in his penitential recounting, resorting instead to euphemisms. The woman does not struggle. She “let herself be led” (Is she deterred by the “strong grip on her wrist”?). She does not scream for help (Is she aware of its futility given the isolated location of the bungalow?). She was “soon naked”, how she came to be naked elided, its place taken by an aestheticized description of the female form reminiscent of classical Sanskrit poetry that deflects attention from the violence. Some trace of the woman’s resistance is acknowledged in her unresponsiveness. At the climactic moment, when he forces himself on her, she turns into a sculpture in his eyes, turning Neruda in turn into a Pygmalion in reverse. Where Pygmalion (in Ovid’s Metamorphosis) manages to obtain his heart’s desire by turning a statue (thanks to Venus’ intervention) into the woman of his dreams, Neruda’s touch turns a living, breathing woman into a sculpture. The description ends with lines that have self-loathing write large over it: “She was right to despise me . The experience was never repeated” (p. 100).

Its Representation

How does Handagama render this incident in film? Unlike in the memoirs, here, the audience is prepped from the start for the impending climax through the sighting of the Parvati statue by Neruda on arrival, his frolics with members of the Sakkili community that has Ratné Aiya incensed, and the rhythmic chiming of the latrine-cleaner’s anklets that wakes him up at dawn from a night of love-making. When the rape finally occurs, it is portrayed on screen in all its brutality. The woman screams, she struggles valiantly to escape, she has to be forcibly detained and stripped naked before the final humiliation of rape. There is nothing subtle or indirect about it. Why this directorial decision to deviate? Is it that Handagama wanted to dispel any illusions that his audience may entertain about the great poet Neruda? Or did he want to force his audience to confront head on the brutality of rape against the backdrop of a rape culture that thrives on misconceptions regarding women’s consent?

I find Handagama’s directorial decisions problematic on many fronts. For one thing, in the eyes of the law, ‘rape’ is sexual intercourse without consent, what constitutes “absence of consent” carefully delineated to accommodate the different scenarios that qualify as “rape” in the eyes of the law. Here, the woman violently struggles, thus confirming a misunderstanding “if there is rape, there must be evidence of struggle.” In a culture where the tendency is to hold the victim responsible for triggering the rape situation, this is dangerous. In anchoring rape in “consent”, the law recognizes the extenuating circumstances where a victim may not be able to physically resist or even say ‘no’. In Neruda’s account, the circumstances that prevent the woman from resisting or saying ‘no’ vocally are very clear. In hindsight, he too acknowledges her ‘no’: “She kept her eyes wide open all the while, completely unresponsive” (p. 100).

Beyond the issue of consent, his portrayal of the scene of rape also raises questions on how to represent violence on screen. Much has been written on the intrinsic violence of representation in attempts to represent violence. The risk is doubled when it comes to sexual violence as Laura Mulvey and others have pointed out as it turns spectators into voyeurs who wittingly or unwittingly participate in the violence enacted on screen. In Alborada, we all join Ratné Aiya at the “keyhole” or aperture to gaze at the scene unfolding within, whether we derive a vicarious pleasure from that or not. Handagama tries to draw the attention of the audience to the very real pain of the woman by having a tear course down her cheek as she stares directly at the camera and at us while averting her gaze from the perpetrator. By doing so, he restores the flesh-and-blood woman to the scene of the rape where Neruda had seen a statue. Unfortunately, the protracted violence of the rape scene is in danger of slipping from pathos to bathos. Sarath Chandrajeewa has already said that he found the scene where the predator and his prey circle round the massive four-poster bed comical. I agree. The scene was too reminiscent of “ottu sellang”, a children’s game of “catch me if you can”, for me!

Life after rape

Feminist critics such as Sharon Marcus and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan have emphasized the importance of rewriting the normative rape script which sees the woman as victim and her defilement as marking her for life. In Sri Lanka, women are enjoined to protect their character (a euphemism for sexual purity) as if it were their life, its loss a fate worse than death. Marcus and Sunder Rajan, therefore, argue that it is essential to speak of rape survivors, not rape victims, who thereby refuse the powerlessness assigned to them in a “gendered grammar of violence”(Marcus).

