Features

Childhood and Growing Up

Published

4 years ago

2023/03/12

Thilina Walpola

Excerpted from Memories that Linger by Padmani Mendis

(continued from last week)

Published in Sri Lanka by The Jam Fruit Tree Publications and is available as a Kindle eBook.

“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes not that you won or lost
But how you played the game”
Grantland Rice, 1941

This is what my mother would quote to us at regular intervals, lest we forget the values she wanted us to have.

My first memories are too hazy to share. Running barefoot up and down the never-ending patnas of Bandarawela with seemingly countless cousins. Ice-cold spring-baths at the peella at the foot hills below, every morning as a pre-lunch ritual. We were spending the years of World War II in Bandarawela, where many Colombo families had moved for protection from possible Japanese bombs and attacks.

And then my recall becomes clearer as it continues after we returned to Colombo to live at 11, Sunandarama Road, Kalubowila. This is where I spent a remarkable childhood. What made it so remarkable were the oodles and oodles of love that I was showered with. My mother had told me at some point in my childhood that the more love you are given now, the more you will be able to give later. It is a truism I believe in firmly. It influenced me when I chose to work with disabled people. It influences me now as an aunt and a grand-aunt to many in the next generations. Nalin and I do not have children of our own to shower my love on.

Growing up, I never had many bought toys to stimulate my development. My mother barely managed to feed her large household to be able to afford toys for me. There were always relatives living with us. Friends of Uncle Lyn (more of Uncle Lyn later) and of the siblings dropped in to visit daily, and they were welcomed warmly by my mother to share our meals.

A vivid image I have in my mind is that of a little brother and sister, perhaps of the ages of six and eight years, coming frequently to our home as dusk fell, clinging to each other perhaps with fear and apprehension. They would say something like “Mummy told to ask for a loaf of bread”. They always had a loaf and more – perhaps a couple of eggs to eat with the bread. We had plenty of those because Uncle Lyn also bred poultry on his farm. To help with the feeding of all of us and more. For this also her cousin Uncle Geoff was always there for my mother. The same Uncle Geoff who had registered my birth.

Uncle Geoff brought groceries for my mother from the Marketing Department Wholesale Store in Maradana. He would bring these in his blue Plymouth. Riding on the back seat with his legs stretched out in front to rest on the front seat. Driven by the ever-faithful Lionel. And a practice he would always adhere to was to display the purchases to my mother. He would set out what he had bought for her on the dining table. She would be sitting at the table adding up the costs which he said he had paid.

And we would love to stand by to watch this ritual being enacted. We all knew that Uncle Geoff always, always, understated the costs of the things he had bought, just to help her. She knew it. But through a mutual understanding between them his kindness was never put into words.

Of Santa, Dolls and Books

I got my first doll when I was about six or seven. My older brothers and my oldest sister had, by this time, passed the age of 21 and were entitled to a small monthly allowance from my father’s estate. They contributed to buy me my first doll. They did not disclose this to me at the time. The doll was in the pillow-case I had hung up that Christmas for Santa Claus; and, because my siblings told me, I had been a good girl. To me the doll was a living idol – in dresses that could be changed, she could open and close her eyes – what wonder! The younger of my sisters made dresses for her so I could not only bathe her but also wash her clothes regularly.

The next year that same Santa gave me a silver tea set. Who was to know or care that it was aluminum? I became the perfect hostess making real tea for any and all. With milk and sugar. With never a show of reluctance, all my guests actually drank my tea. Then I had to collect the used items, wash and dry them and have them ready for my next guests. I was eight or nine years old when, sadly, I learned the truth about Santa.

I got my first book when I was six years old. It was the prize I got in the middle kindergarten when Miss Freda Welikala was my class teacher. It was called “Thumper” and was about a rabbit. The next book I had was “The Water Babies” by Charles Kingsley. That too probably came in the annual pillowcase. It was about a chimney-sweep called Tom. I remember another character in it called “Mrs. Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By”. She had a significant impact on me. And only in my youth did I know that this book was a children’s classic written in 1863. I learned much from both. Both books had delightful illustrations, so attractive to a child of that age; both grew my mind with wonder and imagination.

Learning from Nature

But it was not these rare and expensive toys and books that first made my life joyful. Nor were they the toys that I learned my earliest lessons from. My earliest toys were from nature and the toys came free. We lived in a house with a very large garden, well over an acre of it or even two. Someone wise had lived there before us. This person had covered the land with trees – not just any trees, but those that would bear useful produce.

So coconut, that-was-a-plenty; and thambili, always ready to be plucked for guests or to quench a thirst. There were many different varieties of mango, jambu and guava; there was ambarella, lovi, and other fruit trees that many will not see now – huge masang and veralu trees among them. And then there was jak or kos and breadfruit or del. Always seemed to be available cooked for lunch or dinner or boiled or fried as chips at any time to satisfy a hunger.

