Features
Mrs. B becomes PM and I the Secretary to the world’s first woman prime minster
Anura bothered about his mother seeing his school report before he did
(Excerpted from Rendering Unto Caesar, by Bradman Weerakoon, Secretary to the Prime Minister)
In 1960, as she rode to power, after a grueling campaign, as the world’s first-ever woman prime minister, Sirima Bandaranaike was making the global headlines and taking Ceylon too into the limelight, which was to last for decades. The world wondered as to how this phenomenon, of a woman being chosen to be prime minister, had occurred in Ceylon. Was it some peculiar provision of dynastic succession by which the wife succeeded to a vacancy caused by the death of a husband Could such a thing occur only in an Asian country? Was it, as uncharitable political opponents would say, a consequence of the enormous wave of sympathy that followed close on the tragic death of a popular leader? Was the phenomenon connected mystically with the primacy of motherhood’ (matar) so central a part of the culture of the Indian subcontinent?
There appeared to be some validity in each of these propositions. It took six years more before Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman prime minister. Then followed Golda Meir of Israel and thereafter several others. The breach had been opened and we had been the first to do it. I was going to have the privilege of being the secretary of the first woman prime minister of the world.
The election of a woman head of government was so unusual, that the newspapers were not sure what to call her. “There will be need for a new word. Presumably, we shall have to call her a Stateswoman,” London’s Evening News wrote stuffily on July 21, 1960. “This is the suffragette’s dream come true,” said another.
She was born Sirimavo Ratwatte on 17 April 1916, in Balangoda at the family home and married Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, then minister of local government and health in the State Council, in 1940. He was seventeen years older than her when they married. She claimed no particular political philosophy herself. Her purpose in coming into politics, as she often said, was to complete the visionary work which her husband had begun.
During the March 1960 election called by W Dahanayake, the SLFP was led by C P de Silva and she did not contest. In support of the party she said, “I am not seeking power but I have come forward to help the SLFP candidates so that the party can continue the policy of my late husband.”
The results of the March 1960 general elections were inconclusive. Under C P de Silva’s leadership the SLFP did tolerably well, winning 44 seats as against the UNP’s 50. What was however lacking in the SLFP campaign effort was the charismatic leadership and negotiating skills, which had brought about the coalition of anti-UNP forces, the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna or MEP under S W R D Bandaranaike.
Dudley Senanayake’s government of that time (March to July 1960) was the shortest in the history of Ceylon and he was forced to call another general election in July of the same year.
As the parties geared up for the polls, Sirimavo was prevailed upon to accept the presidentship of the party on 24 May 24, 1960. It was proclaimed on that occasion that in the event of the SLFP winning, Mrs Bandaranaike would be the prime minister.
For Sirimavo, the eight months that elapsed between the death of her husband and her assumption of the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party was a period of intense introspection. Where did her principal obligations lie? With her young family of two daughters, Sunethra and Chandrika and son Anura, now bereft of their father’s guidance? Or with his political party, which was now deprived of his leadership?
During the period of mourning she had publicly expressed her distaste for politics. She had seen her husband betrayed and killed. She was once reported to have said that she “would not take the prime ministership even if it was handed to me on a platter!”
But once she realized that without her, the SLFP would never form a stable government, her fighting qualities and determination took over. With the help of her cousin Felix R Dias Bandaranaike, a No-contest Pact with the LSSP and the CP was entered into in May 1960. This was “to permit the widest mobilization of forces to defeat the UNP” and it ensured for Sirimavo an epic victory. She emerged as the first woman prime minister in the world.
The primary motivation that drove her to accept what was, personally for her, an unattractive job, was her conviction that no other person as leader could fulfill the yet unachieved goals set by her late husband. This was manifested in her first message to the nation:
By their verdict the people have clearly affirmed their faith in the democratic socialist policies initiated by my late husband. It was far from my mind to achieve any personal glory for myself when I assumed the leadership of the party at the request of its leaders. I knew that if I did not take this step the forces of reaction would once again begin to oppress the masses for whose salvation my husband sacrificed his very life.
The speech set some important trends in political thinking. Foremost among them was the idea that the ‘forces of reaction’ had done Mr Bandaranaike to death and that Mr Bandaranaike had `sacrificed his life for the masses’. It was a powerful line, which persisted for a long time.
But there were many, including some of her close relatives, who doubted whether the untried widow of a great leader could so easily step into his shoes. How could an eminently respectable Sinhala Buddhist woman, whose life had centered around family and home, handle the manifold challenges of an emerging nation state? P E P Deraniyagala, a cousin of the late S W R D and best-man at the wedding in 1940, reflected this sentiment pithily when he said, “What does she know of politics? In Solla’s (Solomon’s) time Sirima presided over nothing fiercer than the kitchen fire. She’ll end by spoiling her personal reputation and ruining the family name.”‘ He, and others like him, were soon to find themselves in serious error.