In Neruda’s memoirs, at the end of the account, attention is redirected to Neruda himself albeit on a note of self-recrimination: “She was right to despise me” (p. 100). The woman’s subsequent fate is of little concern to him. In the film, the lines translate into an image of Neruda trading places with the latrine cleaner, first taking up the brush and cleaning the latrine and then walking towards the sea carrying the latrine bucket on his head in a show of abject humility. As for the woman, the camera follows her out of the bedroom and into the sea where she tries frenziedly to rid herself of the defiling touch, her facial expressions indicating her disgust. She is then seen swimming deeper into the ocean, with the ocean waters gradually submerging her completely. Only the red cloth survives to create patterns in the water as it did at the start of the film. Clearly, there is no life after rape.

The film, however, adds another scene in an attempt to locate the phenomenon of rape in the present. In this scene the woman resurfaces from the sea framed against a skyline featuring a jet-ski. How to read it? Is it to remind the audience that, some one hundred years later, nothing much has changed? Or is to hold out hope that in the age of #MeToo, something is about to change?

But, according to Sarath Chandrajeewa (in “Beyond the Fiction of Alborada“)who claims to have traced the identity of the woman raped by Neruda, the “real” woman did not drown herself. She returned to her community but was married off by her family to an older man because she had “lost her virginity” and, when her husband died shortly after, the now pregnant woman jumped into the funeral pyre of her husband and committed suicide, which some in the community described as “Sathi Pooja”. Chandrajeewa even speculates that the husband’s death from alcohol poisoning was “either because he was delighted with his beautiful young bride or perhaps due to grief” (!). This information that Chandrajeewa says he gathered as part of his research among the Sakkili community who lived in Wellawatte and Bambalapitiya in the 1970s raises many questions for me. Did the community that the woman belonged to (the lowly scavenger caste) uphold norms of feminine sexual purity that have their basis in the genteel classes? Did they practice “Sathi Pooja” of which there are no documented cases in Ceylon and which, even in India is very much tied to region, class and caste as scholars like Lata Mani and Gayatri Spivak have pointed out? Pregnant women in any case do not commit Sathi Pooja. They wait until they give birth. How much does Chandrajeewa “know” of their ways?

This is not the only attempt at endowing the woman with an afterlife. Another account of the nameless woman’s subsequent fate has been doing the rounds of late due to an article by Kumar Gunawardena in The Island in 2020 where he, drawing on a story titled “Brumpy’s Daughter” in Tissa Devendra’s On Horseshoe Street, claims that the raped woman’s story had a happy ending. According to Gunawardena, Neruda “did the right thing” by the woman, who now has a name, Thangamma, by marrying her off to his retainer Brumpy. And when a daughter (Neruda’s) was born in due course, she was named Imelda after Neruda’s mother at his behest and supported financially by Neruda through George Keyt. Devendra meets Imelda Ratnayake (last name from the foster father Brumpy) much later when he is heading a Kachcheri where she too works and attracts his attention because of her striking appearance. She ends up marrying a Chilean, a Neruda devotee, who had worked for a while in Ceylon. After her marriage, Imelda settles in Chile with her husband and meets Devendra again at a conference in Mexico. It was a feel-good story. But the feeling was short-lived. When Michael Roberts reprinted Kumar Gunawardena’s account in his blog Thuppahi, someone by the name of Manel Fonseka intervened to spoil it by declaring “If I’m not mistaken, Devendra’s whole story was exactly that! A STORY! No basis in truth”. If Manel Fonseka is right, Gunawardena, a medical doctor by training, had failed to recognize the difference between fact and fiction!

In all this, there is no room for the subjectivity of the woman who was raped. She does not speak. For Neruda, the reason is the language barrier though he turns that into something more by comparing her to a “shy jungle animal” belonging in “another kind of existence, in another world” (p. 100). Handagama restores some humanity to her by adding that artistically placed single tear but that’s where he stops. She never speaks. The gaze in the film is predominantly Neruda’s, the camera angles adopting Neruda’s perspective on the receding figure of the latrine cleaner reminiscent of a classical South Indian sculpture although, unfortunately, her walk could well be that of a model on the runway. Similarly, her face takes on a bronze sheen when Neruda intercepts her to remind us that, in his mind, she resembles a statue. Given the race, caste, class and gender of the latrine cleaner, it is unlikely we will ever know what happened to her. Chandrajeewa, who claims he found the “real” woman, assigns her an exceptional fate as a “mad” woman (suffering from “Idiopathic Psychological Disorder”) who commits Sathi Pooja. Even Tissa Devendra’s story ultimately fails to imagine for her a life that is not defined by the rape. I like to think that there was life after rape for her, that she, though no doubt traumatized, survived the rape without having to play the prescribed role in the normative script for the rape victim–forced marriage and unwanted pregnancy–although, gender norms at the time being such, she could not cry out loud #HeToo!

