Features
Follow Che’s footsteps – lead by example, not words: My Talk with Aleida Guevara, daughter of Che Guevara
by Nilanta Ilangamuwa
It was 1967. In La Higuera, a small village in the Vallegrande region of the Santa Cruz Department in Bolivia, there was a man leading a small guerrilla group that had been fighting for months to transform the Bolivian state. He had arrived in Bolivia from Cuba in November 1966 under the pseudonym “Fernando.” Initially, some members of the Bolivian Communist Party supported him, but the support was insufficient. At that time, General René Barrientos, a staunch anti-communist, was Bolivia’s de facto leader following a military coup that ousted President Víctor Paz Estenssoro in 1964. Barrientos was then elected president in a disputed election in 1966. The United States, determined to stop the spread of communism across Latin America, supported Barrientos. The harsh reality of the situation sealed the fate of the revolutionary who had come to Bolivia under the name Fernando. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, as the world knows him, took his last breath there.
On October 8, 1967, Che and his group hid in a deep ravine near La Higuera, known as “El Yuro Ravine,” to avoid capture by the military. However, a battle broke out shortly after. During the firefight, Che was wounded in the leg and captured by Bolivian soldiers.
Afterwards, Che was taken to a small schoolhouse in La Higuera, where he spent the night. The next day, October 9, 1967, Bolivian authorities, with the assistance of CIA agents, decided to execute him. Mario Terán, a Bolivian army sergeant, was assigned as Che’s executioner. Their plan was to shoot him and then claim that Che had died in combat, as executing a prisoner without trial is a war crime. According to reports, Che faced his executioner without fear and said in his final moments, “I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.” While some accounts suggest that Mario Terán suffered severe mental distress afterwards and committed suicide in 1974, others claim he lived a quiet life until his death around the year 2000.
For years, the location of Che’s remains was a closely guarded state secret. In 1997, after decades of silence, a team of Cuban and Bolivian forensic scientists discovered a mass grave in Vallegrande that contained his remains and those of several comrades. His remains were later brought back to Cuba and buried in a mausoleum in Santa Clara, the city where he won a decisive battle during the Cuban Revolution.
This year marks 57 years since Che was killed. The mahogany plant he planted at Yahalakelle Rubber Estate, later renamed Che Park, in the Moragahahena area of Horana during his visit to Sri Lanka in 1959 has since grown into a towering tree. Che’s admirers honour his memory by tending to the tree every year. As in many countries around the world, some in this country also attempt to co-opt figures like Che to serve the interests of certain social groups. In some cases, this “blind adoration” prevents a critical examination of the deep socio-political ideas that Che sought to convey, leading to subtle distortions of his thoughts.
This special conversation with Aleida Guevara March, Che’s daughter, is significant in this context. The eldest of four children born to Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his second wife, Aleida Guevara is a Cuban physician. She has worked as a doctor in Angola, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, and is currently practising at the William Soler Children’s Hospital in Havana.
I first asked her: Aleida, how did your father’s revolutionary ideals shape your personal values and outlook on life? What specific moments from your childhood reflect his influence on you?
“Unfortunately, I lived with my father for a very short time, and I only have a handful of memories,” she began. Reflecting further on those memories, she added: “But those times were very beautiful. My father woke me up early in the morning. I was always surprised by how early he rose. He would take me with him to do voluntary work. I remember going with him to work alongside sugarcane workers. Even before entering the plantation, I can still recall how he interacted with those people. I remember how he used to cut sugarcane and give me a piece to eat. They talked about many things. I had a lot of fun at that time.
“I participated in voluntary services from a young age, but it was my mother who put me in a position to be a working woman in today’s society. Without her, we would not have been able to receive an education like any other Cuban child. Children often lose their fathers, especially a world-famous guerrilla. It is impossible to fill that gap, and many people try to address it from a material point of view. However, my mother stood up like an extraordinary fortress and ensured we had everything that other Cuban children did.
“We lived in such an environment. We were educated and brought up as ordinary women and men, with our feet on the ground. Today, we have become socially useful citizens because of that deep social understanding and education instilled by our parents,” she stated.
