Features

Federalism and paths to constitutional reform

Published

5 months ago

2026/04/27

Sahan Weerasooriya

Chelvanayakam (R) and S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike shaking hands.

S. J. V. Chelvanayakam: Visionary and Statesman

S. J. V. Chelvanayakam KC Memorial Lecture Delivered at Jaffna Central Collage on Sunday, 26 April, by Professor G. L. Peiris – D. Phil. (Oxford), Ph. D. (Sri Lanka); Rhodes Scholar, Quondam Visiting Fellow of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London; Former Vice-Chancellor and Emeritus Professor of Law of the University of Colombo.

I. Life and Career

Had Mr. Chelvanayakam been with us today, he would no doubt be profoundly unhappy with the state of our country and the world.

Samuel James Velupillai Chelvanayakam was born on 31 March, 1898, in the town of Ipoh, in Malaya. When he was four years of age, he was sent by his father, along with his mother, for the purpose of his education to Tellippalai, a traditional village at the northern tip of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as the country was then called, in close proximity to the port of Kankesanturai. He attended three schools, Union College in Tellippalai, St John’s College Jaffna and S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia, where he was a contemporary of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, with whom he was later destined to sign the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact.

He graduated in Science as an external student of the University of London, in 1918. In 1927, he married Emily Grace Barr-Kumarakulasinghe, daughter of the Maniyagar, or administrative chief for the area, appointed by the colonial government. He had four sons and a daughter. His son, S. C. Chandrahasan, worked closely with me during my time as Foreign Minister on the subject of repatriation of refugees from India. Chandrahasan’s wife, Nirmala, daughter of Dr. E. M. V. Naganathan, was a colleague of mine on the academic staff of the University of Colombo.

Mr. Chelvanayakam first contested the Kankesanturai constituency at the parliamentary election of 1947. His was a long parliamentary career. He resigned from his parliamentary seat in opposition to the first Republican Constitution of 1972, but was re-elected overwhelmingly at a by-election in 1975. He died on 26 April, 1977.

There are many strong attributes which shine through his life and career.

He consistently showed courage and capacity for endurance. He had no hesitation in resigning from employment, which gave him comfort and security, to look after a younger brother who was seriously ill. As his son-in-law, Professor A.J. Wilson remarked, he learned to move in two worlds: a product of missionary schools, he was a devout Christian who never changed his religion for political gain. He was, quite definitely, a Hindu by culture, and never wished to own a house in Colombo for fear that his children would be alienated from their roots.

Gentle and self-effacing by disposition, he manifested the steel in his character by not flinching from tough decisions. Never giving in to expediency, differences of principle with Mr. G. G. Ponnambalam, the leader of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, of which Mr. Chelvanayakam was a principal organiser, led him to break away from the Congress and to form a new party, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, or the Federal Party.

During the disturbances in March and April, 1958, he was charged in the Magistrate’s Court in Batticaloa and sentenced to a week’s imprisonment. He was also subject to house arrest, but he never resorted to violence and used satyagraha to make his voice heard. When, in 1961, he was medically advised to travel to the United Kingdom for surgical treatment, he had to be escorted to the airport by the police because he was still under detention. Although physically frail and ailing in health during his final years, he lost none of the indomitable spirit which typified his entire life.

II. Advocacy of Federalism: Origins and Context

At the core of political convictions he held sacrosanct was his unremitting commitment to federalism. A moment of fruition in his life was the formation of the Federal Party, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, on 18 December, 1949.

Contrary to popular belief, however, federalism in our country had its origin in issues which were not connected with ethnicity. At its inception, this had to do with the aspirations, not of the Tamils, but of the Kandyan Sinhalese. The Kandyan National Assembly, in its representations to the Donoughmore Commission, in November, 1927, declared: “Ours is not a communal claim or a claim for the aggrandizement of a few. It is the claim of a nation to live its own life and realise its own destiny”.

Mr. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, soon after his return from Oxford, as a prominent member of the Ceylon National Congress, was an ardent advocate of federalism. He went so far as to characterise federalism as “the only solution to our political problems”. With Thomas Hobbes in his famous work, The Leviathan, he conceived of liberty as “political power broken into fragments”. Bandaranaike went on to state in a letter published in The Morning Leader on 19 May, 1926: “The two clashing forces of cooperation and individualism, like that thread of golden light which Walter Pater observed in the works of the painters of the Italian Renaissance, run through the fabric of civilisation, sometimes one predominating, sometimes the other. To try and harmonise the two has been the problem of the modern world. The only satisfactory solution yet discovered is the federal system”.

