Midweek Review

Inessa Armand and Lenin:

Published

2 years ago

2024/07/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Inessa and Lenin

“Revolution, Romance, Femininity and Music”: A response

By Sena Thoradeniya

Having read about Inessa Armand in the sixties, who was laid to rest in Kremlin Wall Necropolis in the Red Square Moscow in 1920, the first woman revolutionary to receive this honour, I never thought that she would reappear in a Sri Lankan newspaper after more than a century. Thanks to Satyajith Andradi (SA) for introducing her to Sri Lankan readers in The Island of 10 July 2024 (“Inessa Armand – revolution, romance, femininity and music”). I am beyond grateful to him for not using vulgar phrases used by some Western writers to tarnish Inessa’s and Lenin’s images depicting Inessa as Lenin’s “mistress” or “secret lover” and Lenin’s wife as a “deadweight”.

I do not pretend that I know something about music or of great musicians or that I am a film buff. This brief account on Lenin and Inessa is aimed at just to share my readings about these two great revolutionaries and nothing more.

Inessa Fyodorovna Armand (1874-1920) joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1904; she was a professional revolutionary, a prominent and an active member of the international working class and communist movements. She did party work in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich, Geneva, Berne and many other European cities. During the first world war she played an active part under Lenin’s guidance in the organisation of the international women’s and youth conferences. She was entrusted by Lenin with the task of spreading Bolshevik ideas among the French socialists, young people and trade unionists. She played an important role in the Great October Revolution. After the October Revolution she functioned as a member of the Moscow Gubernia (Governorate) Committee of the Communist Party and the Moscow Gubernia Executive Committee and the Chairman of the Moscow Gubernia Economic Council. From 1918 she oversaw the Women’s Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Why is SA writing about Inessa and Lenin now? In Sri Lanka the Communists of yesteryear, never discussed revolutionary work of Inessa. Even the “History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)” (1951), mentions Lenin’s arrival from exile in only two sentences. Do we have any historical moments to commemorate now? Yes. When Lenin was in exile in Zurich, from 1914 Germany was butchering Russian soldiers in their thousands on the eastern front. It was during 1918-1920, foreign military intervention, blockade of the infant Soviet Country and the bourgeois -landlord- White Guard counter revolution took place. The Soviet Republic defeated the combined forces of British- French – Polish- Japanese interventionists and bourgeois -landlord- White Guard counter revolution.

SA quotes what Maxim Gorky had recollected about Lenin’s comments on ‘Appassionata’, “at Yekaterina Peshkova in Moscow one evening, listening to Isaiah Dobrovein playing Beethoven’s sonatas” (Collected Works of Maxim Gorky, Volume 27). Yekaterina Peshkova was Gorky’s first wife; Isaiah Dobrovein was a Russian pianist, conductor and composer. Catherine Merridale also in her book, “Lenin on the Train” (First US edition 2017) quotes Gorky, but the translation differs.

SA asks: how Lenin “acquired such a refined appreciation of classical music”? Dmitry Ilych Ulyanov, Lenin’s brother and one of the veterans of the Bolshevik Party gives some clues: “Vladimir Ilych learned to play piano when he was still a boy. Mother used to say that he had a fine ear and an aptitude for music.” According to Dmitry, Vladimir Ilych gave up music when he entered the Gymnasium not because it interfered with his studies; in those days piano playing was considered rather an unsuitable occupation for boys. But Dmitry adds that all his life Vladimir Ilych loved music and always appreciated its finer points. Dmitry recollects his visit to the opera with Vladimir Ilych when they were living in Kazan in 1888. Vladimir had gone to the opera even when he had been under police surveillance!

Dmitry adds that their mother was very fond of the piano. She played and sang many of the old airs and love songs and had a liking for selections from the opera “Askold’s Grave” and sang some parts of it (opera by Alexey Verstovsky). He recalls Volodya (Vladimir) often humming melodies from the opera and singing with Olga (Lenin’s sister, best and closest companion in his childhood and youth, who died when she was only eighteen years) as his accompanist. Dmitry says that Volodya knew of Heine’s lyrics and Faust. Nadezhda Krupskaya also recalls that when they were exiled in Siberia, they had a copy of Faust and a volume of German poet Heine’s poems, both in German.