(Carmen Wickramagamage is Professor in English at the University of Peradeniya)

All News Advertisement

Midweek Review

Squeaky clean image of JVP in tatters

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

During the recent debate on the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody, Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) Batticaloa District lawmaker, Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam, warned that the next NCM would be moved against Fisheries Minister Ramalingham Chandrasekaran. Rasamanickam accused the National List member of corruption, a charge vehemently denied by the NPPer. The NPP/JVP needs to initiate an internal inquiry before corruption allegations overwhelm the party that received the full advantage of Aragalaya to transform the outfit from just a three-member parliamentary group, in 2024, to a staggering 159, a year later. The UNP and SLFP led alliances were dealt harshly by the electorates for want of action to curb corruption. Today, the UNP and SLFP are not represented in Parliament, while the SLPP, that secured 145 seats at the 2020 general election, was reduced to just three with its parliamentary group leader Namal Rajapaksa entering Parliament through the National List. Rajapaksa junior obviously feared to face the Hambantota electorate at the last general election. That is the undeniable truth.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The ongoing controversy over Agriculture, Lands, Irrigation and Livestock Minister K.D. Lal Kantha’s three-storeyed luxury house has intensified pressure on the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) government struggling to cope-up with the devastating coal scam, blamed on Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody forcing him to resign.

Jayakody, one of those who financed the NPP/JVP campaign in the run-up to the 2024 national polls ,resigned on 17 April, along with Prof. Udayanga Hemapala, Secretary to the Energy Ministry. Their resignations happened eight months after the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), a breakaway faction of the JVP, revealed the alleged coal scam. The Lal Kantha affair received significant public attention though the primary issue at hand is the massive coal scam that ripped through the government.

Jayakody will continue as a National List member of the ruling party. The NPP/JVP won an unprecedented 159 seats, including 18 National List slots at the November 2024 parliamentary elections.

The Opposition dismissed government claims that the resignations were meant to facilitate the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the procurement of coal, since the commissioning of the country’s only coal-fired power plant during the onset of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term. In the wake of the much delayed resignations, NPP/JVP heavyweight Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, addressing the media at the Information Department, pathetically vouched for Jayakody’s integrity.

Let us discuss the accusations directed at Lal Kantha who had served the SLFP-led Cabinet for a short period, years ago, in terms of an agreement between the SLFP and the JVP. Lal Kantha had never been accused of corruption and was, in fact, one of those lawmakers who raised the issue both in and outside Parliament. Political parties may have forgotten that the UNP got rid of Lacille de Silva, Director General of Administration, Parliament, during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s premiership, in the 2001-2003 period, alleging he passed on information to Lal Kantha to attack the government.

The NPP Executive Committee member, as well as JVP politburo and Central Committee heavyweight, has publicly defended his right to own a luxury house amidst a section of the social media pushing for police investigation into the lawmaker’s wealth.

Unlike the owner/owners of the mysterious Malwana mansion, built on a 16-acre land overlooking the Kelani river, Lal Kantha didn’t try to disclaim the house ownership at Jusse Road, Welivita, in the Kaduwela area. The Malwana house was built towards the end of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term as the President. The hullabaloo over the ownership of the Malwana mansion, and construction costs, dominated the 2015 presidential election campaign. On the basis of the Malwana mansion, the UNP and the JVP built a strong case against the Rajapaksas, accusing the family of corruption.

It would be of pivotal importance that the JVP backed Maithripala Sirisena’s 2015 presidential polls candidature. The campaign was built on an anti-corruption platform that earned the appreciation of the public who disregarded the unprecedented development work successfully carried out by the Rajapaksas, while also fighting a war to defeat the most ruthless terrorist organisation that was out to break up the country.

During a US-India backed violent protest campaign, in March-July 2022, an organised gang set the stately Malwana mansion ablaze. The general consensus was that the Malwana mansion belonged to Basil Rajapakasa, though he vehemently denied having anything to do with it.