The woman who was to be the world’s first prime minister was made of sterner stuff than her detractors envisaged. As she articulated on her role, she was to say:
I feel most strongly that home is a woman’s foremost place of work and influence, and looking after her children and husband are duties of the highest importance. But women also have their vital role in civic life, they owe a duty to their country, a duty which cannot and must not be shirked, and at least some of their time should be devoted to social welfare work.
Yet critics were still to refer to her lack of any outstanding attainments as she entered the highest office. She brought with her no university degree, parliamentary experience or administrative knowledge. But what she had were formidable enough – personal magnetism to draw the masses; ability to command the loyalty and respect of her ministerial colleagues; and the ability to convince the public that she was a woman of good moral character who would be honest in her public dealings.
Her background supported these basic claims for leadership. Sirimavo Bandaranaike hailed from an upper-class Kandyan family with a long feudal background. She had a grooming from childhood for working with people, for people, and social service came naturally to her. It was almost a case of noblesse oblige as in the training of the European nobility in feudal times. She was also the eldest in a family of five boys and two girls and had from early childhood assumed a position of leadership in the family.
Soon after leaving St Bridget’s Convent, a leading Catholic school for girls in Colombo, (although Sirimavo always was a devout Buddhist) she became an active member of the Lanka Mahila Samiti, perhaps the oldest and largest women’s social service association in the country. The Lanka Mahila Samiti was formed in 1931 – the year Sri Lankan women received the right to vote – through the initiative of Dr Mary Rutnam, a Canadian who was inspired by the women’s institutes of Canada. Sirimavo always acknowledged her debt to the Mahila Samiti for giving her the confidence to speak in public and move easily and knowledgeably rural folk.
Sirimavo settled easily into her work schedule as prime minister. She decided to shift into Temple Trees, leaving 65, Rosmead Place its painful memories to be looked after by a caretaker.
The picture (overleaf) is of her first day in office with me by her side. I was thirty years old. The office is the same as that used by the former prime minister – Ranil Wickremesinghe.
With three lively children in the house Temple Trees became, once again after a long period of hibernation, a place not only official work, files, quick movement and hustle and bustle but a place with the added delight of a background of children’s games, laughter, chatter and music. She rarely used her official room in the Fort Office in Senate Square where the prime minister’s main secretariat was located, being quite happy to operate from the guesthouse section of Temple Trees.
This part of the building constructed to accommodate state visitors, housed some modest office space and it was here that the prime minister, the private secretary and myself spent most of our official time. Dr Seevali Ratwatte, the prime minister’s younger brother came in as private secretary initially and he was succeeded in a few months by elder brother Mackie who himself was a medical practitioner.
Mr. Bandaranaike’s personal assistants Amerasinghe, and the ever-smiling Piyadasa were always on hand to help meet constituents from Attanagalla, Mr Bandaranaike’s electorate, and sundry droppers- in at Temple Trees. It was Amerasinghe who was there by Mr Bandaranaike’s side when he lay injured on the floor, and who had telephoned me to announce that, “Lokka has been shot.”
The main part of the prime minister’s office continued in the Fort and most public mail was received there. Dharmasiri Pieries, a young civil service cadet of great promise whom I had chosen, held the position of assistant secretary. He had a table on a side of my room and ably held the ‘fort’, while I spent most of my official time at Temple Trees. The mass of correspondence, which came in daily and did not need to be personally seen by the prime minister, was dealt with expertly and expeditiously by about 15 experienced Subject clerks who knew by long experience exactly what to do to keep business moving.
They were supervised by Francis Samarasinghe MBE, the office assistant, a man who had been inducted by D S Senanayake’s secretary, the meticulous and highly efficient N W Atukorale. He and C. Nadarajah, the chief clerk, ran a tight ship and could be virtually given a free hand. The confidential stenographer to the prime minister, Linus Jayewardene, whom I used almost exclusively since the prime minister did not dictate letters personally, was a character, and a priceless asset. He was one of the quickest and most accurate of stenographers, except on ‘race days’ when he would need to take-off, to place a bet or two with the bookies who operated on the sly, taking ‘all ons’ on the foreign horse races. Linus could always be trusted to have in his drawer a copy of the latest ‘Racing Form’. He was also a keen and appreciative connoisseur of female beauty and would often, and quite unprompted, keep me updated on the current best female form in town.