One of the main things that emerge from examining Che’s writings is that he was not only interested in overthrowing governments but also in building a new kind of socialist society. He believed that revolution should create a “new man” (hombre nuevo), enriched not by material incentives but by moral values. In his view, socialist citizens are people working for the collective good, guided by deep moral principles of solidarity, self-sacrifice, and revolution. This idea, he emphasized, was in stark contrast to the Soviet model, which relied too heavily on material rewards and failed to cultivate true socialist consciousness.
In this context, Aleida was next asked how, in her view, her father’s legacy has evolved over the decades since his death. She was also asked, “Do you believe that modern interpretations of his life and works are consistent with his original intentions, or have they changed significantly?”
In response, she noted, “Some people try to distort my father’s work and life. They devote their lives to it. But they rarely succeed. Che is a coherent example.”
She further mentioned, “He said what he thought and did what he said. He never asked anyone to do what he couldn’t do. His revolutionary ethics set an example for those around him. Respect for people is very important. Unfortunately, we have not achieved everything we want, and not all his works have been studied in depth.
“But his enemies could not crush him or make him disappear. He was such a complete person that anyone who learns about him is drawn to him. My father was a boundary breaker.
“Che is in faraway places and different cultures. We need to study him and master his ideas more. He is still a symbol of an extraordinary life. Our goal is to use his life as a tool to learn and create a more just world for everyone.”
It is well known that as a young medical student, Che took a motorcycle trip across the South American continent with his friend Alberto Granado. In 1952, he travelled with his companion for eight months, visiting various countries, including Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela, covering more than eight thousand kilometres.
The visit gave him a deeper understanding of the true nature of the social inequalities, exploitation, and poverty afflicting the region. It was in Guatemala that Che began to solidify his Marxist ideology in 1954, which coincided with the overthrow of the progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz in a CIA-backed coup in an operation code-named Operation PBSuccess. Witnessing the violence of imperialist intervention firsthand, Che determined that the only way to bring about real change in Latin America was through armed revolution with socialist consciousness.
Accordingly, Che Guevara played a crucial role in various revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. I asked Aleida, “What do you see as the most notable impact of his efforts in these regions? Are there specific countries or events that exemplify his contribution to the fight for social justice?”
In response, she said, “Che broke boundaries. He wasn’t just in Latin America; he still lives on in Africa, Asia, and Old Europe. Che was guided by ideals. Consider, for example, what is happening in Palestine today.
“My father went to Palestine in 1959. When he arrived, the Palestinian leaders explained the situation. Many people mistakenly think that this is a new problem. In fact, the Palestinians had already been expelled from their lands. They were forced to migrate from their territories. Most of the Gaza Strip was full of people.
“Dad didn’t want to see this suffering. He wanted to know where people were preparing to resist that abuse and where they were building weapons to support it. Today, the Palestinian people are fighting for the right to have their own land and culture. Che is relevant today. That’s right. Don’t you think so too?”
Decades after Che’s death, we are experiencing a different world. The world is more fragmented than ever before. The Western military alliance, led by NATO, is expanding, via proxies, into Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At a time when nearly nine hundred American military bases are located around the world, many aspiring nations are rallying for an alternative.
I next asked her: Given the complex political context in Latin America today, what are the biggest challenges to the ideals your father presented? How should current and future generations work to achieve his vision of equality and social justice?
In response, she said, “As you mentioned, the political landscape in Latin America is complex, but it’s even more intricate in Asia, the Middle East, and especially Africa. Che’s influence is not limited to one region; as I said before, he transcended borders.
“New generations should study him more. They should learn how to use his ideas as tools for life. Reading Che fosters unity among social movements seeking a better world. We must never lose respect for the people, for freedom and sovereignty. We must always affirm the necessity of these inviolable principles.”
“Che taught us something else. Anyone who calls themselves a leftist, anyone who aspires to a better world, must have a strong revolutionary ethos. It’s not just about talking or urging people to act; it’s about walking in Che’s footsteps and leading by example. This is especially important today, when many claim that these long-held principles will be lost on future generations.