My brother Shatra would often take me down the garden and show me how the seeds that fell to the ground germinated and grew into trees. He would show me buds burst into blossom from which fruits magically appeared. Always with catapult in hand he would shoot down luscious fruit which we would share. We would collect the bi-coloured red and black olinda seeds.

On a rainy day when we had to be indoors, we would play games using these seeds. They suited the playing of counting games. One game I recall was to throw them up with the palm of one’s hand then see how many one could catch with the back of the hand. With others to help me, I would make garlands and chains and bouquets for guests from flowers we collected from the garden.

Our front garden at No. 11 was covered with neat beds on which my young brothers would grow an array of different kinds of flowers. Seeds were available at not much cost – zenias, marigolds, cosmos, and there had to be the pretty little phlox. At Easter, parts of the back garden would be covered with orange Easter lilies. I would collect some bulbs and plant them in areas that that did not have them so that next year we would have more lilies. This is where my love of flowers blossomed. I have pots of these lilies even now on my balcony.

There was space in this garden of wonder for animals – goats, pigs and a small dairy which Uncle Lyn took care of. Uncle Lyn was more than a relative. My mother had married again and this was her husband “Llewellyn Adolphus Dalrymple Perera Abeyewardene. Although he was married to my mother, to us he was never considered a stepfather. He was always Uncle Lyn. That was our relationship. An amiable but distant uncle – and always there to drive us around and about. Besides, no one could replace our father. My siblings talked often about him and I would listen attentively. We still loved him hugely.

So here in this environment, nature provided my first remembrances of fun and of joy and of sadness, and of my first toys. It promoted my early learning and my early development. I loved especially playing with the baby kid goats of which there was always a steady supply. So much time I spent with them that my sister Nali would call me “Padi the Kid”. And that is how I came to be called “Padi”, then and to this day.

Theva

The dairy cattle were housed in a shed in one corner of the back garden. To care for them, and for the goats and pigs when we had them, was Theva from South India. I don’t recall that we had a bull full-time. I think Uncle Lyn got one down when he felt the cows needed a bull. When Theva required an assistant, he got down his son-in-law from South India. Ranga was a graduate from the University of Madras but had no job back home, and this solved the problem for both father and son-in-law.

Theva and I had a special relationship. I would stand by when I could while he bathed and then fed the cattle with poonac and with grass he cut from the grassland he had tended; while he milked the cows and bottled the milk; while he led the calves to their mothers for their feed. Theva explaining to me what he was doing and why, talking to me about the animals he cared for and about his home in South India and the family he had left behind. Me a keen listener, but full of questions which he had only to answer, helping him with fetching and carrying, and with other little tasks.

A vivid memory I have is of the toys Theva made for me. He would, for example, clean and then cut a dried fallen coconut branch into various sizes. Then he would shape them. The largest part of the branch would be made into a bull and later sections into cows and calves of various ages. Each had their nose and ears as well as a neck round which he would tie coconut string with which I could move them from tree to tree. I had to make sure they were tied firmly so they would not break loose. Then he would help me to tend to my own cattle, while he tended to his.

He also saw to it that I had my own little house. He had not heard of a doll’s house and neither had I. But this was the real thing. Walls and roof made of thatch using fresh coconut leaves. He also made dolls and carts and other toys for me using bits of cloth and paper and empty cans from the house, and sticks and leaves and string and I know not what, except that they were all from the house and garden. Theva, who had never been to school and was not able to read and write, taught me how to be innovative and stimulated creativity within me.

Pets and Other Living Things

In the house we had many dogs – the first I recall is an Alsatian called Marina. She was beautiful and ever so affectionate. I remember Marina allowing me to ride on her back, although when I think of that now, I am angry with myself for having done so.

Then there were the Cocker Spaniels, Chappie and Bessie. Each dog spent a lifetime with us and made us so sad when they left this earth and us. But they were soon replaced with other dogs.

We had two monkeys in the garden. To recall that they were always tied with chains to sturdy posts now makes me wonder how we could have done that. We had, at one end of the verandah, a green parrot who was the same age as my oldest brother, then in his twenties. She was called peththappu. At the other end, we had a white cockatoo Uncle Lyn brought from Anuradhapura where he had inherited paddy lands. Called Polly, she was a very polite cockatoo, and sociable, always ready to greet us in the morning and at other times, and greet also any visitor. She would love to have us sit down in front of her cage and converse with her. Uncle Lyn was a hunter, and on our walls hung leopard and deer skins and antlers of various sizes, and on the floor were bear skins.