As a concession to her unfamiliarity with the parry and thrust of parliamentary debate, Sirimavo choose to sit in the Senate during her first five years as prime minister. The Senate, (the Soulbury Constitution provided for a bicameral legislature), consisted of 30 members. Fifteen were appointed by the governor-general on the recommendation of the prime minister and 15 elected by the lower House. One-third of the membership retired every second year so the government and Parliament alike had the opportunity to infuse new blood.
Like the House of Lords in the British Parliament, it had little power of its own and its principal objective was to subject legislation to a second opinion, the approval of both Houses being necessary to secure the passage of legislation. However, at most times it acted only as a rubber stamp, hardly ever amending or refusing its consent to bills sent up from the other House.
Proceedings in the Senate, whose president then was Sir Cyril de Zoysa, a member of the UNP and one time bus-transport magnate, were sedate and unemotional, the members being generally non-politicians, although favoured by the party which put them forward.
The SLFP got one of its senators to resign and Mrs Bandaranaike was duly appointed in his place by the governor-general. Although some cabinet minsters had earlier come from the Senate – the minister of justice invariably being a senator, the prime minister, the chief executive and the head of the government, had never ever before been from the Senate. This led to quite a lot of critical comment especially from the opposition in the Lower House, the House of Representatives. “Who was to reply to questions of policy if the prime minister was in the Senate?” was the constant refrain.
The leader of the House, C P de Silva, would explain the circumstances which had led to Mrs Bandaranaike not contesting the elections, but this was usually countered by the argument that she could as well have asked one of her own members of parliament to resign from the House and come into Parliament by contesting that seat at a by-election. I recall a minister, at an especially heated debate during which the issue was brought up, who was greeted with howls of protest by the LSSP, when he intemperately suggested that the House, considering the way some members behaved, was no place for a lady.
The fact that the prime minister – the fount of power and the harbinger of change – was not present in the House certainly affected the style and content of the administration. The Temple Trees office, where the prime minister held court each day, assumed an importance of its own. Persons who were close to the prime minister – either through being Mr Bandaranaike’s loyalists, or newer ones like Felix and J P Obeyesekera, became the intermediaries who carried the news of parliamentary proceedings and gossip to the prime minister. Inevitably Sirimavo lost that close touch with her parliamentary colleagues which she could have had if she had been a regular member of parliament. As a result, dissension and the formation of cliques could not be effectively countered in time, and various power groups and ‘young turks’ began to manifest themselves shortly thereafter.
The loneliness that the top position generates and which Sirimavo was soon to experience, was moderated to some extent by Felix Bandaranaike who at the age of 29 years and a newcomer to politics and Parliament, held the powerful post of minister of finance and parliamentary secretary to the minister of defence and external affairs. Both Felix and his wife Lakshmi, who was his private secretary, were relatives as well as good friends, and were so close that they were usually on a first-name basis with ‘Sirima’ as they called the prime minister, except in public and official occasions. They were both enormously loyal to Sirimavo, committed to the party and its causes, hard-working and brilliant strategists. They naturally aroused considerable jealousy, especially from the older party stalwarts, and even from close family members, and continued to face, throughout their association with Sirimavo a largely concealed, but nevertheless acute, hostility from many sides.
C P de Silva led the party in the House while Felix Dias represented Sirimavo in the many spirited battles in Parliament. This gave Sirimavo the space to deal, unhindered by the heat of parliamentary debate, with the-many domestic and foreign challenges then emerging. But it had its downside. It eventually led to the creation of wide spaces between her and the rank and file of the party membership and this unfortunate alienation encouraged the formation of cliques and dissenting groups.
For the first time since independence, the prime minister was to be from the Senate. Her seat in the front row of the House of Representatives remained vacant throughout the period of that Parliament. The vacant seat was symbolic of the fact that the prime minister was in the ‘other place’, but that her virtual presence was in the Lower House. In fact what happened was that Felix took on the role of answering questions addressed to her in his capacity as parliamentary secretary to the ministry of defence and external affairs.
It further added to my duties. When the Senate sat, I sat in the Gallery, there being no Officials Box, assisting as necessary with notes to the prime minister from there. When the House of Representatives sat and important Bills were taken up, or at the adjournment debate at the end of the day, I would sit in the Officials Box in the House and monitor what was happening. It added to my work, and my moving around, but it was one way Sirimavo’s great interest in what was going on in Parliament could be assuaged.