Federalism had a strong ideological appeal, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. The constitutional proposals, addressed by the Communist Party of Ceylon to the Ceylon National Congress on 18 October, 1944, go very far indeed. They envisioned the Sinhalese and the Tamils as two distinct “nations” or “historically evolved nationalities”. The high watermark of the proposals was the assertion that “Both nationalities have their right to self-determination, including the right, if they so desire, to form their own separate independent state”.

These proposals received further elaboration in a memorandum submitted to the Working Committee of the Ceylon National Congress by two leading members of the Communist Party, Mr. Pieter Keuneman and Mr. A. Vaidialingam. Their premise was set out pithily as follows: “We regard a nation as a historical, as opposed to an ethnographical, concept. It is a historically evolved, stable community of people living in a contiguous territory as their traditional homeland”.

The Soulbury Commission, which arrived in the country in December, 1944, had no hesitation in recognising that “The relations of the minorities – the Ceylon Tamils, the Indian Tamils, Muslims, Burghers and Europeans, with the Sinhalese majority – present the most difficult of the many problems involved in the reform of the Constitution of Ceylon”.

They took fully into account the apprehension expressed by the All Ceylon Tamil Congress that “The near approach of the complete transfer of power and authority from neutral British hands to the people of this country is causing, in the minds of the Tamil people, in common with other minorities, much misgiving and fear”.

III. Constitutional Provisions at Independence

The Souldbury Commission, like the Donoughmore Commission before it, was not friendly to the idea of federalism, principally because of their commitment to the unity of the body politic. Opting for a solution, falling short of federalism, they adopted the approach that, if the underlying fear related to encroachment on seminal rights by capricious legislative action, this anxiety could be convincingly assuaged by enshrining in the Constitution a nucleus of rights placed beyond the reach of the legislature.

The essence of the solution, which commended itself to the Soulbury Commission, was a carefully crafted constitutional limitation on the legislative competence of Parliament, encapsulated in Article 29(2) of the Independence Constitution. The gist of this was incorporation of the principle of non-discrimination against racial or religious communities by explicit acknowledgement of equal protection under the law.

The assumption fortifying this expectation was the attribution of an imaginative role to the judiciary in respect of interpretation. It was lack of fulfillment in this regard that precipitated a setback which time could not heal. Judicial attitudes, including those of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which constituted at the time the highest tier of the judicial hierarchy, were timid and diffident.

When the Citizenship Act of 1948, by means of a new definition, sought to deprive Tamils of Indian origin of the suffrage, no protection was forthcoming from the courts on the ground of impermissible discrimination. This refusal of intervention was premised on an implausibly narrow construction of the word “community”, in that, according to the Courts’ reasoning, in the landmark case of Kodakkan Pillai v. Madanayake, Indian Tamils were not identifiable as a community distinct from the larger community of the Tamils of Ceylon. It is hard to disguise the reality that this was, at bottom, a refusal to deal with the substantive issues candidly and frontally.

The resulting vulnerability of minority rights, which judicial evasion laid bare, was a major contributory cause of the erosion of confidence on the part of minority groups. This mood of suspicion and despair, arising from an ostensibly weak method of protection of human rights, presaged ensuing developments.

IV. Further Quest for a Constitutional Solution

Chelvanayakam

The central theme of this lecture, in honour of a statesman who was an epitome of restraint and moderation, is that the deterioration of ethnic relations, which culminated in a war of unrivalled savagery over a span of three decades, was progressive and incremental. There was no inevitability about the denouement. It was gradual and potentially reversible. At several crucial points, there was opportunity to arrest a disastrous trend. These windows of opportunity, however, were not utilised: extremist attitudes asserted themselves, and polarisation became the outcome. This trajectory was, no doubt, met with dismay by far-sighted leaders of the calibre of Mr. Chelvanayakam.

