Features
My beginnings at Pallansena and how my parents and the village influenced my life

The Merril. J Fernando autobiography
Excerpted from The Story of the Ceylon Teamaker
Ninety-three years ago – in 1930 – I was born to a middle class family in the village of Pallansena, as the youngest of the six children of Harry and Lucy Fernando. My sister, Agnes, was the eldest and then came brothers Lennie and Pius, followed by sisters Doreen and Rita. My family roots can be traced back to this village where, from the time of my great-grandparents, ours had been a leading family.
Pallansena is situated about 15 kilometres north of the Colombo International Airport. Many decades ago, long before the airport was even thought of, it was a small village of about 100 closely-knit families. As common to such villages then, most of the families were connected to each other, either through blood or marriage. Irrespective of such connections, all those who lived in the village comprised one large family, held together by religious and cultural commonalities, shared responsibilities, and concern for one another.
Pallansena is no longer a village though, having gradually been overwhelmed by the urbanization and commercialization that is changing the charming landscape of this country, all over. That once-serene rural community is now a crowded suburb of the more densely-populated Kochchikade. The land on either side of the road that I, as a child, used to walk along on my way to the Pallansena village school, was lined with coconut plantations. Today, only a few scattered patches of coconut remain.
Much of the old plantation land is now built over, with modern residences, shops, hotels, and guest houses. In the village of Pallansena itself, most of the graceful old houses with wide verandahs and central courtyards, set deep in large, tree-laden gardens, have disappeared. Instead, unlovely facades of brick, glass, and concrete with barred windows line the roads on both sides.
Many of the houses then, large and small, had intricate wooden trellis frontages, which gave privacy but did not hinder ventilation. These have now been replaced by featureless iron and masonry grills. The very few old houses that remain still evoke memories of a vanished appeal. However, unlike in my youth, they too are now surrounded by high parapet walls and, therefore, rarely seen.
The Maha Oya and the Hamilton Canal which flows into it, in my youth clearly visible through the trees, and the houses which lined the gravel road running past the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Church, have been obscured by row upon row of buildings. The once-pristine surface of the water and the clean, sandy banks, lined with rushes and other water plants, are today littered with imperishable plastic debris.
Instead of the weathered, light wooden canoes and rafts which used to be drawn up on the banks, far apart from each other, hundreds of garishly-coloured fibre-glass motor boats are anchored, shoulder to shoulder and bow to stern, at the edge of the water. The muted splash of wooden oars has been replaced by the clatter of high-powered outboard motors, rudely cleaving the surface. The broad-beamed padda boats with sloping cadjan canopies, steered by weather-beaten boatmen wielding long wooden poles, transporting both cargo and people, were another common feature along the canal in my early youth. They too disappeared many decades ago.
In my youth the community co-existed in gentle harmony with its surroundings. But, today, the unforgiving influence of commercial prosperity has been imposed on a once-tranquil society. Signs of affluence are visible and numerous, but they have come at a heavy price, which has been paid by a vulnerable environment.
Formative influences
Pallansena, like most villages on the western coast then, especially north of Colombo, was almost entirely Catholic, the result of the Portuguese influence, which first made its presence felt in Ceylon at the beginning of the 16th century. Religion was both a powerful unifying and guiding force and all families were raised on the strict spiritual principles of the faith. The Parish Priest was a man of great authority in the community, a sort of a benevolent dictator, a feature common to all such societies.
The village church used to be the centre of both religious and social activity. As a youth I was an altar boy in the church, then considered a proud distinction. Despite the many developments that have changed the face of Pallansena over the years, the church continues to be a powerful influence in the community. In a society which has evolved almost beyond recognition, that one feature has remained a constant in the nine decades since my birth.
My parents, especially my mother, raised me strictly according to sound, time-tested values, centred around the family and our faith. She was very religious and civic-minded and from my childhood, instilled in me the need to help our less-affluent neighbours. She visited other families regularly and, despite my vocal protests, quite often shared with the children of these families the prized goodies that I received, such as cakes, chocolates, and sweets.