The economy and the budget, at the beginning of the sixties, were the sites of the early problems Sirimavo had to face. The worsening of the terms of trade made rationing and import substitution inevitable. There was a shortage of foreign exchange and I recall that travelers abroad were restricted at one point, to a sum of three Sterling pounds and fifty pence as their travel allowance. Visits abroad for education and medical treatment were strictly limited. This raised great problems for Sirimavo when it became time for Sunethra – her elder daughter – to go to Oxford.
The father had always wanted the children to have their final education abroad. So Sunethra, who had been a bright student at St Bridget’s Convent and easily passed the qualifying tests, gained admission to Somerville College. Foreign exchange was a problem, and Sirimavo was not going to bend the rules for her children. Arrangements were made for a relative – Michael Dias, brother of Felix Bandaranaike, who was a lecturer at Cambridge – to help out. The documentation was all in order, the Exchange Control authorities were happy and the entire procedure was very open and straightforward.
However, the press was not going to leave this alone and the usual critical comments about the children of privileged families getting special facilities while the others had to go the `aswa vidyalaya”, etc – a portion of the university being then conducted at the former Grandstand of the race course on Reid Avenue – continued for some time. I remember Sunethra, who hated publicity, being much put out by all the fuss and bother.
Sirimavo always took a great interest in the children’s schooling. Anura who was then 12 or 13 years old and attending Royal College was a constant concern, as he still had not settled down to the grind of study and homework. He would often be playing cricket in the large back lawn or declaiming, very much in the manner of a speaker on a political platform, to his admiring team-mates. When the holidays commenced, after the term tests were over, time of extreme anxiety for Anura. I would see him hovering around the office area in anticipation of the arrival of his school report. He wanted to have a look before the document was seen by the prime minister. I had quite a problem deciding whether I should show it to him first or put it up to the mother.
‘The treason of the intellectuals’ in the age of populism – Part I
Sri Lankans recently celebrated the fourth anniversary of the Aragalaya, which, some believe, ushered in an era of Left populism in Sri Lanka. Left politics in Sri Lanka has been ravaged by a crisis, since the late 1970s. It was basically one of an inability to regain the mass basis the Left lost in the 1977 elections. The Left was pushed out of the coalition government, led by Sirimavo, by the right-wing forces, within it, in the context of the global oil crisis that led to the adoption of austerity measures by the government.
This crisis of the Left exploded with the mass uprising ,known as the Aragalaya, which began with the hashtag campaign ‘Gota Go Home’. The nature of its development has come under scrutiny by critics who allege that hidden international hands orchestrated the movement. Nevertheless, the Aragalaya—which developed into an authentic citizen action—ultimately ended in a counter-revolution. The current JVP/NPP government came to power by riding the wave of public awakening that accompanied the Aragalaya.
Is the JVP/NPP government Leftist?
Even though the Western international media, as part of a strategy to manipulate the JVP/NPP administration from time to time, calls it a left government, it works very closely with the right-wing local capitalist class and international financial agencies.
Subaltern or elite?
While there was some initial attempt to identify the JVP/NPP government’s class basis as ‘subaltern,’ in the face of criticism, this formulation was changed to ‘non-elite’. It is correct that, generally, members of the new regime do not belong to the strata of the political elite of the traditional aristocracy and bourgeoisie. However, it can be argued that those who are holding the leadership of the NPP government are those with the aspiration of becoming the new elite. They are the emerging political elite, representing both the rural and urban petty-bourgeois strata.
The leadership consists of those who have risen to the top in professional fields and the bureaucracy, led by those in the fields of academia, medicine, engineering and technology, law, management, business, accountancy, and administration, alongside those who have traditionally been political activists and trade union leaders. Political power has been captured by these petty-bourgeois class elements that have embraced a technocratic ideology. Rallied around them is the capitalist leadership that directs chambers of commerce and is tied in with international capital.
In essence, the current regime represents an alliance formed between the petty-bourgeois and capitalist groups and international finance capital—an alliance that, by now, has replaced the popular bloc formed with ‘janathawa’ (the people) during the election campaign, leading to the formation of the government.
The new elite represents the heirs of the nationalist-Left tendency of the generation of the ‘56 daruwo,’ represented by the JVP, a social force that Bandaranaike released in 1956. The mainstream of the political change of ’56 came to be represented by Bandaranaike’s own party, the SLFP, whose promise of building a common man’s era fizzled out with the regime, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa, coming to an end in 2015. At long last, true representatives of the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie have assumed political power after a long-drawn-out struggle, however, shedding their Left credentials in the process. This is the generation that Gunadasa Amarasekara, the doyen of jathika chintanaya, controversially hoped would take responsibility for the future of the country. While they have assumed political power, their formulation of, what they call, punarudaya (the Renaissance) seems to be at odds with Amarasekara’s wish to recover the ‘Sinhala Buddhist civilisational consciousness’—a point which requires a separate discussion, at another time.