The formation of the Federal Party was a turning point. With Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, King’s Counsel, as founder-president, and Dr. E.M.V. Naganathan and Mr. V. Navaratnam as joint secretaries, the party embarked on a journey which marked a radical departure from the conventional thinking of the past. This was plain from the text of seven resolutions adopted at the national convention of the party held in Trincomalee in April, 1951. The foundation of these resolutions was the call to establish a Tamil state within the Union of Ceylon, and the uncompromising assertion that no other solution was feasible.

The path was now becoming manifest. The demand up to now had been for substantial power sharing within a unitary state. This was now giving way to a strident demand for the emergence of a federal structure, destined to be expanded in the fullness of time to advocacy of secession.

Although standing out boldly as a landmark in constitutional evolution, the Federal Party resolutions did not carry on their face the hallmark of finality or immutability. The call of the Tamil leadership for secession yet being some years away, the ensuing decades saw further attempts by different governments to resolve the vexed issues around power sharing.

The first of these was the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact, signed by the Prime Minister and the leader of the Federal Party on 26 July, 1957. There was an air of uneasy compromise surrounding the entire transaction. This was evident from the structure of the pact, which, as one of its integral parts, contained a section not reduced to writing in any form, but consisting of a series of informal understandings.

The essence of the pact was the proposed system of regional councils which were envisaged as an intermediary tier between the central government and local government institutions. This did break new ground. Not only did the pact confer on the people of the North and East a substantial measure of self-governance through these innovative councils, including in such inherently controversial areas as colonisation, irrigation and local management, but territorial units were conceived of as the recipients of devolved powers. Of particular significance, the regional councils were to be invested with some measure of financial autonomy. The blowback, however, was so intense as to compel the government to abrogate the pact.

The next attempt, eight years later, was by the United National Party, which had vehemently opposed the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact. This was the Dudley Senanayake–Chelvanayakam Pact, signed between the leader of the United National Party, at the time Leader of the Opposition, and the leader of the Federal Party. It differed from the Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact, both contextually and substantively.

As to context, it was signed on 24 March, 1965, on the eve of a parliamentary election, to ensure for the United National Party the support of the Federal Party. A disheartening feature was the plainly evident element of duplicity. Once in government, the Prime Minister’s party showed little interest in implementing the pact. Within three years, the Federal Party left the government, and its representative in the cabinet, Mr M. Tiruchelvam QC, Minister of Local Government, relinquished his portfolio.

Substantively, the lynchpin of the pact was a system of district councils, but there was entrenched control of these bodies by the central government, even in regard to action within their vires. This was almost universally seen as a sleight of hand.

Despite the collapse of these efforts, room for resilience and accommodation had by no means disappeared. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the events which led up to the drafting and adoption of the “autochthonous” Constitution of 1972. This involved the historic task of severing the centuries-old bond with the British Crown and bringing into being the Republic of Sri Lanka.

One of the Basic Resolutions, which eventually found expression as Article 2 of the new Constitution, characterised Sri Lanka as a unitary state. The Federal Party proposed an amendment that the word “federal” should be substituted for “unitary”. Mr. V. Dharmalingam, the spokesman for the party on this subject, in his address to the Constituent Assembly, on 16 March, 1971, showed flexibility by declaring that the powers of the federating units and their relationship to the centre were negotiable, once the principle of federalism was accepted. Indivisibility of the Republic was emphatically articulated, self-determination in its external aspect being firmly ruled out.

There was no reciprocity, however. Mr. Sarath Muttettuwegama, administering a sharp rebuke, declared: “Federalism has become something of a dirty word in the southern parts of this country”. The last opportunity to halt the inexorable march of events was spurned.

The pushback came briskly, and with singular ferocity. This was in the form of the Vaddukoddai Resolution adopted by the Tamil United Liberation Front at its first national convention held on 14 May, 1976. The historic significance of this document is that it set out, for the first time, in the most unambiguous terms, the blueprint for an independent state for the Tamil nation, embracing the merged Northern and Eastern Provinces. The second part of the Resolution contained the nucleus of Tamil Eelam, its scope extending beyond the shores of the Island. The state of Tamil Eelam was to be home not only to the people of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, but to “all Tamil-speaking people living in any part of Ceylon and to Tamils of Eelam origin living in any part of the world who may opt for citizenship of Tamil Eelam”.