In that era, in communities such as Pallansena, whilst there was no significant poverty, there were still a few underprivileged families. To my mother, helping such people was a serious moral obligation. She was a woman of great generosity and humility and was truly loved by the people of the village. She is still spoken of with much affection and gratitude by the older folk of the village, especially those who benefited from her compassion.
Neighbours reciprocated my mother’s many acts of kindness by frequently bringing her their home-grown fruits, vegetables, and traditional home-made sweets. As she sat in her verandah, always with rosary in hand, passing neighbours would stop and talk to her. They would also offer to buy her groceries and run other little errands for her. Sharing and caring were endearing features of our village, undoubtedly mirrored across many similar communities then, unlike in the highly-urbanized and commercialized age we live in now.
The principles that I still live by were articulated for me, very early, by role model example by my parents, especially my mother. They were conditioned largely by the teachings of my religion and the decent ethics of life, which are common to all great religions and principled societies. Since moving out of that somewhat-cloistered community and into the larger world of industry and international commerce eventually, I have been exposed constantly to different learnings and varied influences. However, the strength of that early indoctrination is such that I have remained true to those principles of conduct and interaction. On reflection, I feel comfortable with myself today because my basic values have not changed.
In the environment I was brought up, people took time and effort to care for each other. The concern that people of the village had for each other was clearly demonstrated, in times of both grief and joy. For example, when there was a funeral in the village, neighbours would send the mourning family meals for three days. Similarly, when there was a wedding, neighbours would send dinner to the wedding house on the pre-nuptial night. These traditions were of great practical benefit, intended to reduce pressure on the family concerned, enabling them to concentrate on the event.
For generations my ancestors had worshipped at the Pallansena, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Church. My maternal great-grandparents, Petrus Perera and Anna Marie Perera, passing on in 1881 and 1901 respectively, are interred within the southern wing of the church, their final resting places marked by two stone tablets set into the church floor. Despite the many feet of worshippers which have trod on them for over a century, the dedications etched into the slabs are still very clear. Apparently, this unusual distinction had been extended to these two ancestors of mine, on account of their generosity to the church.
The spacious grounds on which the church now stands had been gifted by these two, whilst they had also contributed generously towards the construction of the church itself. The incumbent priest’s residence, a beautiful, heavily-timbered, two-storeyed, Dutch-styled house, still elegant despite some indelicate, subsequently introduced modern flourishes, had also been built by them.
They had both been well-reputed Ayurveda physicians, especially known for the treatment of cataract and other eye diseases. My grandmother and grand-aunts continued this healing tradition. I recall that there would be many patients consulting them every day, with the numbers increasing on weekends.
They also made a very special herbal oil which, apparently, was guaranteed to keep hair black, well into old age.
My brothers and sisters used that oil and retained black heads of hair, well into their seventies. I used it in my teens. It had a very strong, highly-aromatic scent, but in my view, not unpleasant. However, since my schoolmates objected to the smell, I stopped using it very early. This wonder oil was distilled from a mixture of rare herbs and ghee, all the ingredients being boiled together in copper cauldrons, over wood fires, for three weeks.
Sadly, none of our younger family members learned the formula for this healing oil. I still have a thick head of hair, but it has been silver for a long time. Perhaps, instead of yielding to my schoolmates, I should have continued to use the oil!
The medicines for the treatment of eye diseases were distilled from a variety of herbs, which were crushed and mixed with other ingredients, including mothers’ breast milk. Often, in my youth, I was frequently given the embarrassing assignment of approaching breast feeding mothers in the village and asking for spoonsful of milk. It was always readily given, though.
My grandmother was a heavily-built lady who spent most of her time in a comfortable chair, with her walking stick beside her. As a playful little boy, I used to tease her by hiding it frequently and my aunts had to retrieve it repeatedly, scolding me all the time. In her annoyance at my harassment she used to threaten me. It was then fun for me, but I realized later how irritating I would have been to her.