Of Songs and Relatives

My mother had a beautiful voice and she had many favourite songs. Some that had been taught to her by her English Governess. My fondest memories of her are when she was relaxing on a sofa, singing. Equally happy singing when we would be traveling in a car with many of the children jostling together on the back seat. I would often be sitting on her lap in the front seat. No seat belt requirements then.

A routine weekly trip would be to Moratuwa because that is where my aunt Violet, my mother’s oldest sister, lived with her brood of eight. My mother had to see each of her sisters at least weekly. I recall those songs she sang often – “One day when we were young” and “After the Ball is over”. The favourite of all was however “Jerusalem”. I can sing those to this day even in my now ageing and crackling voice.

My mother also used to visit her surviving aunts and uncles regularly. So almost always, on the return trip from Moratuwa we would stop by to visit Eddie Seeya. This was her father’s brother, her uncle E.L.F. who lived in a “cottage” on his coconut plantation, situated in what is now Ratmalana. As we drove up the long straight drive, the cottage under the tall coconut trees came into view. It was painted in colours of green and gold.

E.L.F was a well-known horse-racing enthusiast – for several consecutive years, the winner of the Governor’s Cup with his horse called Orange William. His racing colours were green and gold. These are the colours worn by the jockeys who rode his horses. But it seemed to us children that to E.L.F., everything he owned had to be in green and gold. I recall clearly those green and gold flower pots at the end of the drive and surrounding the cottage.

One day Eddie Seeya gifted to me a toy Daschund pup. He told me I could call it Gypsy. She was my loving companion at Kalubowila for many long years.

With me hanging on to her sari pota there would be visits to Mary Archchi and to Willie Seeya in Colombo. There were also regular visits to other relatives in Moratuwa and Angulana where many of them still lived on their large coconut properties.

Anura, Summa and Shatra

The younger of my six brothers, Anura, Summa and Shatra, I came to know better than I did the older three who had already embarked on their post-secondary studies. And those three did tease me with tall stories. A favourite was that my mother had found me in the “kaanuwa” or drain at Kadugannawa, felt sorry for me and brought me home. They even had a rhyme that went with that story – “kalu, katha, kota ape nangee, Kadugannawa kaanuwen gedara genawe ape ammi”.

To the extent that sometimes I believed stories like this and that would have me in tears. But there were always loving sisters to admonish them and send them off to do something more productive. And comfort me with stories of me as a baby and of my father, and action songs I liked to hear. These would end with tickles and hugs and kisses.

One thing that I have not forgiven those three brothers for is that even after plea after plea, none of them ever taught me to ride a bike. And after that I could never do so, in spite of trying over and over again. It must have been a mental block.

Anura was the one who had the most number of interests and hobbies, was always looking for something creative to do. At one time, he produced a family newspaper, a replica of the real thing with current news of family members and sketches of their activities. At another time, he was an amateur photographer. He started with a Kodak box camera and then, when he saved up enough from the allowance he got as an accountancy apprentice, bought a real fancy one which had to be focused each time before taking a photograph. He developed his own films in a dark room he made, sectioning off a corner of the front room with dark curtains.

,I would love to join him there, smell the chemicals and watch his photographs as they came to life. With this he introduced me to elementary science, which I learned later was physics and chemistry.Anura and Summa were boxers at school. Shatra still has his trophies earned in his childhood from his prowess in athletics. They played rugger at school and later for the Havelock’s Sports Club. I had no interest in sports and, come to it, in any physical activity. At school, I would be standing at the back of the class when we had physical education hoping I would not be seen.

(To be continued)

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Features

From Bally’s to the Backstreet: Inside the business of Casinos and Cards – II

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

A quick guide to Buruwa
for the uninitiated

Buruwa is traditionally played with a 52-card pack, a standard deck. Players sit in a circle, and after the cards are shuffled by the dealer, one player who sits right side of the dealer can cut the deck and “request” a specific card from the dealer who must deliver it into two sets (hitting-the dealer’s side and asking-the opposite side), after set aside two cards, and the first player to collect their requested card wins. it’s quick, sociable, and genuinely simple to learn, which is a large part of why it has survived, largely unbothered by the law.

(The second instalment in a five-part series on the business of gambling, legal and illegal)

by Prof. C. A. Saliya

Walk along the Colombo waterfront, after dark, and you’ll see it: a strip of glass and neon that would not look out of place in Macau or Manila, tucked in among the hotels and office towers. Bally’s. Bellagio Entertainment. The Ritz Club. Stardust. The Continental Club. MGM Grand Colombo. Kollupitiya Casino. Crown Club. Tokyo Club. Nine full-scale casinos, in one city, on one small island, more than most people realise, not that the country’s own citizens are technically allowed to use.