The most discouraging element of this sequence of events was the timid and evasive approach adopted by prominent actors at crucial moments. The District Development Councils Act of 1980 presented a unique opportunity. Disappointingly, however, the Presidential Commission, presided over by Mr. Victor Tennekoon QC, a former Chief Justice and Attorney General, lacked the courage even to interpret the terms of reference as permitting allusion to the ethnic conflict. Despite the persevering efforts of Professor A.J. Wilson, son-in-law of Mr. Chelvanayakam, and a confidant of President J.R. Jayewardene, and Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, the majority of the members were inclined to adopt a narrow, technical interpretation of the terms of reference. The setting of the legislation was one in which Tamil formations, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front, were struggling to maintain their moderate postures in an increasingly polarised environment, with pressure from radical elements proving almost irresistible.

The whole initiative paled into insignificance in comparison with a series of tragic events, including the burning of the Jaffna library during the run-up to the District Development Council elections in the North and the calamitous events of Black July 1983. Policymakers, at a critical juncture, had, once again, let a limited opportunity slip through their fingers.

The next intervention occurred in the sunset years of the United National Party administration. This was the Parliamentary Select Committee on the ethnic conflict, known after its Chairman as the Mangala Moonesinghe Committee, appointed in August, 1991.

The Majority Report made a detailed proposal which was intended to serve as the basis of a compromise between two schools of thought—one stoutly resisting any idea of merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, and the other demanding such merger as the indispensable basis of a viable solution. An imaginative via media was the concept of the Apex Council, which formed the centrepiece of the Majority Report. It adopted as a point of departure two separate Provincial Councils for the North and the East. This dichotomy would characterise the provincial executive as well: each Provincial Council would have an Executive Minister as the head of the Board of Ministers. However, over and above these, the two Provincial Councils together would constitute a Regional Council for the entire North-East region. Although presenting several features of interest, as a pragmatic mediating mechanism, the proposal did not enjoy a sufficiently broad support base for implementation. (To be concluded)

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Features

The NPP’s Dilemma: Arresting Politics and Unarresting Progress

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/13

Thilina Walpola

The New Parody: NPP and its Lilliputians

by Rajan Philips

The 22^nd Amendment has given the government’s critics a convenient cudgel to beat up the government. But there has been no crushing blow by any effective opponent. Too many people have been taking too many turns and striking too many blows, but no one has landed anything to shake the government in any way. The whole drama is the new Sri Lankan parody of Lilliputians taking on Gulliver. Nonetheless, the critics have found an opening to keep haranguing the government. There are two prongs to their exertions.

One is the pre-NPP past of the old JVP. In political years, the chasm is as wide as that between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This provides the basis for claiming that 22A is the NPP government’s first step towards ending parliamentary democracy. The hilarity of this accusation is matched by its hypocrisy inasmuch as the current chief accuser was also the high priest of the 18^th Amendment that was set up to envision a third term for Mahinda Rajapaksa. Who else – but GL Pieris. One good thing the Bar Association did was to keep GL Pieris entirely out of its entourages.

The second front of attacks on the government is based on the JVP-NPP’s cohabitation in the Yahapalanaya diarchy of Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. Indeed, the question has been asked: Is Malimawa heading to be the second Yahapalanaya? If that were so, GL Peiris and others should be able to feign a sigh of relief that parliamentary democracy is indeed safe owing to the NPP’s incompetence. But the absurdity of the Malimawa – Yahapalanaya allusion is a different laugh. Perhaps, more than one laugh.

One is in the table-talk suggestion that “due to the misdeeds of Pohottuwa that followed Yahapalanaya, voters gave an overwhelming mandate to Malimawa…” Sanitizing the disaster that was Gotabaya presidency as misdeed is quite a feat. A more serious look is about the voters who gave the “overwhelming mandate to Malimawa.” Most of the Malimawa voters were peeled off the Pohottuwa vote block, while Yahapalanaya voters were left to choose between Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe. Namal Rajapaksa who was supposed to stand down in support of Ranil Wickremasinghe in the hope of diverting Pohottuwa votes to RW. Instead, the Rajapaksa scion decided to get big race experience, fared badly in the race and caused another serial defeat for RW.