My two aunts were very religious, always praying to God for the welfare of the family. I would ask them if they were praying for me, too. The answer was always a very firm NO, because I used to annoy my grandmother all the time. No one knew my grandmother’s exact age, but she lived a comfortable life for over 100 years.
My parents
I truly miss the village life of my early youth, the transparently genuine values of simple people — kindness, cordiality, love, and concern for one another and especially the needy were the virtues that held such societies together. Those values are unknown in big cities today. I miss the fresh air, the clean rivers and canals, sea bathing, and the furtive swimming outings with friends of my age in the Maha Oya, which flowed behind my home. My pet dog, Beauty, a Golden Retriever, would also jump into the water with us and stay at my side as long as I was in the water. Such faithfulness is still seen amongst animals but rarely with people.
My mother was very protective of me and terrified of my swimming. She did not allow me to swim either in the river or the sea. Invariably, even on our secret swimming escapades, she would appear on the bank within minutes of us entering the water and scold my friends for having persuaded me to get in, although it was actually on my invitation that we were in the water. My friends were always in awe of my mother. Despite her naturally kindly nature, when angry she could be formidable.
On weekends I used to get together with a few of the village boys and play cricket, football and ‘elle’ on the road. The latter game, a simplified version of American baseball, would attract others from the village and soon we would have as many as 20 people competing. It was great fun, with the winners eventually treating the losers with king coconut plucked from a nearby tree.
Those were wonderful times in a simple village society, where we all treated each other in a spirit of equal friendliness and sharing. Many of my friends were from poor homes in the village, but such differences did not matter. Very few of my village friends are alive today.
My mother was my role model in my early years and became a defining influence in my development as an adult as well. She always represented an uncompromising moral power. Her devotion to the family was the driving force and purpose of her life. As a typical old-fashioned housewife, she did most of the cooking, producing outstanding food of our preference.
She had a very efficient woman, Isabel, to assist her in both housework and in the kitchen, but she insisted on doing much of the cooking herself. To this day, I try to prevail on my cooks to use the ingredients she relied on. She roasted and prepared all the spices and other ingredients at home. The tempting flavours and the heady fragrance of spices, which Ceylon is famous for, were ever present in our home.
Isabel was a middle-aged lady who had been working in my parents’ home for many years and was very much part of the family. In ensuring that the children of the family, especially I, conducted ourselves well, she exerted almost as much authority as my mother did. In our household there was no visible master-servant distinction. That was another lesson I learnt at a very early age from my mother: irrespective of station in life, mutual respect was a condition to be observed in all exchanges, transactions, and relationships.
When she was about 80 years of age, my mother had a serious fall and fractured her hip. I was holidaying in Nuwara Eliya at that time and rushed back on hearing the news. She was admitted to hospital in severe pain and I contacted my friend, Dr. Rienzie Pieris, Senior Orthopaedic Surgeon, who operated on her immediately. Three weeks after the surgery she was released from hospital and with some difficulty I persuaded her to stay in my home in Colombo, for her convalescence before returning to the village.
My mother occupied the guest room in my house and was provided full-time professional nursing care, with my domestic staff also dancing attendance on her. I was delighted that she was now in my home. However, after a few days, my mother pleaded to be sent back to her Pallansena home. Despite the special attention and comforts I provided, she was unhappy away from her familiar environment and her friends. I understood her need and reluctantly took her back to the village, though she was deeply apologetic for disappointing me by her refusal to stay with me.
She refused to undergo physiotherapy after she returned to the village. No amount of persuasion regarding the importance of post surgical therapy could change her mind. As a result, despite the corrective surgery, she was unable to walk unaided and for the rest of her life was compelled to use a wheelchair. However, my widowed sister Doreen took great care of her.