Some of the leftists, who joined the NPP to form the government, seek to justify their choice by claiming that the new regime stands for the two-stage revolution ‘a la Lenin’—that is, first, the bourgeois-democratic stage and then the proletarian-socialist stage; Sri Lanka will achieve industrialisation in the first stage, under punarudaya, or the Renaissance. What is not made clear is how Sri Lanka could industrialise while being under the grip of international finance agencies whose actions, economists argue, from the very beginning of their involvement in the Sri Lankan economy, have preempted even the remotest possibility of the country becoming an industrialised one. With its claim to bringing about economic stability and growth, the government has moved away from serving the genuine interests of the people, and the country, in the fields of economy, polity, and culture, as its critics point out, as briefly outlined in the next section of this article.
It is claimed that the theory of left populism was formulated in opposition to right-wing populism, which furthered the neoliberal agenda. Going by what is outlined below, can the JVP/NPP government be identified as a left-populist one?
Not economic democracy, but autocracy?
Left political parties, groups, and individuals in Sri Lanka widely hold that the crisis of Left politics has been intensified with the current government assuming power. According to their criticisms, the JVP/NPP government is not a Left government.
The current government entered into an agreement on debt restructuring with the IMF based on the conditions imposed by them, despite the expectations of the masses that rallied around the JVP/NPP election campaign and the promises made in its own election manifesto to renegotiate it. Accordingly, placing the larger burden of the haircut of the debt restructuring on the EPF of the working people has been carried out by the JVP/NPP government without any changes to the original plan.
It is apparent that the current government’s economic programme, from its inception, has been directed by the leadership of the representatives of the capitalist class, led by the chambers of commerce. The government has been mainly formulating and implementing government policy, based on the debt provided and the conditions imposed by the IMF and its affiliated institutions, the World Bank and the ADB, rather than on the felt needs of the Sri Lankan people.
An unbearable tax burden is imposed on the people. The government boasts that it has filled the Treasury with trillions of rupees, including the wealth it has exploited, via those taxes. Not only the poor but also the middle classes are oppressed by the unbearable burden of an ever-rising cost of living.
Poverty and malnutrition, which are major determinants of living standards, remain at high levels under the current government. According to official reports, 25 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, while 80 percent of them live in rural areas. The poverty of the Tamil community, living in plantations, is even higher. Neoliberal economists themselves say that if calculated according to the real cost of living, the population living below the poverty line would be one-third of the total population. Women and children—and among them, girls—suffer the most from all this.
Sri Lanka’s micro-finance and credit crisis has trapped hundreds of thousands of people, mainly rural women, in a deep debt trap through predatory high-interest loans, leading to over 200 reported suicides. Activists have already expressed fears that the Microfinance and Credit Regulatory Authority Act, recently passed by the government, is designed to blame victims and will contribute to the erosion of consumer protections in such a regulatory framework by placing the onus of protection on borrowers. They stress that the Act does not include sufficient provisions to protect micro-finance and credit consumers.
Critics point out that not only our economic sovereignty but also our political sovereignty and security have been compromised by the secret agreements signed by the current government with the global American empire (US-Sri Lanka Security Memorandum of Understanding/Government Partnership Program (2025)) and the regional Indian power (India-Sri Lanka Security Partnership Agreement (2025)).
This government is strengthening relations with Israel—a nation that has embarked on a policy of genocide against Palestinians—and is maintaining cooperation with Israeli intelligence agencies and the military.
The current government has declared the private sector and the market mechanism, not the state sector, as the engine of economic growth at a level surpassing previous governments.
The government has accepted the neoliberal vision of subjugating large areas of social life to the logic of commodification. By allowing the market to behave as it sees fit, people have been subjected to the ruthless control of the market, except in the case of a few essential goods.
Critics have accused the current government of subtly but carefully implementing the privatisation of state-sector institutions, a move that the previous government had withheld in the face of public opposition. Services, essential to the survival of ordinary people and the middle class, such as public healthcare and education, are increasingly being brought under the influence of the market. There is no clear attempt to free passenger transport from the clutches of a rapacious private sector. The energy sector—oil and electricity supply—continues to be driven towards privatisation through fragmentation.
It is instructive here to note what Bhaskar Sunkara, Editor of Jacobin—the popular Left magazine published in New York that strongly backed Zohran Mamdani’s bid for Mayor—has to say on social infrastructures:
“Health care, education, transportation, energy, and telecommunication are not consumer goods but social infrastructures on which participation in modern life depends.