Arresting Politics

Now the political wheels are turning differently. Namal Rajapaksa has become the latest martyr of the government’s arresting politics. Illusorily or not, the young Rajapaksa believes that he’s finding political traction in the country and that the government is putting him behind bars to slow him down. Coming to his defence is of course the inscrutable (even to himself) Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Sajith Premadasa has apparently remained quiet so far, and so has the SJB. Neither has made any statement or expressed concern over the arrest of Namal Rajapaksa on Friday, September 4. It is not that Mr. Premadasa is becoming what Ranil Wickremesinghe was to Mahinda Rajapaksa – the government’s Minister of the Opposition, but the man has no political fire in his belly. If his passion is for wildlife, he should ask the government to put him in charge of running the Yala National Park. He can have a better animal farm there than what he seems to be suffering within his Party and in parliament.

Mr. Rajapaksa has been arrested over the Airbus purchase scandal that goes back to 2012 and 2013. The details of the scandal are known, and allegations of payoffs have been rumoured for quite a while. Yet it is the of pattern of Friday morning questioning, evening arrest and arraignment, and weekend incarceration – that has become all too familiar and fodder for cynical misgivings. There have been too many arrests but too few trials, let alone convictions. All arrests and no trials not only erodes public confidence in the process, but also let the criminals and their beneficiaries go Scot-free.

For his part, Namal Rajapaksa is claiming that the government timed his arrest to scuttle the political rally that he and the SLPP have scheduled for Saturday, September 12, in Anuradhapura. Their claim seems to that the Anuradhapura rally will mark the scion’s coming of age as a viable presidential candidate. The claim gets some credence in the context of the government’s own political planning for holding a series of pro-government public rallies where President Dissanayake will be both the show and substance. The first of the NPP rallies is coincidentally scheduled for Sunday, September 13, and also in Anuradhapura.

Next week, we will have all the commentaries and comparisons about the two rival rallies in Anuradhapura. Future rallies will show whether Mr. Rajapaksa is actually surging in the public recognition of his political abilities, and whether the government is actually concerned about this apparent surge and mounting a counter surge of its own. If all this were true, the irrelevance of Sajith Premadasa will become even more entrenched, and the personal relevance of Ranil Wickremesinghe will become even more real.

For the pundit theory is that while the NPP might view Namal Rajapaksa as a growing threat in popular politics, its more substantive fear is about Ranil Wickremesinghe and what he says about the economy. To wit, the government’s full throttled response to Mr. Wickremasinghe’s casual remark at a political book launch that the government may not be having enough forex reserves when foreign creditors come collecting in 2028.

The Real Question

The real question is apart from the show and tell of political rallies there is still not much to write home about government performance on the substance of the economy. The government has so far been quite good at keeping the economic house in order. Keeping order is not too difficult a task once you start keeping corruption out of the door. But there are no signs of the government doing anything substantial on the economic front, especially the export sector for without significantly increasing export earnings it will be impossible to carry out debt repayment.

The government has been commended for identifying 33 State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs) for closure or restructuring. Yet there are a few biggies left, including the debt burdened Sri Lankan Airlines with about $ 2 billion estimated to be its accumulated losses. The government has also announced a slew of mega projects in highways and the energy sector. At the same time, there are ethno-economic criticisms that the government is delaying work on the KKS Harbour and the Palaly Airport projects that have Indian funding.

Highway projects can be a curse dressed up as blessing, and they are coming out of the same Rajapaksa economic playbook. There are rumours that would be corporate beneficiaries of mega highway projects have found an inside track to government decision makers. It is up to the government to prove that such allegations are untrue and to demonstrate that it will not be bought over in contract awards. Highway construction is also import heavy even with local contractors. The economic worry should be that with too many highway projects, all going on at the same time, there will be a drain on the limited forex reserves to bring in equipment and materials. That was the experience of the highway robberies under the Rajapaksas and the NPP government can forget the lessons from that era only at its peril.

On a positive note, there is commendable activity in the renewable energy sector, amidst warnings by the Public Utilities Commission (PUSCL) about new power cuts under El Niño weather conditions. The PUSCL recently approved new feed-in tariffs for electricity from renewable energy sources and has directed the newly minted National System Operator (NSO) to expedite the implementation of Battery Energy Storage System with sufficient capacity to accommodate solar energy. There is some and back-and-forth between the two agencies about implementation details, but that is a good disagreement to have as opposed to the prolonged agreement about doing nothing on renewable energy.