I used to visit regularly, taking with me things which she enjoyed. Despite her condition, she continued to share these with others. Even the tea that I provided her from my company was parceled and shared with neighbours. Since she was now unable to do any housework, she used to spend most of her time in a special chair placed in the verandah, quite often with the holy rosary and reciting her prayers. Whenever I visited her, the first words to me would be, “Son, I am praying for you all the time; God will always bless you.”
In her last year, though she would greet me affectionately whenever I visited, my mother failed to recognize me, which distressed me deeply. She acknowledged only Doreen, her constant companion and carer. I realized then that her end was near and prayed to God for his blessings. On April 6, 1988, at the age of 98-years, 17 years after my father’s death, she passed into the arms of Jesus Christ. I had lost my great treasure.
During her funeral, which was held at the Pallansena church, there was a torrential downpour lasting about 15 minutes. It was so unexpected and so intense that it seemed to me to be symbolic of the occasion.
My love and admiration for her have been constant. She taught me a great lesson in life – to love my neighbour as myself and to share with those in need. She instilled in me, at a very early age, the concept that moral values cannot be compromised, irrespective of circumstances or the nature of temptation. Not until I started working and earning did I realize the value of her personal ethic, which was reflected in her everyday life. I absorbed from her the principle that a man had a responsibility to his community. And, later, as I shared with the less fortunate, my earnings increased, my business prospered, and God’s blessings flowed in abundance.
My father, Harry, was a simple, humble, and extremely hardworking man. He worked a long day, leaving home at early dawn and returning very late in the evening. His last business was the manufacture and supply of building materials, red bricks and tiles especially, for construction companies and other customers, mainly in Negombo, which was about 10 kilometres away.
The material he produced was collected and delivered by both lorries and bullock carts. Often there were delays in the settlement of his dues and collection would require many visits to customers. He would make all such journeys either on foot or by bullock cart.
He was a man of reasonable means. I realized that because people regularly borrowed money from him. Collection of such debts was often a problem, with debtors constantly trying to evade him. Those who were spotted by him on his collection trips would then feel the rough edge of his tongue. My father was a stern man who never forgot the due dates of settlement and insisted on the timely discharge of obligations and responsibilities. It occurred to me then itself that money-lending was not a pleasant business.
My father sent us all to good schools and, within his means, provided for us well. That was quite sufficient to give us decent starts in life and all his six children did well for themselves. If he were alive today, he would be a very proud and happy man. Whilst my siblings were generally obedient, I think I was the only trouble-maker, especially in my early years. Though my somewhat erratic educational progress would have disappointed him, he ungrudgingly paid all my school and boarding fees.
In his final years he lived at home with my mother and my widowed sister Doreen and I were able to care for them in every way. As he grew older and dependent on others for his daily needs, he became a little difficult and would complain about Doreen, who was under great stress but managing very well under the circumstances. I used to console Doreen with the assurance that since she was looking after our parents, when the time came I would look after her as well.
My father passed away on February 11, 1971 at the age of 84 years. He lived a good, responsible life. I thank God that I was able to show him my love and gratitude for all he did for the family. I deeply miss my parents and the others of my family who have passed on. I believe that our family will reunite at the second coming of Jesus Christ.
In December every year I visit my village for an almsgiving ceremony, in memory of my parents and family members who have passed away. I give away a couple of hundred packs of dry rations, each sufficient to last a family during Christmas and New Year. A few remaining friends and their siblings show up and say, “Sir, can you remember, my brother used to play cricket and ‘elle’ with you?” I do recall them and feel blessed that I am now in a position to help them in various ways. The Parish Priest at Pallansena has been very useful in identifying such people in need and I have been able to channel my assistance through him.