Yahapalana Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, is on record as having declared that the Malwana mansion would be renovated and used to accommodate a state institution. Lal Kantha’s newly acquired wealth has to be examined and discussed, taking into consideration his long standing claim that as a fulltime member of the JVP he entirely depended on his wife’s monthly salary and help provided by friends and associates. If that was the case, Lal Kantha couldn’t have ended up among the richest group of politicians, within less than two years after the last presidential election, held in September 2024.

Lal Kantha couldn’t have been unaware of the possibility of the Opposition, particularly the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), attacking him and the NPP/JVP over his Kaduwela house. Responding to critics, the Anuradhapura District lawmaker has claimed, on YouTube, that he sold a property he owned in Anuradhapura and used that money to acquire the Jusse Road land.

The outspoken Minister is also on record as having said that the existence of his new house, to which he moved in late 2024, was disclosed by him. However, incisive Youtuber Dharma Sri Kariyawasam has claimed that he made the revelation on 01 October, 2025, while another You-Tuber, Abeetha Edirisinghe, rammed up pressure on the NPP by lodging a complaint with the police, via the special number 1818. Edirisinghe’s SL Leaders YouTube posted a video of him lodging the complaint.

What made the complaint really interesting was Edirisinghe’s declaration based on ‘Dark Room’ YouTube allegations that wealthy businessman Nissanka Senadhipathi, who had been one of the closest associates of the Rajapaksas, provided the wherewithal required to acquire land, build and then furnish the Jusse Road mansion. Defending his position, Lal Kantha claimed that he acquired a piano for his daughter, about 15 years ago, while declaring he enjoyed the capacity to raise large sums of funds if necessary. A smiling Lal Kantha explained how he could effortlessly collect Rs 500,000 each from 100 associates/friends. Programmes posted by Dharma Sri Kariyawasam and Abeetha Edirisinghe are must-watch for those genuinely interested in knowing the explosive story, from different angles.

Close on the heels of debates on Lal Kantha’s mansion, the media reported the Minister’s last available asset declaration, sent to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), dealt with over Rs 80 mn worth of property, vehicles and gold, etc. The JVP heavyweight’s annual income has stunned even the staunchest supporters of the ruling party. Lal Kantha, through his lawyer, demanded Rs 10 bn in damages from ‘Hiru’ for wrongly estimating his properties, etc., at Rs 460 mn.

Both Dharma Sri Kariyawasam and Abeetha Edirisinghe propagated that police wanted the public to complain to special the number 1818, created to accept such complaints in case they felt suspicious about newly acquired property, regardless of who owned them.

Unexpected disclosure of Lal Kantha’s unprecedented wealth obviously stunned the public who genuinely believed in the unshakable NPP/JVP stand on corruption. Lal Kantha, who had joined the JVP in 1982, before becoming a full time member, in 1987, had no qualms in defending his new lifestyle, having repeatedly and bitterly complained about the difficulties experienced by him and his family.

In his defence, Lal Kantha emphasised that he hadn’t been accused of robbing the taxpayer or public sector corruption. However, the NPP/JVP all-out attack on all previous governments, over waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement, and branding all their MPs corrupt, cannot adopt such a stance. The Kaduwela mansion has sent shockwaves through the electorate. Dharma Sri Kariyawasam, in his response to Lal Kantha, repeatedly stressed that his wealth was being questioned by those who exercised their franchise in support of the NPP/JVP at the national elections and Local Government polls, in 2025.

Growing public resentment over what various interested parties, including the NPP/JVP called ill-gotten wealth of members and henchmen of previous governments fuelled Aragalaya (31 March-14 July 2022). Those who set houses and other property, belonging to various then government politicians and their associates ablaze, operated on the presumption that they were beneficiaries of ill-gotten wealth. The NPP/JVP powered the campaign, alongside the breakaway JVP faction, styled as Peratugami Pakshaya (Frontline Socialist Party) as well as the UNP.

Ranwala and others

Against the backdrop of Auditor General Samudrika Jayarathne’s devastating report on coal procurement for the 2025/2026 period and Lal Kantha’s declaration that he owned a three-storeyed house, the resignation of Asoka Ranwala, as the Speaker of Parliament, over his failure to prove his declared academic qualifications seemed uncalled for. Jayarathne signed that report on behalf of the National Audit Office (NAO).