There is a new green light for the once controversial 350 MW LNG power project in Kerawalapitiya. The project is being undertaken by Sahasdhanavi Limited on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis, and will be implemented in two phases. The unfortunate snag is that in both phases, initial operations will be based on diesel with expectation to switch to Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) which will require additional infrastructure and supply arrangements. One would hope that diesel generation will not become a permanent feature in Kerawalapitiya.

To its credit, the government launched Sri Lanka’s largest renewable energy project, the ‘Rividanavi’ Solar Power Park project, in September 2025, in the Monaragala District, as part of the target to generate 70% of the country’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030. Sooner the country reduces its reliance on thermal energy, the better for its economy and the environment.

The government seems to be wanting in messaging its achievements, big or small, to the public in consistent and convincing ways. The mode of messaging through presidential rallies may not have much benefit except during an election campaign. At the same time, the government is getting caught up in controversies of its own making. The exertions on all sides over the 22^nd Amendment is a case in point. In the upshot, it is the judiciary that has been badmouthed and diminished. The lure of arresting politics could be appealing in the short term, but can come back to haunt one if no one gets convicted.

For all intent and purpose, the government has missed the bus on constitutional reforms. I would be the first to applaud if my prediction turns out to be incorrect. But the government cannot walk away from the economy the way it seems to have abandoned its promise on the constitution. And the challenge of managing even a small national economy is not getting any easier with all the havoc that the Trump Administration is wreaking on America and the world.

Features

Remembering Nihal Rodrigo: A friendship extending over 50 years

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/13

Thilina Walpola

Anila Bandaranaike as a graduate student at Cornel in the US (right) eating ice cream at Central Park with Nihal and Chitra Rodrigo and their twins

Nihal Passed away on 14th August, a few days after his 86th birthday. Nandi, Raffi and Anouk, his granddaughter, had been with him from New York till just a week before he died. In the weeks after he passed away, there have been glowing tributes to Nihal by his professional colleagues and from organisations in which he served. My tribute is personal, of friendship over decades with a multi-talented and kind-hearted gentleman, with a delightful sense of humour, who wore his talents so lightly.

I cannot speak of Nihal without talking of his wife Chitra. To me, they were an ideal union. They shared the same values of kindness, generosity, commitment, professionalism, humility and unquestionable integrity. They also shared many interests – in art, theatre, film, classical music (both oriental and western), literature and world affairs, to name a few. They were equal partners, each respecting the other’s views and looking out for the other. They had their arguments, but with never a loud, rude, harsh or unpleasant word.

I first met Nihal and his family nearly 50 years ago in Manhattan, New York. I had moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a graduate student in January 1978. I had an introduction to them from my close friend Radhika Coomaraswamy, who had known them since her student days in New York. Nihal was Counsellor at the Sri Lanka Mission to the UN. He and Chitra, together with their 6-year old twins, Nandi and Satya, graciously opened their home to me. From the beginning, I was made to feel a part of this delightful family and I considered their apartment in Manhattan as my “home away from home”. I regularly dislodged one of the twins from a bed to a sleeping bag on the floor, whenever I turned up in the “Big Apple” on the six-hour greyhound bus ride from Ithaca, comfortable enough to occasionally bring a friend along as well!

I have such happy memories of walking in Central Park eating ice-cream with the foursome, or going to movies and Broadway shows with Chitra. Our friendship never wavered over the next several decades and geographical distances, as they moved from one diplomatic post to another. I remain ever-grateful to Radhika for that initial introduction.

My father (Sam Wijesinha) had befriended them before me, when he had accompanied a Parliamentary delegation to Australia in 1970, in his capacity as Secretary General of Parliament, and he was a great fan. Nihal was then acting High Commissioner and they had brought him to their home for a chat and informal dinner after an official party they had all three attended. When they got home, both Nihal and Chitra realized that neither had taken their keys with them and they were locked outside their own home with their guest! Undeterred, Nihal managed to prise open the kitchen window and climb into the house to let the other two in. My father remained a great admirer of Nihal and Chitra forever after!