“But the real question is: how do we educate them (this younger generation)? How do we instill in them respect for other people and for nature, for cooperation and love? They can help create the changes needed for a fairer world for everyone. How actively involved they will be depending on how we educate the new generations.”
Another important point to note is that Che often emphasized the significance of women in revolutionary movements. I finally asked Aleida: As the daughter of an influential figure like Che, how do you see the role of women in your father’s work and in the broader context of the Latin American Revolution? What lessons can be learned from their contributions and struggles?
In response, she said, “Before Che, the apostle of the Cuban Revolution, José Martí, highlighted the role of women in revolutions. He stated that even women who send their children to the battlefields to fight for freedom and sovereignty should be involved in a true revolution.
“Martí said something very beautiful: ‘Motherly love for the motherland is not the absurd love of the earth or the grass under our feet. It is the invincible hatred of those who oppress us and the eternal resentment towards those who attack us.’ My father studied Martí, respected him, admired him, and followed his ideas.
“There are very beautiful things that are repeated among great men. Respect for women, the right of all women to be considered equal to our comrades, is very important. He always said that a true revolutionary defends their ideas to the last consequence. But a woman defends her ideals. Not only does she defend a province or a nation; in her configuration, there should be 50% women. They understood that the participation of women in the whole process is essential; the tenderness that comes from a woman is important to fill it with energy. Therefore, I think we have to work a lot more on that side.”
Finally, she said, “There are many parts of the world that are still referred to as so-called first-world societies where women are not respected or allowed to have equal rights to education. The social acceptance we need is not yet established. We need to work on this. A culture that treats women as inferior even to cattle has existed for centuries. It makes it difficult to change the social injustice that we all aspire to. Che’s real struggle was based on this need.”
The underlying issue in Anuradhapura is a struggle between a few families who, for years, have waged a quiet cold war over control of the Udamaluwa. Similar situations exist in Mihintale as well. These places, among others, are treated as treasures of Buddhism but, in practice, function as tightly controlled economic centres. The same pattern repeats in Kandy around the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and in Kataragama at the shrine of God Kataragama. Variations of it exist across religious spaces of Islam, Catholicism, and Hinduism too, where institutional authority becomes indistinguishable from localised power networks. What is presented as sacred order often operates as inherited control.
It is indeed devastating to see situations where parents have no alternative but to expose their children to predators in robes for survival. This has nothing to do with religion itself, but with human pathology in the context of survival. These are the questions that demand answers, not superficial responses that treat symptoms while ignoring the conditions that produce them. What is more shocking and disturbing is not the tragedy itself, but the reactions to it. Social media has overwhelmed us, not towards understanding, but towards a fragmented cognitive state with no exit route.
A friend of mine in Nairobi used to keep all his electronic devices at home and go into the forest once a month, spending days there before returning. He called it “detoxification”, but in reality it was an escape from a system that no longer allows uninterrupted thought. Daily life is now saturated with unnecessary content, and attention itself has become a commodity extracted, processed, and sold back to us. This is where we have become unable to understand what really drives certain tragedies we endlessly react to, while remaining blind to the systems that quietly manufacture them.
Multi-dimensional poverty
Poverty is structural, poverty is political, and poverty is functional; it is a tool and a manoeuvring force of power. The question is no longer whether poverty exists, but who benefits from its persistence, and who is forced to survive within it. From education to medicine to basic food supply chains, countries like Sri Lanka are not simply mismanaged; they are structurally captured by a small number of actors who remain stable regardless of who is formally in power. Small-scale enterprises and NGO circuits that circulate foreign funding to “solve structural issues” often operate as hollow administrative performances, producing reports rather than transformation.
Poverty is not merely the absence of money. It is the absence of bandwidth, absence of protection, absence of time, and absence of cognitive stability. As Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir state, “Scarcity captures the mind. Just as the starving subjects had food on their mind, when we experience scarcity of any kind, we become absorbed by it.” This is a description of how human cognition is structurally reorganized under constraint. Scarcity does not sit outside the person; it occupies them.