The Gampaha District MP resigned on 13 December, 2024, just 22 days after being appointed the Speaker. The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) relentlessly attacked Ranwala over his fabricated or unverified educational qualifications, specifically a Ph.D. from a Japanese university and a degree from the University of Moratuwa.

The NPP/JVP tried to defend Ranwala but quickly succumbed to SJB pressure. We never managed to establish whether Ranwala resigned on his own accord or the NPP/JVP asked him to resign to save the party. Similarly, the resignations of Energy Minister Jayakody and Prof. Hemapala, who cut a sorry figure before the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) recently, must have been demanded by the ruling party. Had the NPP bosses acted prudently, much earlier, after he was indicted before the Colombo High Court on a previous corruption case, they could have easily asked Jayakody to resign his ministerial portfolio before the Parliament debated the no-confidence motion against him.

Another case that really embarrassed the ruling party was accusations directed at Dr. Jagath Wickremeratne, who succeeded Ranwala as House Speaker. The Polonnaruwa District MP was the next to face fire, following a dispute with the Deputy Secretary General of Parliament Chaminda Kularatne who is also the Chief of Staff of the House. Kularatne hit back hard after Parliament sacked him over alleged irregularities. In a petition, dated 2 February, 2026, sent to CIABOC, Kularatne disclosed the circumstances the Speaker reacted angrily after he brought to the NPPer’s notice illegal actions and corruption, as well as his (Kularatne) recommendation in his capacity as the Right to Information (RTI) officer, to release certain information sought by civil society activists. Kularatne further claimed that the situation deteriorated further over an incident that happened on 18 June, 2025, or a date closer to that date, in the room where Speaker Wickremeratne had his lunch. Kularatne refrained from revealing the incident.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of a senior parliamentary official moving the CIABOC against the Speaker. The allegations directed at the Speaker, in respect of abuse of vehicles, taking two fuel allowances, misuse of equipment belonging to the Media Unit of Parliament, inadequate payment for lunch obtained for Chameera Gallage, Speaker’s private secretary, who had lunch with him, illegal payments made to retired Ministry Additional Secretary S.K. Liyanage, who was appointed to inquire into Kularatne’s conduct, suppression of release of information in terms of RTI, and uncalled for interventions in administration.

Kularatne’s complaint to the CIABOC failed to result in an expeditious inquiry, though a complaint lodged against a sacked parliamentary official appeared to have received much more attention. The NPP has responded cautiously to Kularatne vs Wickremeratne battle as pressure mounted on the ruling party over the coal scam that threatened to cause further increase in already unbearable electricity tariffs. The Auditor General’s report, in no uncertain terms, has implicated the Energy Ministry and Lanka Coal Company in the sordid operation that resulted in low-grade coal ending up at the Lakvijaya coal-fired power plant that earlier met about 30 to 40% percent of the country’s power requirements at essentially low cost, barring hydroelectricity.

The report declared that the term tender for the supply of coal was awarded to Trident Champhar, an Indian company that hadn’t been registered at the time it bid for Sri Lanka’s largest tender and procedures in respect of loading and unloading the cargo. To make matters worse, Minister Jayakody, who had been implicated in the coal scam, was recently indicted on corruption charges in the High Court of Colombo. There hadn’t been a previous instance of a sitting member of the Cabinet being indicted for corruption. Therefore, the NPP government cannot be happy over its steamroller majority in Parliament having defeated the no-confidence motion moved against Jayakody who remained confident in the parliamentary group’s support at the behest of the top party leadership.

The NPP/JVP finds itself in an extremely embarrassing and pitiful situation over the coal scam. The damning report issued by the Auditor General pertaining to the coal scam has to be examined taking into consideration the failure on the part of the government and the Constitutional Council to reach a consensus on filling the vacant Auditor General’s post in 2025. The post of Auditor General remained vacant from early April 2025 to early February 2026.

Role of NAO

The NAO functions as an independent body answerable to Parliament. The recent NAO report that dealt with coal procurement exposed the utterly corrupt system in place, regardless of assurances given by the government. The report proved that irregularities can be perpetrated and corrupt practices continued, regardless of assurances given by the current dispensation.