That last part isn’t a typo. Under Sri Lankan law, these casinos exist primarily for foreign passport holders. Locals occupy a strange legal shadow around their own country’s casino industry, not quite welcome, not quite banned, depending on which club, which night, and which security guard is on the door. It’s the first sign of something that runs through this entire industry, all the way down to the humblest card game in the smallest village: in Sri Lanka, who is allowed to gamble has always mattered more than whether gambling itself is right or wrong.

The price of a licence

Running one of those nine casinos legally is not cheap. Under the rules brought in a few years ago, a casino licence costs 500 million rupees, and it only lasts five years before you have to pay again. On top of that, the government has been pushing to raise the tax on casino profits from 40 percent to 45 percent (the Casino Business Licensing Regulation No. 1 of 2022, published on August 31, 2022).

Sit with those numbers for a moment, because they tell you something important about who actually gets to run a legal casino in this country. Half a billion rupees before you’ve dealt a single card, renewed every five years, on top of one of the highest profit tax rates applied to any industry here, that is not a price a small local businessman can pay. It is a price only a handful of large, well-financed groups can afford. The result is an industry that looks, on paper, like it’s tightly regulated and heavily taxed, which it is, but that regulation also happens to conveniently protect the handful of big players already inside the gate from any new competition. That is not necessarily corruption. It is just how licensing fees this steep tend to work everywhere in the world: they keep an industry “controlled,” and they also keep it small, exclusive, and dominated by whoever could afford to get in early.

For scale, look at Sri Lanka’s neighbours in the casino business. Macau, the former Portuguese colony now part of China, pulls in more casino revenue in a single year, over $22 billion at last count, than most entire countries collect in tax. Singapore’s two giant resort casinos, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa, bring in a combined $4 billion or more. Sri Lanka’s nine-casino Colombo strip is a genuine tourism asset and a real contributor to state revenue, but next to those regional giants, it is still a minnow swimming with sharks, which is exactly why the government keeps trying to expand and formalise it rather than shrink it.

The card game everyone plays and nobody arrests

Now step away from the waterfront and into a completely different world, one that exists in every town and village on the island, at every funeral house, every festival season, informal gambling pots.

It’s called Buruwa. Some people call it “Baby Cutting.” It’s a simple, fast-moving card game, a well-worn 52-card deck, players taking turns to request a card, a person to get the card they asked for taking the round. There’s no croupier, no neon, no five-hundred-million-rupee licence but only a commission called Tome which is charged from the dealer if the dealer wings a three rounds, usually 20% of the winning amount. Just a mat, a deck of cards, and a small pile of notes that keeps changing hands.

Here’s the thing: Buruwa has been against the law since 1889. The old Gaming Ordinance from that year criminalised what it called “unlawful gaming”, playing a game of chance for money in any public place, in most circumstances, and that law is still technically on the books today. And yet Buruwa is arguably the most socially normal form of gambling in the entire country. It isn’t hidden. It’s played in the open, in front of children, blessed almost by tradition itself. Funeral houses themselves often as a fundraising events, with a genuine gambling element to them, to raise money for entirely legitimate and community causes.

This is the part of Sri Lanka’s gambling story that rarely makes it into any government report: an activity that is, on paper, a criminal offence, is in practice one of the most widely tolerated pastimes in the country, precisely because almost everybody has played it at some point, in some form. You cannot arrest an entire village. And no government, in more than a century of trying, has seriously attempted to.

It isn’t only card games in village settings, either. Head into some of Colombo’s more exclusive private clubs and you’ll find money changing hands over poker, bridge, tombola, darts, snooker and billiards, all technically covered by the same 1889 definition of “unlawful gaming” if played for a stake, and all almost entirely ignored by anyone in a position to enforce that law.

When the law does bite

Enforcement isn’t completely theoretical, though, it’s just extremely selective. In 2019, Sri Lankan authorities shut down several illegal casinos operating in Colombo, not village card circles, but full commercial operations offering slot machines and table games without a licence, competing directly with the nine legal venues on the waterfront. That distinction matters. When the state does step in, it is almost always to protect the revenue and market position of licensed operators against unlicensed commercial competitors, not to stamp out gambling as a social activity. A family playing Buruwa has essentially nothing to fear. A businessman running an unlicensed slot-machine parlour has everything to fear. The law on paper treats both as the same crime. The law in practice treats them as entirely different worlds.

Where the new law fits in

Sri Lanka is now in the middle of rewriting the rulebook for all of this. A new Bill would scrap three old, separate laws, the ones covering horse racing, general gambling, and casinos, and replace them with a single Gambling Regulatory Authority responsible for the whole industry, online and offline. It’s a genuinely significant modernisation, and we’ll examine it properly in our final instalment.