They also state, “Scarcity leads us to borrow and pushes us deeper into scarcity.” That is the mechanism that must be confronted without euphemism. Poverty is not only deprivation; it is a self-reinforcing trap in which survival decisions generate the next layer of crisis. Once a society crosses a certain threshold of scarcity, it stops producing long-term reasoning as a default condition. It produces short-term survival logic, often mistaken by outsiders for irrationality.
It is precisely here that public discourse becomes intellectually dishonest. Everything is translated into moral language because moral language is easier than structural analysis. But morality without structure becomes theatre. It produces outrage, not understanding, and repetition, not reform.
It is indeed brutal when an individual wearing religious insignia—whether robe, symbol, or institutional identity—is accused of acts that fundamentally contradict the moral authority attached to that position. It is equally brutal when institutions that depend entirely on trust begin to function as shields rather than safeguards. But the deeper question is not shock. The deeper question is what kind of social condition produces families who see placement within such institutions not only as devotion, but as a survival strategy under constraint.
Ethical decision-making
That is where the argument collapses into its most uncomfortable form. Poverty does not produce ethical decision-making environments. It produces constrained optimization under pressure. When food insecurity, debt, and social instability converge, institutional spaces that appear stable become transactional destinations for survival rather than moral choices. To interpret this as purely cultural failure is to deliberately ignore the structural compression of options.
Mullainathan and Shafir describe this clearly: “Instead of saying that scarcity ‘focuses,’ we could just as easily say that scarcity causes us to tunnel: to focus single-mindedly on managing the scarcity at hand.” That tunnelling effect is not abstract. It is visible wherever long-term planning collapses under immediate pressure. Systems then misread this as irresponsibility, when it is in fact cognitive overload produced by structure.
What is rarely acknowledged is how deeply this extends into governance itself. Institutions increasingly operate as if they are managing rational, unconstrained individuals. In reality, they are interacting with populations whose cognitive bandwidth is already structurally taxed. The result is policy failure interpreted as public non-compliance, enforcement interpreted as moral correction, and reform interpreted as communication failure rather than design failure.
Social media has intensified this distortion. It does not merely spread information; it destroys sequencing. Structural problems require temporal depth. Social media removes that depth and replaces it with instantaneous judgment. Every event becomes a surface object, detached from causality. The outcome is a society permanently reacting and never diagnosing.
Poverty, in this environment, becomes invisible in its real form. It is not seen as a continuous structural condition but as episodic failure. A scandal appears, is consumed, and disappears. Another replaces it. Nothing accumulates into understanding because attention itself is exhausted before synthesis can occur.
Modern Condition
The modern condition reflects a reversal of earlier social organization, where human relationships are embedded within abstract systems of finance, law, and administration that often fail to recognize the lived constraints of those they govern. In this disembedded state, institutions increasingly misinterpret human behaviour as their capacity for structural understanding weakens. At the same time, attempts to resolve systemic failures through expanding administrative complexity produce diminishing returns: more regulation, oversight, and reporting generate less coherence. Over time, institutions shift from functional effectiveness to symbolic performance, maintaining the appearance of control rather than achieving it.
This is why public outrage repeatedly fails to translate into structural change. Outrage is not a tool of reconstruction. It is a signal of system fatigue. It circulates, intensifies, and dissipates without altering the underlying architecture. Meanwhile, the conditions that produce repetition remain intact.
The most persistent illusion is that these are separate problems: poverty here, institutional misuse there, media distortion elsewhere. They are not separate. They are expressions of a single condition in which scarcity, complexity, symbolic authority, and fragmented enforcement interact without coordination. The system does not fail in one place; it fails in the gaps between these layers.