Over the past several years, tangible measures were taken to strengthen the NAO. Parliament certified the National Audit (Amendment) Act, No. 19 of 2025 on 22 September, 2025. That act introduced reforms meant to enhance public sector accountability, enforce audit findings, and streamline the surcharge process. The no nonsense report proved that in spite of interference and undue influence exerted on the NAO, those responsible did their job without fear or favour.

SJB lawmaker Mujibur Rahman, during the debate on the no-confidence motion against Minister Jayakody, alleged in Parliament that COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) Chairman Dr. Nishantha Samaraweera directly intervened when the NAO was in the process of finalising the report. The former UNPer called for an investigation to establish whether the Galle District NPP MP visited the NAO on several days to meet those handling the investigation.

We are not aware whether the COPE Chief, who called for the NAO to inquire into allegations in respect of coal procurement, visited the NAO.

However, the NAO report on the coal scam, now available online for all to study, underscores the pivotal importance of the anti-corruption fight.

In September 2025, the SJB asked the CIABOC to probe how some NPP/JVP Ministers amassed so much property. The SJB raised the issue with the focus on Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe (like Lal Kantha, he, too, represents the Anuradhapura District) amassed Rs 275 mn. The SJB’s complaint to CIABOC sought investigations on Ministers Sunil Handunetti, Bimal Rathnayake, Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa and Kumara Jayakody, and Deputy Minister Sunil Watagala.

Lal Kantha, who has now acknowledged having as much as Rs 80 mn worth property, was not among the lawmakers targeted by the SJB. Having falsely propagated an anti-corruption campaign to deceive the public, the NPP/JVP stand literally exposed before the public. The coal scam and Lal Kantha fiasco have caused irreparable damage to such an extent, their anti-corruption campaigns may not carry any weight with the public at future elections.

Midweek Review

Some languages confine you; some languages free you

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

‘… where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; ….

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward….into ever-widening thought and action…’

With wide apologies, I am going to put snatches of that poem into more dreary uses, though not quite desert sand.

What are those narrow domestic walls which break up the world into fragments? Languages.

Amiya reads the Gitanjali but does not read the Tirukkural. Hong Li reads Kong Fut Ze’s Analects but not Plato’s Republic. Paul reads Miton’s Paradise Lost but not Njal Saga. Sarath Kumara reads Wickremasinghe’s satva santatitya but not Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Ngidi does not read Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the 20th Century or Anthony Atkinson’s Inequality at all. Hirono uses Large Language Models to do homework but Rasolomanana has not seen a computer. And so on and so forth. The world is broken into fragments by languages, but not by languages alone. The daughter of a rich black man living in Howard County in Maryland goes to Stanford but a brown dweller in Dharavi cannot enter Jawaharlal Nehru University. The lesson is that it is not only languages or orthodoxies that break up the world into ‘fragments’ but also many other barriers, about one of which Tagore sang.

Language is a marvellous ‘invention’ of nature well cultivated by humans. No other species has the faculty to use language to know. Ludwig Wittgenstein expressed it epigrammatically, ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ It is language that carries forth knowledge. It is not only language that carries forth knowledge: mathematics, in its own right, is a powerful carrier of knowledge. One can write something simple like if x-y=0, then x=y, as well as whole pages of complex and complicated arguments using mathematical notations. Mathematics may and often does write nature and about nature; it also writes about things that exist only in the mind. That is not different from languages: heaven and Vishnu exist in some minds but not in others or elsewhere. Galileo Galilei learnt ‘Nature is an open book but it is written in mathematics’. Much of nature is a closed book to those to whom mathematics is alien territory. But today, I am interested in how some languages ‘break the world into fragments by domestic walls’, while a few others fly about regardless. When a team from India played cricket with a team from Pakistan a few weeks back, the commentary was broadcast in India in 14 languages and in Nigeria national news is read in several languages. That same game of cricket also was broadcast to the rest of the world in one language: English.