Organizing them through profit-seeking intermediaries that ration by price rather than need introduces predictable distortions. The result is a system that undermines both equality and efficiency. Decades of comparative experience suggest that public provision in these sectors can deliver better outcomes at lower social cost, precisely because it aligns provision with social need rather than purchasing power.” (‘We Need a Socialism After Capitalism,’ Jacobin, April 2026)
Serious damage to the natural environment and biodiversity continues under the current government. Deforestation, fragmentation of wildlife habitats, and human-wildlife conflicts have intensified. The release of protected lands to local and foreign private investors for so-called development, ignoring environmental impact assessments (for example, the Mannar wind farm projects), and the failure to stop illegal land acquisition and sand mining, which have undermined biodiversity, especially in the dry zone, are continuing.
The introduction of a biometric national identity card, funded by an Indian grant, in conjunction with the massive digitalisation programme, launched under the private sector operation, poses a serious risk of being used to unnecessarily restrict individual freedoms and to be used by the Sri Lankan government and foreign states to suppress citizens when necessary. Overall, it is clear from global experience that digitalisation, in the name of national security, is building a surveillance state. (To be continued)
by Kumudu Kusum Kumara
For quite a few decades,we have nonchalantly operated under a comforting and standard assumption that our bodies are our ultimate legal deeds. The features of every human body are quite unique. We have been taught that while passwords can be guessed, documents can be forged, and keys can be stolen, the biological architectures of our physical selves remain fundamentally unassailable and distinctly foolproof. Your face, your fingerprints, the unique landscape of your eye, are nature’s barcodes, forged from an intricate mix of genetics and intrauterine chance, utterly distinct to each of us among billions of people. This absolute distinctiveness made “biometrics”; automated methods used to recognise, authenticate, or identify individuals based on their unique biological and behavioural characteristics, the golden child of universally accepted global security. Amongst many other things, they are even trusted to unlock smartphones, provide access to sensitive portals, secure multi-billion-dollar wire transfers, cross international borders, and even safeguard top-secret military complexes.
Yet for all that, a profound and deeply unsettling shift is occurring, even beneath our own feet. The rapid acceleration of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital cloning technologies has begun to split open this relationship between biological reality and identity confirmation. Today, sophisticated software can replicate human voices with terrifying accuracy using mere seconds of feed-in audio, synthesise flawlessly lifelike videos of public figures saying things they never ever verbalised, and generate artificial fingerprints or facial configurations designed specifically to trick electronic gatekeepers. The comforting illusion that our bodily metrics are fool-proof is perhaps dissolving to quite a significant extent, casting a real-time shadow across the infrastructure of modern trust, even in everyday life.
Beyond the Fingerprint: The Expanding Universe of Identity
To understand the intricacies and depth of the current risks, one must look beyond the traditional hallmarks of identity verification. Perhaps the average person is clearly and deeply familiar with standard facial recognition, thumbprints, and the striking, complex rings of retinal imagery. Indeed, human biology offers an incredibly vast and nuanced spectrum of unique identifiers. Science and industry have quietly harnessed a long list of alternative indices to verify the identities and details of exactly who we are.
Consider iris recognition, which maps the intricate, visible coloured ring surrounding the pupil of the eye, or palmprint authentication, which tracks the expansive system of major lines, wrinkles, and minute ridges across the entire hand. Beyond these lie vascular biometrics, often referred to as vein pattern recognition, which uses near-infrared light to capture the unique layout of blood vessels seen beneath the skin of a finger or palm, a map completely invisible to the naked eye.
Furthermore, behavioural traits have proven just as distinct as anatomical ones. Voice biometrics analyses the physical anatomy of the vocal tract, nasal cavities, and vocal cords to isolate distinct sound frequencies. Gait analysis evaluates the precise, rhythmic mechanics of how an individual walks, tracking joint angles and weight distribution. Even keystroke dynamics, the precise cadence and rhythm with which you type on a keyboard, and ear acoustic geometry, which measures the unique way sound waves echo back out of your specific ear canal, have been successfully deployed to establish undeniable proof of identity.
The Pro Side: Unmatched Convenience and Safety
The historical arguments in favour of biometric systems remain incredibly compelling, which explains their near-ubiquitous adoption. First and foremost is the argument of unmatched convenience. Biometrics elegantly solve the “human error” factor inherent in traditional security appliances. You cannot lose your iris on a crowded train; you cannot accidentally leave your unique vein patterns at home; and you cannot forget the complex “password” of your facial geometry. It is an identity architecture that is permanently attached to the user, eliminating the friction of remembering combinations of symbols or carrying physical keys.