When their family was staying in Samara region in the Summer of 1889, Olga had been playing on the piano and finished with the Marseillaise; just then Vladimir Ilych came into the room quite unexpectedly and asked Olga and Dmitry to sing The Internationale; it was the first time that Dmitry heard The Internationale; hardly anyone in Russia knew it then. Vladimir Ilych sat down at the piano with Olga and they played the new tune and then sang it together in French. (From “Reminiscences of Lenin by His Relatives”, 1956)

During their second emigration to Paris, Vladimir Ilych found pleasure in frequenting cafes and suburban theatres in Paris to listen to revolutionary chansonniers (poets, song writers, singers) of the working class, says Krupskaya. They had the services of a French charwoman (a cleaner) a couple of hours a day. Once Ilych heard her singing a song about Alsace. He asked her to sing it over again and memorided the words he often sang: “You have seized Alsace and Lorraine, but in spite of that we shall remain French; you have managed to Germanise our fields, but never will you have our hearts”.

I do not intend to go into details of what authors and their works Lenin liked most and his comments on those works. Lenin had written many articles on art and literature. Nadezhda Krupskaya in her recollections (“Reminiscences of Lenin by His Relatives”, (1956) and “Recollections of Lenin” (1931)), Maxim Gorky (“Collected Works”), Clara Zetkin, one of the founders of the German Communist Party and outstanding figure in German and International working-class movement, ( “My Recollections of Lenin” (1956)), Anatoly Lunacharsky, prominent revolutionary and People’s Commissar of Education and Chairman of the Academic Council of the USSR (1932) and many others had shed much light on this aspect.

But how “he cultivated a profound love for the music of Beethoven”? In Lenin’s many writings on art and literature we don’t come across any reference either to Beethoven or music, although Engels only in one instance refers to Beethoven in his “Notes on Germany”: “Economic position of Germany during the Continental Blockade – The period of greatest humiliation from abroad coincides with a period of great brilliance in literature and philosophy while music reaches its culmination in Beethoven”.

Now some thoughts about the letters written by Lenin to Inessa Armand. The letters that Lenin had written appear in his Collected Works, Volumes 34, 36, 37, 44 and 45 respectively; Volume 37 carries letters Lenin had written to his relatives, his mother (Maria Alexandrovna), wife Krupskaya, brother Dmitry (Mitya), sisters Maria (Manyasha) and Anna (Anyuta) and brother-in-law (Mark Yelizarov) respectively. His letters to Inessa Armand appear in Collected Works Volume 35, February 1912- December 1922, Letters (First Printing 1966) and Collected Works Volume 43, December 1893- October 1917, Letters (First Printing 1969) respectively. It should not be construed that all these two volumes contain letters written by Lenin only to Inessa Armand. They contain hundreds of letters written by Lenin to prominent people of the day including Maxim Gorky and Lunacharsky, Marxist theorists, party leaders, leaders of the international workingmen’s and Communist movement, revolutionaries, many institutions and bodies. All in all, Volume 35 contains 321 letters and Volume 43 includes 587 letters respectively. Volume 35 carries 23 letters Lenin had written to Inessa, and Volume 43 contains 69 letters written to her if my calculations do not deceive me! Letters that appear in Volume 43 are very short compared to letters included in Volume 35 and some are postcards. (I recall how I carried home 45 volumes of Lenin, weighing more than 50 kilos with great difficulty, from the People’s Publishing House, then at Kumaran Ratnam Mawatha, Slave House).

In the letters Lenin had written to Inessa he addressed her as “Dear Friend”, sometimes writing greetings in English and many expressions and some phrases in French or English. These letters were sent to her from Cracow, Paris, Brussels, Poronin, Berne, Sorenberg (Switzerland), Flums and Zurich.

But in the 92 letters Lenin wrote to Inessa there is no single reference to music, let alone Beethoven. On literature there is only one reference, 35/67 (June 5, 1914) that is, about the new novel she had sent to him written by Vladimir Kirilllovich Vinnichenko , a Ukrainian writer, a bourgeois nationalist who later became a traitor : “There’s balderdash and stupidity!” “This pretentious crass idiot Vinnichenko, in self-administration has ……compiled a collection that is nothing but horrors – a kind of two-penny dreadful. Brrr…. Muck, nonsense, pity I spent so much time reading it.”

I have not seen the film mentioned by SA. But I have read Catherine Merridale’s “Lenin on the Train”, which describes Lenin, who was exiled in Zurich arriving at Petrograd’s Finland Station, with 12 others including Inessa in a sealed railway carriage in a week-long trans-European railway journey (from Zurich ( Switzerland), via Germany, Sweden (crossing to Sweden by ferry) and Finland; three whole days while crossing Germany they could not buy a meal. I think the film director has taken a few creative liberties, adding a bit of movie fantasy to make two Bolsheviks humming the tune from the Appassionata!

SA gives four letter numbers and the dates these letters were written, as they appear in the Collected Works, (43/337 April 11, 1914, sent from Cracow; 43/ 539 January 13, 1917 sent from Zurich; 43/ 541 January 15, 1917 sent from Zurich; 35/84 sent from Berne on 17 January 1915) keeping the readers in dark and suspense. But each of these letters too in my assessment are political in nature.