But here’s a question worth asking now, before that new authority even opens its doors: will it change anything at all for Buruwa? Almost certainly not, and, honestly, it probably shouldn’t try to. A regulator built to license casinos, tax betting operators, and police online platforms has neither the tools nor, frankly, the moral standing to start prosecuting card games at funeral houses. The more interesting question the rest of this series will keep returning to is whether that’s a sensible, deliberate choice, leave the harmless social gambling alone, focus enforcement on the commercial and online operators where the real money and the real harm actually sit, or whether it’s simply a gap nobody in government has ever bothered to think through. (See Inset)

Next week, Part 3 turns to a very different kind of “casino”, one that never uses the word gambling at all, dresses itself up as investing, and lives entirely on your phone: the world of forex and CFD trading apps.

(Prof. C. A. Saliya, is a charted accountant, academic, researcher and former banker. He is the author of SAMAJA GAVESHAKAYA and Springer Publication DOING SOCIAL RESEARCH. He can be contacted at saliya.ca@gmail.com. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the organisations with which he is affiliated.)

Features

Why should faith promote justice?

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/8

Sahan Weerasooriya

St Sebastian's Church in Negombo in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks

A catholic response to national pursuit of accountability

By Rev. Dr. Rashmi M.Fernando, S.J.

Sri Lanka appears to be entering a decisive chapter in its ongoing investigations regarding the Easter Sunday bombings, in 2019, and other accountability issues. For decades, our nation has carried the heavy burden of unresolved wounds: corruption, enforced disappearances, political assassinations, abductions, financial crimes, abuse of power, and the many forms of violence that have left individuals, families, and communities searching for truth and closure. Many citizens have cast their votes with the hope that a new political administration would have the courage to pursue accountability where previous governments have failed.

Why Justice if Forgiveness is a Christian Virtue?

As investigations continue and legal processes unfold, however, another familiar phenomenon has emerged. Those who fear accountability, or those who perceive themselves or their political allies to be threatened by investigations, increasingly appeal to religion—particularly the Catholic Church—to argue that Christians should simply “forgive and forget.”

Some have even criticized local Church leaders for continuing to seek the truth, suggesting that Christians should move on because forgiveness lies at the heart of the Gospel. If Christians are called to forgive, why continue investigating crimes? Why pursue accountability? Why insist on knowing who was responsible?

The argument sounds pious. But it is profoundly incomplete. It raises a fundamental question for Christians, and particularly for Catholics: Does forgiveness require us to abandon the pursuit of justice? If not, why?

The Cry of the Oppressed is the Cry of the Church Demanding Justice

The answer of the Christian tradition is unequivocal: No. Indeed, authentic Christian faith does not ask us to choose between forgiveness and justice. It calls us to hold them together. The Catholic tradition begins with a simple but profound conviction: every human being possesses an inviolable dignity because every human being is created in the image and likeness of God.

Consequently, any act of violence committed both personally and collectively is not merely a violation of a rule. It is ultimately a violation of God’s image and likeness and, consequently, the very dignity and nature of the whole of humanity. For this reason, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) reminds us that the common good is not simply whatever benefits the majority or those who possess power. The common good includes the social conditions that allow every person and community to flourish.

Moreover, CST has a particular concern for those whose voices are the weakest, those whose voices are made weak, and those whose dignity is most easily ignored. This is the foundation of the Church’s preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. When people are abducted, when families are denied the truth about disappeared loved ones, when public resources are stolen, when political power is abused, when the poor are exploited, when violence is permitted to go unpunished, or when institutions are manipulated to protect the powerful, something more than law is being violated. The dignity of persons and the moral foundations of society itself are being wounded.

That is why the Church cannot be indifferent when victims are silenced. Because they lack political power, the Church cannot remain neutral when families continue to live with unanswered questions. She cannot call for peace while ignoring the cry for justice of those who have suffered. A peace built upon silence is not necessarily peace. Often it is a sign that the poor and the wounded have cried without anyone to hear them. That is why the Christian faith requires a voice, a voice that cries out for truth, dignity, responsibility, the common good, solidarity, and restoration.

Promotion of Justice is an Absolute Requirement of the Service of Faith

The Church does not seek political power by standing with victims. She stands with them because the God she worships is the God who hears the cry of the needy. The God of the Scriptures repeatedly hears the cry of the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the oppressed. The Jesus of the Gospels consistently moves toward those whom society pushes to the margins.

The Second Vatican Council gave Catholics a renewed understanding of the Church’s relationship with the world. Gaudium et Spes famously reminds us that the “joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties” of the people of our time are also the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of Christ’s followers. The Church, therefore, cannot isolate herself inside sanctuaries while society suffers outside her doors. When injustice wounds society, silence is not always neutrality. Silence itself becomes a moral decision.