From a general, social and systemic perspective, biometrics have provided an unprecedented layer of objective truth. In criminal justice, fingerprint and DNA databases have exonerated the wrongfully accused, reunited missing children with families, and brought dangerous fugitives to justice based on definitive physical evidence rather than fickle, unreliable human memory. At international borders, automated biometric gates process millions of travellers daily with high efficiency, flagging authentic security threats while speeding up travel for the public. In the financial sector, a glance at a smartphone or a press of a thumb could prevent billions of dollars from being fraudulently stolen in identity theft and sham transactions every year by ensuring the actual account owner is physically present.
The Dark Side: When Your Body Becomes a Vulnerability
Despite these immense benefits, the reliance on biological markers has always harboured a fundamental flaw: the absolute permanence of the data. If a hacker steals your credit card number or a critical password, you can easily log online, cancel the account, and generate a completely new string of random characters. The breach is a nuisance, but it is entirely correctable and is fixable. However, if a malicious actor steals the high-resolution digital file containing your retinal map, your facial architecture, or your voice print, you cannot change your body. You cannot reset your eyes; you cannot easily forge a new set of fingers. Once a biometric signature is compromised, it is compromised for the rest of your life.
This permanence creates a highly centralised vulnerability. Biometric authentication systems do not store your actual finger or face; they store a mathematical digital template derived from them. These templates are housed inside vast corporate and government databases, and even universal digital portals. As cyberattacks grow increasingly sophisticated, these databases represent high-value targets for digital thieves. The terrifying consequence is that a single security breach at a major technology company or a government agency could permanently expose the personal physical keys of millions of citizens simultaneously.
The AI Shadow: Faking even the Unforgeable
This brings us to a profound paradigm shift driven by modern artificial intelligence. The traditional and abiding defence of biometrics was that physical traits could not be replicated in real-time. A photograph of a face could not trick a system looking for depth, and a recorded voice lacked the dynamic shifts of live speech. However…, surprise, SURPRISE…, AI has completely shattered these firmly held conventions and inferences.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), a class of AI models in which two neural networks compete against each other, are now capable of analysing thousands of images or audio clips of an individual and creating a near-flawless synthetic clone. A clone refers to an exact copy, duplicate, or true genetic replica of another organism, cell, or object. The term applies across several fields and implies an absolutely identical real-life descriptor. Using these tools, fraudsters can create “deepfake” videos that mimic the precise micro-expressions, skin textures, and even the blink rates of a targeted executive, acclaimed scientist, an economist of global repute or even a political leader. In 2024, an employee at a multinational firm in Hong Kong was tricked into paying out 25 million dollars after attending a video conference call where every other participant was an AI-generated digital clone of his real-world colleagues.
Similarly, voice cloning has become a weaponised tool for financial scams. With less than ten seconds of audio scraped from a social media post, AI can synthesise a voice that is indistinguishable from a loved one or a bank official, perfectly matching the acoustic biometrics used by telephone banking systems. Even more alarming is the concept of “Master Prints”: the AI-generated, synthetic fingerprints that combine the most common ridge patterns found across the human population. Much like a master key that can open many different locks, these synthetic prints can trick biometric sensors up to 20% to 30% of the time, completely undermining the premise of absolute individuality.
Implications for the Future: Rebuilding Trust
The realisation that biometrics can be systematically manipulated has immense implications for the future of global society, law, and security. We are stepping into an era where we can no longer trust our eyes or ears to verify the identity of the person on the other side of a digital connection. This breakdown of trust threatens to disrupt not only financial institutions but also the very foundations of democratic systems, where synthetic video and audio can be deployed to frame individuals or fabricate digital evidence.
To survive this environment, the security industry must completely abandon the concept of the commonly used single-factor biometric authentication. The future will require a multi-layered approach. Biometrics will likely be coupled with behavioural signals that change dynamically over time, or physical tokens like cryptographic hardware keys. Furthermore, security developers are engaged in an intense arms race to create “deepfake detectors”; AI systems designed specifically to analyse incoming files for the microscopic digital artefacts left behind by generative software, verifying that a human face or voice is biologically real and is happening in real-time.
Legally and ethically, this shift demands robust new frameworks. Governments worldwide are beginning to recognise that our biological signatures require the same, if not greater, legal protections, as our financial assets. Laws must be strictly enforced to punish the unauthorised creation of digital clones and to compel corporations to encrypt biometric data using advanced, non-hackable methods.
A Balanced Path Forward
Ultimately, and even surprisingly, biometrics are neither a flawless saviour nor an inherent curse. They are powerful tools caught in the crossfire of an abiding technological evolution. They continue to offer unparalleled efficiency and security when implemented correctly. However, the dangerous myth of their absolute infallibility must be permanently laid to rest.