Now our problem is how to publish our analysis of these 92 letters in a newspaper article. All the letters written by Lenin are totally political in their content, not excluding letters written to Inessa. There are few references which can be described as (i) personal (in 14 letters: that her children are coming to spend the summer with them; advising her to visit new and old friends; asking her to go to the South for sunshine; to go on skiing on the mountains as it is very good for health; “Learn the trick; It’s good in the mountains in winter! It’s delightful and smells of Russia”; (nothing strange in this as Lenin had said the same thing to Olga in a letter send to her); Nadya’s illness and her recovery; Nadya intends to write to her); (ii) intimacy and friendliness (in 4 letters: asking her to make a trip somewhere to have a change; not to take his occasional advice in a “bad sense”); and (iii) preparing to go back to Russia (in 9 letters). But all these matters appear intertwined with the main political discourse or as postscripts.

In these letters Lenin describes what took place at conferences and meetings, about publications, translations, weaknesses and anti-party activities of some leaders; praising her for her excellent command of French, her translations and the work she had carried out at meetings. He regrets what she had written about “free love” in a pamphlet (fortunately not published) and her interpretation of it. He rejects what she had listed as not “freedom of love” and asks her if she refutes these, she must show that these interpretations are wrong, indicate which are wrong, replace them by others, if incomplete add those which are missing and whether they are not divided into proletarian and bourgeois demands.

Majority of his letters were intended to correct her misconceptions about slogans such as “The Working Men have no country”, “defence of the fatherland”; an ideological battle goes on to clear her wrong interpretations of Engels, her “political mistakes” and “theoretical oddities”. “In my opinion you are falling into abstraction and unhistoricalness”. “To identify, even compare the international situations of 1891 and 1914 is the height of unhistoricalness”. Indicating her political mistakes, he criticizes her for not assessing what is going on politically. “Everything depends on the system of political relations before the war and during the war”.

I conclude this essay quoting a part of a letter written by Lenin on 1 April 1914 (35/62): he begs her pardon for a comment he had made in a previous letter: with this we come to know that Lenin had used the words “Holy Virgin”. “Please don’t be angry, it was because I’m fond of you, because we are friends, but I can’t help being angry when I see “something that recalls the Holy Virgin”. We don’t know whether it was a “slip of the pen” or he was referring to the virtues of Holy Mary.

Krupskaya mentions a visit Lenin and she paid after Inessa’s death, to see their “young friend Varya Armand (Inessa’s daughter), who lived in a commune for art school students”. Later she (Varvara Alexandrovna Armand), studied at the Higher Art Technical Studios.

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Midweek Review

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

Published

1 day ago

2026/09/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

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

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

By Shamindra Ferdinando

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multiple reasons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Australian and US interventions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chemmani mass graves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Midweek Review

A street where Sri Lankan stories found their readers

Published

1 day ago

2026/09/9

Sahan Weerasooriya

Margaret Richardson and Asanka de Mel / Ashok Ferrey

By Ifham Nizam

Pictures by Nishan S Priyantha and Kamal Bogoda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stories from a Sri Lanka we know

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

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

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

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

This is one reason she admires Ferrey’s work.

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

Amendra Haputhanthri (extreme left) with winners

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

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

Literature, in that sense, becomes more than entertainment.

It becomes memory.

The stories behind the poems

Vivimarie Vanderpoorten offered a very different literary experience.

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

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

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

For Haputhanthri, hearing those stories transformed the poems.

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

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

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

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

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

Cricket is more than a score

Andrew Fidel Fernando brought yet another dimension to the event.

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

And Sri Lanka has a particularly richstory to tell.

Andrew Fidel Fernando / Dr. Vivimarie Vanderpoorten

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

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

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

Because literature can sometimes reveal what statistics cannot.

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

From manuscript to book

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

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

Her experience demonstrated that literary success rarely happens overnight.

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

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

Haputhanthri knows that process well.

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

And translations create another layer of difficulty.

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

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

A speech from the future

Carmel Miranda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stories that preserve a country

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem is not the e-book

Ramya Jirasinghe (third from left)

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

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

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

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

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

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

But her answer is not to blame young people.

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

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

‘Readers Are Not Born, They Are Created’

That belief is now developing into another initiative.

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

The target will be parents as much as children.

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

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

For Haputhanthri, the issue is deeply personal.

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

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

Beyond one literary weekend

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

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

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

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

But the larger ambition goes beyond sales.

It is about discovery.

A reader discovering a Sri Lankan writer.

A child discovering poetry.

An aspiring author discovering that rejection is not the end.

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

And a country discovering itself in its own books.

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

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

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

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