Features
Minds and Memories picturing 65 years of Sri Lankan Politics and Society

Last week I made mention of a gathering in Colombo to remember Kumar David, who passed away last October, as Comrade, Professor and Friend. The event was held on Saturday, April 5th, a day of double significance, first as the anniversary of the JVP insurrection on 5th April 1971, and now the occasion of the official welcome extended to visiting Indian Prime Narendra Modi by the still new JVP-NPP government. The venue was the Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue (EISD) on Havelock Road, which has long been a forum for dialogues and discussions of topics ranging from religious ecumenism, Liberation Theology and Marxist politics. Those who gathered to remember Kumar were also drawn from many overlapping social, academic, professional and political circles that intersected Kumar’s life and work at multiple points. Temporally and collectively, the gathering spanned over six decades in the evolution of post-independence Sri Lanka – its politics, society and the economy.
Several spoke and recalled memories, and their contributions covered from what many of us have experienced as Sri Lankans from the early 1960s to the first two and a half decades of the 21st century. The task of moderating the discussion fell to Prof. Vijaya Kumar, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Peradeniya, who was a longtime friend of Kumar David at the university and a political comrade in the LSSP – especially in the Party’s educational and publication activities.
Vijaya Kumar recalled Kumar David’s contributions not only to Marxist politics but also to the popularization of Science that became a feature in several of KD’s weekly contributions to the Sunday Island and the Colombo Telegraph. Marshal Fernando, former and longtime Director of the EISD welcomed the participants and spoke of Kumar David’s many interactions with the Institute and his unflinching offer of support and advice to its activities. EISD’s current Director, Fr. Jayanath Panditharatne and his staff were extremely helpful.
Rohini David, Kumar’s wife of over 50 years, flew in specially for the occasion from Los Angeles and spoke glowingly of Kumar’s personal life as a husband and a father, and of his generosity for causes that he was committed to, not only political, but also, and more importantly, educational. An interesting nugget revealed by Rohini is the little known fact that Kumar David was actually baptized twice – possibly as a Roman Catholic on his father’s side, and as an Anglican on his mother’s side. Yet he grew to see an altogether different light in all of his adult life. Kumar’s father was Magistrate BGS David, and his maternal grandfather was a District Judge, James Joseph.
Kumar had an early introduction to politics as a result of his exposure to some of the political preparations for the Great Hartal of 1953. Kumar was 12 years old then, and the conduit was his step-father, Lloyd de Silva an LSSPer who was close to the Party’s frontline leaders. From a very young age, Kumar became familiar with all the leaders and intellectuals of the LSSP. Lloyd was known for his sharp wit and cutting polemics. One of my favourite lines is his characterization of Bala Tampoe as a “Lone Ranger in the Mass Movement.” Lloyd’s polemics may have rubbed on Kumar’s impressionable mind, but the more enduring effect came from Lloyd’s good collection of Marxist books that Kumar self-admittedly devoured as much as he could as a teenager and an undergraduate.
Electric Power and Politics
Early accounts of Kumar’s public persona came from Chris Ratnayake, Prof. Sivasegaram and Dr. K. Vigneswaran, all Kumar’s contemporaries at the Engineering Faculty that was then located in Colombo. From their university days in the early 1960s, until now, they have witnessed, been a part of and made their own contributions to politics and society in Sri Lanka. Chris, a former CEB and World Bank Electrical Engineer, was part of the Trotskyite LSSP nucleus in the Engineering Faculty, along with Bernard Wijedoru, Kumar David, Sivaguru Ganesan, MWW Dharmawardana, Wickramabahu Karunaratne and Chris Rodrigo. Of that group only Chris and MWW are alive now.
Chris gave an accurate outline of their political involvement as students, Kumar’s academic brilliance and his later roles as a Lecturer and Director of the CEB under the United Front Government. Chris also described Kumar’s later academic interest and professional expertise in the unbundling of power systems and opening them to the market. Even though he was a Marxist, or may be because of it, Kumar had a good understanding of the operation of the market forces in the electricity sector.