The conviction of the Council has particular significance for the Society of Jesus. The 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, in 1975, articulated one of the defining principles of contemporary Jesuit mission: “The service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.”

The wording matters. The promotion of justice is not presented as an optional consequence of faith—as though some Christians might be interested in justice while others might simply concentrate on prayer and personal holiness. It is an absolute requirement of authentic faith. The Jesuit understanding of mission subsequently developed around the inseparable relationship between faith, justice, reconciliation, and dialogue. Later General Congregations of the Society emphasised reconciliation with God, with one another, and with creation.

Reconciliation here does not mean dismissing, forgetting, or unnoticing. Neither does it mean protecting perpetrators from accountability. Nor does it mean asking victims to sacrifice truth for the convenience of society. Forgiveness without truth becomes sentimentality. Justice without forgiveness can become vindictiveness.

The Reality of Social Sin Beyond Individuals

The distinction between faith and justice becomes even more important when we recognise that sin is not always merely individual. Catholic Social Teaching (CST) speaks of structures that can perpetuate injustice. Pope John Paul II, particularly in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, developed the language of “structures of sin” to describe social, economic, political, and cultural arrangements in which sinful choices become embedded and reproduced. This means that Christian responsibility does not end with asking, “Who committed the individual wrong?” We must also ask: What structures allowed it to happen? Who benefited from it? Who was silenced? Which institutions failed? What must change so that it does not happen again?

For this reason, the liberation theologians in the Church, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, and Ignacio Ellacuría, insisted that the Gospel requires Christians to confront structures that perpetuate human suffering. Ellacuría, the Jesuit theologian murdered in El Salvador, in 1989, spoke of the need to “take the crucified people down from the cross.” The phrase is powerful because it reminds us that Christian compassion cannot remain merely emotional. It must become transformative. To stand beside the crucified is also to ask why they were crucified in the first place—and what must change so that others are not crucified tomorrow.

Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass after courageously speaking against violence and social injustice, once observed that there are things that can be seen only through eyes that have cried.

This is a profound theological truth. Those who have never experienced disappearance may speak casually about “moving on.” Those who have never lost a loved one to political violence may find accountability inconvenient. Those who have never lived with poverty may speak easily about patience. Those who have never been abused by power may find it easy to preach forgiveness to those who have.

But the Christian tradition insists that we listen first to the wounded. This is not because victims are always right about every question. It is because justice begins with hearing. Before reconciliation, there must be truth. Before truth can become healing, the wounded must be permitted to speak. And before society asks victims to forgive, society should have the humility to ask what it has done—or failed to do—to protect them.

Forgiveness Never Cancels Justice—and Justice Never Cancels Forgiveness

One misunderstanding about Christian faith is the assumption that forgiveness demands silence, and silence demands complicity. It does not. Forgiveness is, first and foremost, an interior act of the human heart. It is a personal process through which a victim gradually refuses to allow hatred, resentment, and the desire for revenge to imprison the soul. To forgive is to surrender the desire for vengeance and to place oneself, and ultimately the offender, into the merciful hands of God. But forgiveness does not mean that the injustice committed is dismissible, acceptable, or justified. A victim may freely choose to forgive, but that person cannot and should not, by personal forgiveness, absolve wrongdoers from their responsibility to protect others from being harmed in the same way. Society has a responsibility to establish the truth, protect the innocent, hold wrongdoers accountable, and prevent the repetition of injustice.

While forgiveness is personal, justice is communal and, as such, it has meaning because human beings do not live as islands or isolated individuals. We live together—as families, communities, institutions, and nations. What one person does to another can affect an entire community. A crime committed against one human being is a wound caused in the entire social fabric. Justice, therefore, seeks to protect the common good, uphold the dignity and rights of every person, establish equity, repair what has been broken, and ensure accountability.

If a person steals from the public, forgiveness does not eliminate the obligation to restore what can be restored.

If a person abuses public office, repentance does not automatically remove the need for accountability. If a person participates in violence, forgiveness does not require society to abandon the pursuit of truth. If someone has disappeared, forgiveness does not mean that the family should stop asking what happened. A Christian victim, as in the case of the Easter Bombing, may forgive. But mere seeking truth, on behalf of that victim, both individually and communally, is an act of solidarity with the wounded and the suffering.

Speaking on the side of the wrongdoers, if a person sins privately, the Christian faith requires that that person reconcile with God and with his or her own conscience. But if he or she commits a crime against another person, while forgiveness of God and reconciliation with the self is always a personal job, and available upon genuine remorse, request, and change of heart, there is a social dimension that the offender should fulfill, as given in the constitution or the law. Religious language must never become a shield behind which perpetrators escape accountability.