When and how do some languages come to ‘lead the mind forward into ever widening thought and action’? The transformation occurs when users of one language become conquerors and rulers of peoples using other languages and when the users of a language become generators of new knowledge which are eagerly sought after by users of other languages. Greek, Latin and Arabic contributed mightily to the vocabulary of modern Western European languages. When new ideas in law, government, philosophy, medicine and science had to be expressed, they went to Greek, Latin or Arabic. Consequently, you will bump into Greek terms the moment you begin thinking about those disciplines. The serious study of Greek was introduced to England by Erasmus (of Rotterdam) about 1500 AC. The use of Latin began with the Roman Empire but took on new functions when Latin became the vehicle carrying Christianity east and north (of Europe) and elsewhere later. Until about the 18th century AC Latin was the language of learning in most of Europe. At its inception, Manchester Grammar School was a Latin school and the Boston Latin School which started in 1635 still thrives in that name. The two medieval universities in England were mostly seminaries teaching in Latin well into the 19th century. A wide swathe of languages is written with the Latin alphabet: European languages from the Black Sea to the Atlantic and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, America from Canada to Chile, sub-Saharan Africa including Togo, and Indonesian, Malaysian and several others. The exodus of Jewish, Arabic and other scholars, after the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the Ottomans, brought Greek and Arabic to Western Europe including England. From about the 14 to the 18th century, European indigenous vernaculars grew to be carriers of new knowledge, especially in sciences. Luther’s reformation and the development of German had much in common. Gutenberg’s new printing press (1450 AC) helped the growth of European vernaculars and the spread of reformed Christianity.

Four western European languages stood out as both conquerors and carriers of new knowledge: Portuguese, Spanish, French and English. Arabic performed the same function from about 800 AC to the 13 AC when that language carried a new religion and new knowledge in mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Arabic replaced the indigenous languages in the entire Maghreb. The language of governance and learning from Mexico south to Chile is Spanish with Brazil using Portuguese and are collectively called Latin America, because Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian are Romance or Latin Languages. French is the language of governance and learning in several parts of West Africa. English was a phenomenon in itself. It destroyed the use of hundreds of languages in North America. It conquered almost half the world and English is the language of governance and higher education in a good part of the land it once ruled. As a language carrying new knowledge, English excels all others. As the collapse of four European empires, including the Ottoman, went on from about 1915 to about 1960, English, which produced new knowledge faster than any other, began to break ‘domestic walls’, the world over. China, which had little love for the English-speaking world, had millions of its citizens schooled in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia during the last 30 years and continues to do so, to date. In contrast, during that time how many rushed to Niger to learn Fulfulde or to Lanka to study Sinhala? The prominence of English was promoted by two other processes: one was translation into English of major works in other languages and the other the growth of a class of indigenous writers and readers in the conqueror’s language. One reads Oblomov, Gilgamesh and, indeed, Gitanjali translated into English. India now probably has more readers in English than any other single country. Persons in Western African countries have crafted in French and English, masterpieces in fiction, poetry and drama. Modern European languages have been both conquerors’ languages and carriers of new knowledge.

Several people recently have written in The Island and in Lankadeepa about the importance of using the ‘mother tongue’. They have stressed the importance of the ‘mother tongue’ in creative writing. As with observations regarding empirical phenomena, it is necessary to test those generalisations against reality. Samskrt is a language not entirely unfamiliar to many in this land. Samskrt was nobody’s mother tongue. (After all, it is deva bhaashitam.) There is not a shred of evidence that Kalidasa’s mother talked to him in Samskrt. But Kalidasa wrote rtusmahara and shakuntalam.. The vedas and upanishads were first spoken and later written in samskrt. Pali is nobody’s mother tongue but Theravada writings are almost entirely in that language. Isaac Newton wrote Principia Mathematica in Latin; we have no evidence that baby Isaac babbled in Latin. Paul Dirac wrote about particle physics in mathematics rather than in his father’s beloved French. Leopold Senghor’s mother tongue was not French nor Chinua Achebe’s English. More casually, check your own libraries. I had a collection of about 2,300 books until last year. There weren’t even 200 written in Sinhala and that 200 included editions of works from the 13th century. Check how many books written in Sinhala and English you bought in the last two years. There were far too many writers and scientists who brought forth highly acclaimed work in languages other than their mother tongue, contradicting the argument that the mother tongue was essential or even desirable for original work, in science or in literature.

Most languages ‘break the world into narrow fragments’. A few coagulate them into large masses: 900 million people speak Mandarin and 325 million, Bengali. A half dozen bind themselves together speaking a conqueror’s language. Four languages stand out as having ‘led the ‘mind forward into ever-widening thought and action’: Greek, Latin, Arabic and English. English, so far, is unrivalled.

by Usvatte-aratchi