From Counsellor in New York, Nihal rose to Ambassador status, SAARC Secretary-General and Foreign Secretary, and finally as our Ambassador in China. They were such fun and gracious hosts when my husband and I visited them in both Kathmandu and Beijing and made their home our base while travelling in Nepal and China. They were the perfect diplomatic couple, able to converse with, and entertain royalty, presidents, the literary, arts and business communities and regular citizens, with equal ease, grace and dignity. It certainly did not harm the Sri Lankan image that they were also an extraordinarily good-looking couple!

Nihal and Chitra met as students at Peradeniya University in its golden years. They enjoyed Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s plays at the famous open-air theatre, while Nihal was also President of the English Drama Society. On my return to Sri Lanka in the mid-‘80s, it was Chitra who introduced me to Sinhabahu and Maname, as well as all the glorious ballets performed by the Chitrasena and Vajira dance troupe.

As mentioned by others, Nihal was an authority on art and a painter himself. Nihal, Chitra and fellow students were befriended by George Keyt, then living in Kandy. Canvasses in their home showcase Nihal’s artistic talents, as well as early Keyt paintings, gifts from the artist himself. Later, Nihal served on and supported the George Keyt Foundation in many ways. He was also a lover of, and an authority on film. I remember especially the Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart classics. If one wished to watch, one had only to visit the Rodrigos and ask- Nihal had an entire collection of those DVDs.

Nihal could speak with authority, in language a lay person could understand, on geopolitics, especially the power changes taking place in an increasingly volatile world. His astuteness on Sri Lanka’s diplomatic relations was ahead of his time.

In the early 1990s, Nihal was Secretary to a high-level Foreign Affairs Study Group (FASG) appointed by President Premadasa and chaired by Dr. Gamani Corea, with Mervyn de Silva, Lakshman Kadirgamar and S.K. Wickremesinghe among its members.

As the Cold War had ended and Asia began emerging as an economic force, Nihal saw that, along with two economically awakening giants China and India, fast developing countries in East and South East Asia would become increasingly important to Sri Lanka for its own future development. He therefore officially co-opted me, from the Central Bank’s Economic Research Department, to provide the FASG with regular statistical updates of Sri Lanka’s economic and trade links with those very countries.

His thinking has proved correct, although I do not think successive Sri Lankan governments gave such astuteness the importance it warranted.

His final diplomatic posting, as Ambassador to China, reflected the enormous respect in which he was held. His time there was invaluable to Sri Lanka. Since his return to Sri Lanka in 2007, he was one of the most sought-after authorities on China in the region. He lectured in academic institutions and was a popular speaker on Sri Lanka’s foreign policy for well over a decade after his retirement.When his health began to deteriorate, he led a quieter life, meeting friends and family in their home, ably cared for by his devoted wife through the years that followed.

Nihal’s and Chitra’s interest in world issues and the arts have been inherited by, and nurtured in both Nandi and Satya, and most likely, Anouk too. Today, where are those delightful six-year olds whose beds I took over all those years ago?

Nandi is Head of Research at the New York Times Magazine, married to Raffi, a senior writer for the New Yorker, and Satya, a senior diplomat in Sri Lanka’s Foreign Service, currently serves as our Ambassador in Rome, with the same charm and professionalism as his father. So, to me, Nihal and Chitra were also role-model parents, giving their twins space to grow and develop their own individual personalities.

Nihal had many admirable qualities, but what I admired most was how his intellect and creative abilities sat so lightly on him. He shared of his knowledge, experience and wisdom without ever acting superior or talking down to anyone; he could turn a tense moment in a discussion and lighten the mood in a wink, with a delightfully witty remark or joke, and always had time to chat and joke with us younger adults, however busy his work schedule.

But Nihal was not all-perfect! It was Chitra, his soul-mate, he relied on so completely for all matters practical and financial, including hosting, entertaining and maintaining their homes all over the world, and for companionship, comfort, peace and harmony, in their own home in Colombo, in the final years of his life.

He will be missed by all who knew him, but we will all treasure memories of a talented, humane individual who made this world a better place. May he rest in peace.

Anila Dias Bandaranaike

Features

The Essence of the Notion of ‘Father’: A short review of Piyasara Gedara by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/13

Thilina Walpola

By Ashanthi Ekanayake

There has been a trend in social media in inquiring of its users what their favourite literary works are and I took some time to explore which poem I might single out as the best of its kind written in English which is of personal significance. I immediately thought of the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath. I made the choice quickly because I had been thinking of it since I began to read Amarakeerthi’s latest novel. The notion of the father and the larger metaphor of the patriarch or the arch patriarch has been something all societies have grappled with since the beginning. Plath declares in the second verse Daddy, “I have had to kill you.” This act of parricide has been a strong metaphor in many literary works and also in the etiological myths of many peoples.