Forgiveness, Justice, and Mercy

The life of Jesus makes the distinction among forgiveness, justice, and mercy quite unmistakable. When Jesus encountered sinners, He repeatedly offered forgiveness. To the woman caught in adultery, He said: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin anymore” (Jn 8:11). Notice the two dimensions of this encounter. Jesus forgives, but He does not deny sin. He does it with great mercy and calls for conversion. The past is not rewritten. Instead, the sinner is offered a new future. Mercy does not erase truth; it makes transformation possible.

The same Jesus, who forgave individuals, also confronted social and structural wrongdoing. He overturned the tables of those who had transformed the Temple into a marketplace (Mt 21:12–13). He publicly challenged religious leaders who exercised authority while neglecting the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith (Mt 23:23). Jesus did not remain silent simply because He was preaching forgiveness. He confronted hypocrisy. He challenged the abuse of authority. He defended the dignity of the vulnerable. He challenged structures that placed religious burdens upon ordinary people while those in authority protected themselves.

And at the very moment of His own execution, Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). Yet His forgiveness did not make the crucifixion just. The Cross remains one of history’s most profound revelations of human violence, injustice, and the abuse of power. Jesus forgave His executioners without declaring their actions righteous. That is the foundation and the meaning of the Christian Cross and suffering, and that’s where the Church’s concern for justice becomes particularly important.

A Call

Christian theology cannot simply comfort victims while leaving intact the structures that produce suffering. The Church’s preferential option for the poor requires Catholics to stand with those whose voices are least likely to be heard. While solidarity with them requires us to recognise that the suffering of another is not simply “their problem,” forgiveness demanding victims to remain silent is a distortion of the Gospel. Prayer and worship that do not concern justice could become mere sentimentality. The Eucharist we celebrate at the altar must eventually lead us to the human being who suffers beyond the walls of the church.

Hailing from St. Sebastian’s Parish, Katuwapitiya, Negombo—where alone 117 people were killed in the Easter Sunday bombing in 2019—and as someone who continues to accompany the victimised children and families in their ongoing journey of grief, healing, and the search for truth, ever since that unfortunate day and to this day. I reckon that our greatest danger should not be that justice may fail. Rather, our greater danger should be that, in the pursuit of justice, we may lose our souls. Jesus asked, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mk 8:36). When adapted these words to our own context here, one might ask: What does it profit us if we, one day, obtain every political victory, every judicial judgment, and every public apology, but in the process lose our peace, fill our hearts with anger, hatred, and resentment, and surrender our capacity to forgive and to pray for those who persecute us?

The pursuit of justice must never cost us our humanity or our place in heaven. We must seek the truth, demand accountability, and work for justice with courage—but without allowing the wounds inflicted upon us to transform us into what we oppose. We can pursue justice without hatred, demand accountability without vengeance, and seek truth while leaving room for mercy. For the Christian, the ultimate victory is not merely that justice is done, but that, in seeking justice, we do not lose the capacity to love. The Gospel never asks us to choose between faith and justice. Rather, it calls us to practice a faith that does justice—for the greater glory of God and for the greater dignity of every human person. Forgiveness heals the heart. Justice heals the social wound. Mercy makes both possible. The Christian vocation is to pursue a deeper synthesis: truth with mercy, justice with forgiveness, accountability with the possibility of redemption.

Author

Rev. Dr. Rashmi M. Fernando, S.J., is a professor at the College for Business Administration (CBA), Special Assistant to the Provost, and Cabinet Fellow for Global Affairs at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Los Angeles, California; and Pastoral Coordinator for the Sri Lankan Catholic Community (SLCC) in California, USA.

Features

Accountability must not be limited to bribery and corruption

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/8

Sahan Weerasooriya

Namal Rajapaksa

by Jehan Perera

The arrest of SLPP National Organiser and Member of Parliament Namal Rajapaksa on corruption charges related to the massive Airbus purchase scandal of 2013 has captured the centre stage of public attention. He was arrested by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) on September 4 and remanded until September 18. The allegations concern an alleged payment of US$800,000 connected to the procurement of Airbus aircraft by SriLankan Airlines. Opposition political parties working together with the SLPP have condemned the arrest as being politically motivated. They point to the mass opposition public rally to be organised by the SLPP on September 12 as being the reason for the arrest.

The SLPP together with other opposition political parties have been trying to get back to the public eye as being viable opposition political parties after the drubbing they received at the last presidential and general elections held in 2024. However, they face a daunting task. They face a government with a 2/3 majority in Parliament and a President who currently enjoys a 75 percent approval rating with the people as indicated in the recent CPA survey. The main issue that led to the electoral watershed in 2024 was corruption and abuse of power that was widely believed to have fed into the collapse of the national economy in 2022. The arrest of the SLPP National Organiser and the charges against him bring back the issue of past corruption to the fore.