As artificial intelligence continues to blur the line between the real and the synthetic, our approach to identity must become as dynamic as the technology threatening it. We must stop viewing our physical bodies as unshakable passwords. True security in the modern age will not come from blindly trusting our biological uniqueness. It can only come from our collective vigilance, technological adaptation, and the implementation of robust, multi-layered digital defences that protect the sacred boundaries of who we really are.
by Dr B. J. C. Perera
MBBS(Cey), DCH(Cey), DCH(Eng), MD(Paediatrics), MRCP(UK), FRCP(Edin), FRCP(Lond), FRCPCH(UK), FSLCPaed, FCCP, Hony. FRCPCH(UK), Hony. FCGP(SL)
Specialist Consultant Paediatrician and Honorary Senior Fellow, Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
An independent free-lance correspondent.
A groundbreaking international study, spanning 17 years, has revealed an alarming rise in human-caused deaths of the endangered Sri Lankan leopard, with the majority of fatalities concentrated in the tea estate landscapes of the Central Highlands.
The peer-reviewed study, titled “Human-Caused Leopard Deaths in Sri Lanka Are Concentrated in Central Highlands’ Estate Mosaics: Evidence From 17 Years of Mortality Records,” was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Wiley’s Wildlife Letters.
The research team was led by conservation scientist Sanjaya Weerakkody and comprised a distinguished group of local and international researchers, including Vimukthi Gunasekara, Sethil Muhandiram, Try Surya Harapan, Kithmi R. Gunasekara, Bandini Jayasena, John B. Wilson, Prathiba M. Amugoda, Tharika de Silva, Chathuranga D. Hathurusinghe, Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, and Enoka P. Kudavidanage.
The scientists represented a broad collaboration of institutions, including the Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yunnan Provincial Tropical Rainforest and Asian Elephant Conservation Innovation Team in China, LeopardCon Sri Lanka, Oklahoma State University in the United States, the Department of Natural Resources of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, and the Tropical Ecosystems Research Network.
Speaking on the significance of the findings, researcher Sethil Muhandiram said the study provides the clearest picture yet of how human pressures are driving leopard mortality in Sri Lanka’s hill country landscapes.
“We found that plantation landscapes, especially tea estate mosaics in the Central Highlands, have become major hotspots for leopard deaths. Most concerning is the widespread use of wire snares, which continue to silently kill leopards and other wildlife,” Muhandiram said.
According to the findings, researchers analysed leopard mortality records from 2008 to 2024 and documented 164 human-caused deaths across the island, averaging nearly 10 deaths annually. More worryingly, the study found that leopard deaths have steadily increased over time, underscoring intensifying human-wildlife conflict in Sri Lanka.
The study identified wire snares as the leading cause of death, accounting for over 62 percent of cases where the cause was known. Many of these snares are believed to have been set for wild boar and other animals but ended up trapping leopards.
“Snaring is now one of the greatest threats facing the Sri Lankan leopard outside protected areas. Unless immediate action is taken to remove snares and strengthen enforcement, these deaths will continue to rise,” Muhandiram warned.
Plantation landscapes, especially tea estates in the Central Province, emerged as the most dangerous habitats for the country’s apex predator.
Researchers found that nearly 47 percent of all recorded leopard deaths occurred in the Central Highlands, while the Nuwara Eliya District alone accounted for 38.4 percent of fatalities, despite covering only a small portion of the leopard’s estimated range.
Researchers warned that the patchwork of tea estates, fragmented forests, villages, and agricultural lands has become a deadly landscape for leopards attempting to move between habitats.
The study also found that adult male leopards were disproportionately affected, a trend scientists caution could have serious implications for breeding populations and the long-term survival of the species.
Sri Lanka’s leopard, scientifically known as Panthera pardus kotiya, is an endemic subspecies found nowhere else in the world and is already listed as endangered.
Muhandiram stressed that conservation efforts must move beyond national parks and include estate landscapes where leopard-human interactions are increasing rapidly.
“Conservation cannot focus only on protected areas anymore. Leopards are surviving in human-dominated landscapes, and protecting them will require cooperation from estate communities, plantation companies, Wildlife authorities, and policymakers,” he said.
The study has further emphasised that leopard conservation in Sri Lanka can no longer focus solely on protected areas such as the Yala National Park, as significant leopard populations are increasingly surviving in estate and rural landscapes vulnerable to human pressures.
Researchers concluded that without immediate and coordinated action, Sri Lanka risks losing one of its most iconic and ecologically significant species to escalating human-induced threats.
By Ifham Nizam
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