I was initiated to the history of our race and nation as a young child and I remember that I had no qualms about accepting that I came from a lineage which had a certain “lion” in the beginning and that the lion had two children and that they “married” to start our race. Firstly, I heard this story as a young child and “marriage” did not mean much to me, secondly, I was from a generation which was not allowed to question and challenge my “elders and betters.” I was also a somewhat passive and placid child. When it was (unfortunately) my turn to do the honours in initiating my own offspring they were not so gullible. They were appalled and not impressed. They said in one voice “what ignominy to trace one’s beginning to parricide, bestiality and incest.” Fortunately for me I know some “Classics.’ So, my rejoinder was that even the Greeks and Romans have similar accounts and reminded them of Oedipus. Oedipus and Sinhabahu both have to kill their fathers to come into their own, regardless of the fact that Oedipus meets with tragedy. The notion of the patriarch and succession through parricide has been a historical reality and a literary strategy explored by many and has an etiological function.

In this sense the narrative of Piyăsara Gedara by Amarakeerthi Liyanage makes the reader question this accepted notion of the patriarch and also the role of the father/father figure by their presence and absence in the novel itself. Not stopping there Amarakeerthi uses the shadowy and unnamed yet unmistakable character of “sir,” in the novel as a parasitic dramaturge who has a rather overbearing personality. This shadowy figure is mirrored by the introduction of fathers who are not quite fathers in the later chapters. Amarakeerthi has been committed to writing novels experimenting with different styles while touching on themes which are current and relevant. His unhurried creative exercise has always managed to keep the reader engaged in questioning social norms and accepted values and exploring the very politics of the creative enterprise and also recent events. The metaphor borrowed from a renowned stylized stage play is an extended metaphor with the heart room of the Dias home gaining an importance as a significant space. (I refrain from exploring the obvious nationalist aspect because the readers will come to these assumptions on their own.)

Just as there are many fathers, Dias appears to be just like the youngsters in the narrative, lost in the ruminations of what his father might have achieved had he not been in the shadow of the dramaturge who himself remains a shadowy figure in the narrative rather like the murder instrument which is not one. His realisation that his father was not unique and not deserving of many of the accolades that Dias had wanted as a son for his father gives the novel a certain bildungsroman/coming of age quality even though Dias appears to be relatively old. A rather late coming of age for Dias because he has to see that his father was not all that he believed him to be. This aspect of the novel also resonates with the notions of anxiety of influence/anxiety of authorship because Dias whom the playwright wants to rename is in fact doing much of the groundwork in research for the work the person referred only as “sir.” The other fathers are of a variety of types that we encounter in our everyday relationships. The absence of one father encourages one character to become vigilante like. The introduction of the manikin/mannequin or “womannequin” provides an alter-ego to one of the characters who is also described as doll-like.

As always Amarkeerthi’s latest creation is packed with metaphors which keep the reader alert in piecing together the story. He opens the novel using a technique resonant with the ultra-performativity of the current day and age. His narrative has a cinematic quality which is in keeping with the modern experience of a drone capturing the action as it takes place. This makes the novelist appear very powerful, even godlike and the experience makes the reader a viewer in a sense. He ties this narrative strategy in the final few pages and carries it on to the acknowledgement which is rather like watching movie credits roll at the end where he names the cast and crew.

In addition to the dramatic/cinematic quality, the novelist also uses onomatopoeia as a narrative strategy which I will not spoil for those who are yet to read the novel. Among the many themes explored are the

There is an irony in the notion of the patriarch because the very patriarch we challenge literally or figuratively is the one who gives us our name and our being and makes us into who we are, and ultimately renders himself a figure we have to destroy in order to come into our own. All the characters in the novel, main and the relatively insignificant are all used in exploring this metaphor of the father.

Plath says at the end of the poem “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” The irony of the presence or absence of the father and the notion of bastardy and the stigma involved and the social necessity of the presence of a father, is an aspect of our lives we will continue to explore in our creative enterprise.