Symbolic systems
What makes this condition more severe is that symbolic systems continue to operate at full strength even when structural systems degrade. Religious identity remains powerful. Political rhetoric remains strong. Cultural symbolism remains intact. But enforcement capacity, institutional coherence, and social trust degrade beneath them. That gap is where instability grows. Until that gap is addressed at the level of structure rather than sentiment, repetition remains inevitable. New scandals will emerge, new interpretations will circulate, and new cycles of outrage will follow. Nothing resolves because nothing is being reconstructed beneath the surface of reaction.
This is no longer repairable through adjustment or rhetoric. It is a form of decay that persists until it exhausts itself, because the mechanisms meant to correct it are now part of the same failure. It continues until rupture, not reform. At that point, instability ceases to be episodic and becomes structural. Pressure will accumulate into breakdown, and what follows will not be managed transition but forced reversal. The responsibility lies with those who govern these institutions to prevent that trajectory, not through language, but through change. The drama is ending; farce is over; what we are witnessing is tragedy unfolding with unprecedented consequences.
by Nilantha Ilangamuwa
As Sri Lanka celebrates the birth, Enlightenment and the Parinibbana of the Buddha, almost a month after the rest of the Buddhist-world did so, there is widespread discussion about threats to Buddha Sasana provoked by some recent incidents. Regarding the views expressed about postponing Vesak celebrations in my article ‘May Day and postponement Vesak 2026’ (The Island, 25 May), my very good friend Dr Upali Abeysiri has sent me the following comments: “The Mahanayakas have a good reason to postpone Vesak. The dawning of the full moon has to be on the same constellation (nekatha) as when the Buddha was born and attained enlightenment. Although Adhi Poya is reckoned as the second full moon arising in the same calendar month, this is supposed to be an odd exception.” Though it would have been ideal if a consensus could have been reached prior to the split of celebrations, perhaps, it does not matter very much as celebrations occur on a symbolic rather than an actual date, there being no historical or archaeological evidence confirming exact dates.
Whilst there are no direct threats to Buddha Dhamma, as the expanding horizons of science continue to confirm the fundamentals of Buddha Dhamma, there is no doubt whatsoever that there are threats to Buddha Sasana. However, these threats become important as the Buddha Sasana performs the pivotal role in protecting and propagating the Dhamma and, hence, become an indirect threat to Dhamma itself. Therefore, it should be the concern of all Buddhists and it is in this spirit I am making some comments which some may interpret as disrespectful to the Maha Sangha. I can reassure that my intentions are entirely directed towards the preservation of the Buddha Dhamma and Sasana. Though the Buddha proclaimed that the Sasana consists of Bhikkhu, Bhikkhuni, Upasaka and Upasika, for all practical purposes Sasana had been led by Bhikkhus, often at the expense of others.
There is hardly any doubt that there are external forces at play in Sri Lanka and even some Buddhists seem to object to Sri Lanka being called a Buddhist country. Interestingly, no one seems to object to countries like the UK and the USA being called Christian counties. I
There is no registration or baptism in Buddhism and there are no rewards for Buddhists for conversions. As I pointed out in a previous article, ‘How does the Buddha differ’ (The Island, 1 May) unlike most other religions, Buddhism is not a ‘high-demand’ religion, nor ‘law-based’ religion and is not exclusivist. Perhaps, it is this liberalism, pacifism and gentleness, which are the real strengths, that are being exploited as weaknesses by others.
There will always be external threats and the Buddha too faced many during his lifetime. Before addressing those, is it not more important to address the threats within? One of the most important problems seems to be the breakdown of discipline. Bhikkhus are bound by Vinaya rules, laid down by the Buddha and some recent incidents highlight total deviations. Though there were many previous incidents like unsubstantiated claims of Arahanthood, Bhikkhus attacking each other on YouTube and Bhikkhus conducting YouTube channels, not for the propagation of the Dhamma but for the accumulation of rupees, attention was focused after the detection of 22 young monks carrying narcotic drugs.
Though many commentators were quick to condemn the Sangha on this account, we need to go deeper. Narcotic menace has become a huge problem in Sri Lanka and it looks as if the drug lords would resort to anything to achieve their objectives. Though it looks as if some gullible young monks had been duped by drug lords, we need to question why it was possible. Is it due to the lack of supervision of these novices by their seniors that allowed them to accept a request in a WhatsApp group? Should there be checks and balances on foreign travel by Bhikkhus?