There is a strong public case for pursuing accountability for corruption, irrespective of the political status of those being investigated. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has claimed that if all alleged corruption and wrongdoing uncovered by the government were fully investigated, hardly anyone among those responsible would be left untouched. The fact that an alleged wrongdoer in the Airbus scandal is the scion of one of the most formidable political dynasties in the country and is the leader of a major political party is not deterring the government.

Enormous Scale

The present government is demonstrating a greater determination coupled with political will to push the accountability process forward compared to previous governments. This is not the first occasion on which Namal Rajapaksa has been arrested as part of government investigations into corruption. In 2015, the government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe launched a major investigation into the Airbus deal as the amounts at stake were enormous. In 2013, SriLankan Airlines had contracted for six A330-300s and four A350-900s, with further A350 leases arranged for a fleet renewal programme valued at over US$2.5 billion. That figure is comparable in size to the US$3 billion IMF bailout and shows the scale of exposure the loss-making state-owned carrier was taking on. SriLankan Airlines decided to exit the leases starting in 2015–2016 following the change of government. The penalties paid exceeded US$100 million.

After the catastrophe, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government appointed a high powered investigation body. Despite the Board of Inquiry’s recommendation that former executives face criminal prosecution, no one named in the report was ever successfully prosecuted. The Airbus case is particularly important because what is at stake is not simply the size of the alleged bribe. What is more troubling is the deliberate commitment of scarce public resources to a loss-making enterprise, for a personal gain far smaller than the cost imposed on the national budget. Corruption is not only about what an individual allegedly gets as a commission or bribe. It is also about the public resources committed, institutions weakened, and opportunities lost when decisions serve private rather than public benefit.

Having completed two years in power, like past governments, the NPP government is still trying to define who was responsible for the current state of affairs in the country. Instead, they need to shift their thinking on what institutions and systems must be changed so that past problems cannot easily recur. This means moving from anti-corruption politics to systems reform. This distinction is crucial. One can prosecute a set of corrupt individuals and still leave behind a system that produces another set. Conversely, if procurement, appointments, public finance, political financing, policing and judicial processes and reconciliation are redesigned properly, opportunities for corruption and political abuse will be reduced. For the NPP, therefore, the real measure of success should not simply be how many former politicians are investigated or prosecuted. It should be whether, by the end of its term, Sri Lanka has become a country in which it is substantially harder for any future government to abuse public power.

Broader Accountability

This broader understanding of accountability is particularly important because financial crimes and corruption, grievous though they be, are not the only set of gross misdeeds that plunged the country to the bottom rungs of development in the world. There is another issue of accountability that needs to be pursued. This is to find out what happened to the tens of thousands of missing persons due to political violence in the past four to five decades which has put Sri Lanka in the second spot internationally for the number of missing persons. Amnesty International has estimated that at least 60,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 people have been subjected to enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka since the 1980s.The numbers are so large that they should shock the conscience of the country. It is telling that the disappearance of a person does not attract the same public attention as the disappearance of money.

A missing million dollars matters because it belongs to the people. A missing person matters because that person belongs to a family, a community, a country. Both are failures of the same underlying obligation that the state apply accountability equally, to money and to people, regardless of who is harmed or who is implicated. While lost public money weakens the economy, disappeared people weaken the body politic itself. In the case of Sri Lanka, the disappeared are disproportionately Tamil, though people of all communities have vanished during the country’s cycles of violence. The question this raises is whether ethnic minority citizens believe the state cares for them as it does the ethnic majority. A citizen should not have to ask whether the state cares about the disappearance of a person because that person was Tamil, Muslim or Sinhalese. Nor should a family have to wait for decades for an answer simply because the disappearance occurred during a period of political violence. This needs to be pursued with the same political will that is now being demonstrated in relation to corruption. The pursuit of accountability for corruption can therefore become an opportunity to demonstrate that accountability is not selective. It needs to apply to financial wrongdoing, abuse of power, violations of rights and the failure of institutions to protect citizens.

The government has an opportunity to show that accountability is not about settling political scores with the previous rulers. It is about establishing a standard of public responsibility that applies to everyone and every institution.This is also important for national unity, both in name and in spirit. If ethnic minority citizens are to feel a sense of belonging to the Sri Lankan state, they need to know that their suffering matters as much as the loss of public money. Otherwise, unresolved grievances will remain a wound in the body politic and continue to weaken it. The missing people matter as much as the missing millions. In fact, people matter more than money in our society. The real test of accountability is whether Sri Lanka can build institutions and systems in which neither public money nor people can disappear without consequence.