What shocked Buddhists was what followed next; the arrest of the Nayaka of Atamasthana for allegedly having sex with a minor. Anuradhapura was our first capital and Sri Maha Bodhi is the longest surviving authenticated tree in the world. Ruwanweliseya and Jetawanaramaya were among the ten tallest man-made structures in the ancient world, Jetawanaramaya still holding the Guiness record for the largest stupa in the world. Cyberspace is full of theories. Whilst some have condemned the Nayaka Thero even before the conclusion of inquiries whilst others claim that this was a coup by another Nayaka Thera in an attempt of succession.
I was intrigued, reading in a Sri Lankan newspaper about the 80th birthday celebrations of a Nayaka priest, who was convicted in London in 2012 of historical child sex abuse and sentenced to seven years in prison. I remember the case very well as he was the head of the Vihara, we had our first contact on relocating to the UK. I also remember his devotees, who believed that he was wrongly accused, collecting over £50,000 for an appeal. In spite of being represented by one of the top Barristers in the UK, the conviction was upheld but the jail-term was reduced by a year. His name is still on the sex-offenders register in the UK and he is permanently prevented from association with children. One can argue that as he has served the sentence and not reoffended, this should not be held against him but what baffled me is that he is still being referred to as the Chief Sangha Nayaka. Should a person on the sex-offenders register be the Chief Sangha Nayaka?
It is high time we put our own house in order before fighting the external enemies. It is reported that the former president CBK has written to the Mahanayakas requesting urgent reform and we should be obliged to her for taking the lead.
There are many aspects that need urgent reform, the first being removal of caste barriers practiced by some Nikayas, which is the greatest insult to the Buddha who promoted equality. The second is the active encouragement of Bhikkhuni Sasana which has not happened in spite of the landmark ruling by the supreme court. The third is the establishment of proper disciplinary processes under a single Adhikarana Sangha Nayaka with powers and support than allowing the government to take over the control of even non-criminal Vinaya matters.
There are many other issues that need settlement like the controversy of the land of Buddha’s birth which seems to linger on. An expert committee should hear all evidence and settle this issue once and for all.
As I have pointed out on many occasions in these columns, it is high time a Dhamma Sangayana was held, as the last one was 70 years ago. Ideally, it should be different with active participation of lay experts as well. It is the duty of us Buddhists to ensure that the words of wisdom of the Buddha continue to enlighten generations to come.
By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana
The University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, was in our time, a less-crowded residential university, where everybody knew everybody else or at least knew of everybody else.
I knew of Emeritus Professor Vijaya Kumar of the Department of Chemistry at Peradeniya, or Kumar, as we referred to him fondly, before I got to know him. His dear wife Savitri, also a member of the academic staff of the Department of Chemistry, was nicknamed Kumee, by some of their students (of which vintage is unknown to me) and the duo were thereafter referred to affectionately as Kumar and Kumee.
The Faculty of Science became a regular haunt of mine as I would go there in the company of my batchmates to attend lectures on Basic Mathematics given by Professor Maheswaran, as it was a requirement for our General Arts Qualifying Examinations. I would also go there to listen to some excellent talks under a programme that was held in the auditorium of the Science Faculty referred to as “Popular Science Gossip”. The “gossip” at these talks were not confined solely to science but were broad enough to include Literature, History and other branches of knowledge as well. I would often spot Kumar in the audience at these talks or bump into him in the corridors of the Science Faculty. But I got to know him personally only after he became the Warden of Arunachalam, my hall of residence, during my undergraduate years initially, and later, as a member of the academic staff of the Department of English.
Our Science Faculty undergraduate contemporaries, especially those at Arunachalam Hall and its immediate neighbour, Jayatilaka Hall, both within a stone’s throw away from the Science Faculty, shared many an anecdote about Kumar and their other lecturers. One of these anecdotes, had to do with a spectacular (motor car) driving feat of Kumar’s. Legend has it that he drove from his university bungalow-home to the Faculty of Science deploying only the reverse gear of his car! Kumar, on hearing of this, had told certain of his student friends, including some who became his colleagues later on, that this story is one of the biggest yarns he had heard in his life!
Some of his one-time younger colleagues, now in retirement like Kumar, tell me that Kumar exuded warmth and friendliness in all of his professional and administrative interactions with others in the wider university community. But there was no warmth or mercy for those who indulged in the unsavoury pastime of student ‘ragging’. He was a very strong proponent of the need to ensure to all freshers an environment free of the menace of ‘ragging’. He remained ever-vigilant during the ‘ragging’ season. There are stories of his chasing ‘raggers’ and catching them. Professor Maheswaran, who later became an intimate friend and remains so after more than half a century, was another who was fiercely opposed to ‘ragging’. I was a personal witness to Mahes chasing a ‘ragger’ up and down the stairs of the main library to nab him. Yet another of his students has noted that Kumar’s office room in the Faculty was a total mess at all times. It had tables, piled so high with books and documents that one could not easily spot Kumar at his desk. He, however, had the knack of pulling out from amidst the clutter, any document that he needed at any given time. If anybody were to volunteer to help tidy his desk, Kumar would respond firmly with “Don’t you touch my desk!”.
Kumar, like several of his colleagues in the other faculties as well, had his own eccentricities. According to information received from reliable sources, Kumar who taught Organic Chemistry used to carry his lecture notes in his shirt or trouser pocket with ‘the entire lecture condensed in point form on a half-sheet or half of a half-sheet of paper’. The way he rummaged through his sling bag filled to the brim with stuff to find an item that he needed was another ritual that amused onlookers.
Kumar, interestingly enough is a Royal-cum-Thomian product, in that he had his primary education at S.Thomas’ Prep School, Kollupitiya and the entirety of his secondary education at Royal College, which he entered in 1953. In a note written by Kumar himself, he notes that despite having had excellent teachers at Royal, his was not a notable school career. He goes on to say that “the only achievement I could boast of was my being the joint-winner of the school General Knowledge Prize”. However, he had been active in a Scout Group outside of school (1st Port of Colombo, Sea Scouts) where he “was Queen’s Scout, Patrol leader, and later, Assistant Scout Master”.
Kumar entered the Faculty of Science of the University of Ceylon in 1961 and secured from it an honours degree in Chemistry in 1965. He joined the academic staff of the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science, University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1965 and left the following year for Magdalen College at Oxford University, from which institution he obtained his doctorate in Chemistry. His entire teaching career was at Peradeniya, where in the period 2003-2006 he served as the Dean of the Faculty of Science, a position that his late father-in-law had held a few decades earlier.
Among the other highlights of his career are: Chairman of the Industrial Technology Institute (formerly the Ceylon Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, CISIR); Member (representing Sri Lanka) of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Science and Technology from 1999 to 2007 and its President from 2001-2003; President of the Sri Lanka Estate Workers Union from 1989 onwards; Member of the Politburo of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party from 1988 to 2014 and currently, a member of the Executive Committee of the National People’s Power (NPP).
Vijaya and Savitri Kumar are parents of daughters Shamala and Ramya, who are following in the footsteps of their parents: with the former teaching in the Department of Agricultural Economics in the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya and the latter, in the Department of Community Medicine at the University of Jaffna.
(I wish to thank the following who assisted me in the writing of this brief essay: Mr. Bandula Warnakulasuriya, Emeritus Professor Ratnayake Bandara, Professor Mahinda Wickramaratne, Professor Swarna Wimalasiri and Mr. Manik de Silva).
*Editor’s note: Prof. Vijaya Kumar, a member of the NPP’s National Executive Committee and is still active in politics turns 84 today. This article by Tissa Jayatilaka, former Executive Director of the United States – Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission for Mutual Academic Exchange, was written for an upcoming collection of essays on Kumar’s life by his friends.
(Colombo Telegraph)
By Tissa Jayatilaka
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