Chris also dealt at length on Sri Lanka’s divergent economic trajectories before and after 1977, and the current aftermath of the recent economic crisis. As someone who has worked with the World Bank in 81 countries and has had the experience of IMF bailout programs, Chris had both warning and advice in light of Sri Lanka’s current situation. No country, he said, has embarked on an economic growth trajectory by following standard IMF prescriptions, and he pointed out that countries like the Asian Tigers have prospered not by following the IMF programs but by charting their own pathways.
Prof. S. Sivasegaram and Dr. K. Vigneswaran graduated in 1964, one year after Kumar David, with first classes in Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering, respectively. Sivasegaram joined the academia like Kumar David, while Vigneswaran joined the Irrigation Department but was later drawn into the vortex of Tamil politics where he has been a voice of reason and a source for constructive alternatives. As Engineering students, they were both Federal Party supporters and were not aligned with Kumar’s left politics.
It was later at London Imperial College, Sivasegaram said, he got interested in Marxism and he credited Kumar as one of the people who introduced him to Marxism and to anti-Vietnam protests. But Kumar could not persuade Sivasegaram to be a Trotskyite. Sivasegaram has been a Maoist in politics and apart from his Engineering, he is also an accomplished poet in Tamil. Vigneswaran recalled Kumar’s political involvement as a Marxist in support of the right of self-determination of the Tamils and his accessibility to Tamil groups who were looking for support from the political left.
K. Ramathas and Lal Chandranath were students of Kumar David at Peradeniya, and both went on to become established professionals in the IT sector. Ramathas passionately recalled Kumar’s effectiveness as a teacher and described his personal debt of gratitude for helping him to get a lasting understanding of the concept and application of power system stability. This understanding has helped him deal with other systems, said Ramathas, even as he bemoaned the lack of understanding of system stability among young Engineers and their failure to properly explain and address recurrent power failures in Sri Lanka.
Left Politics without Power
The transition from Engineering to politics in the discussion was seamlessly handled by veterans of left politics, viz., Siritunga Jayasuriya, Piyal Rajakaruna and Dishan Dharmasena, and by Prof. Nirmal Dewasiri of the History Department at the University of Colombo. Siritunga, Piyal and Dishan spoke to the personal, intellectual and organizational aspects of Kumar David in the development of left politics after Kumar David, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Bahu were no longer associated with the LSSP. Dewasiri reflected on the role of the intellectuals in left political parties and the lost to the left movement as a whole arising from the resignation or expulsion of intellectuals from left political organizations.
While Kumar David’s academic and professional pre-occupation was electric power, pursuing power for the sake of power was not the essence of his politics. That has been the case with Bahu and Sivasegaram as well. They naturally had a teaching or educational role in politics, but they shared another dimension that is universally common to Left politics. Leszek Kolakowski, the Polish Marxist who later became the most celebrated Marxist renegade, has opined that insofar as leftists are generally ahead of their times in advocating fundamental social change and promoting ideas that do not resonate with much of the population, they are unlikely to win power through electoral means.
Yet opposition politics predicated on exposing and decrying everything that is wrong with the system and projecting to change the system is fundamentally the most moral position that one can take in politics. So much so it is worth pursuing even without the prospect of power, as Hector Abhayavardhana wrote in his obituaries for LSSP leaders like NM Perera and Colvin R de Silva. By that token, the coalition politics of the 1960s could be seen as privileging a shared parliamentary path to power while dismissing as doctrinaire the insistence on a sole revolutionary path to power.
The two perspectives clashed head on and splintered the LSSP at its historic 1964 Conference. Kumar David and Lal Wijenayake were the youngest members at that conference, and the political genesis of Kumar David and others at the Engineering faculty that Chris Ratnayake outlined was essentially post-coalition politics. In later years, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Bahu and Kumar David set about creating a left-opposition (Vama) tendency within the LSSP.
This was considered a superior alternative to breaking away from the Party that had been the experience of 1964. Kumar David may have instinctively appreciated the primacy of the overall system stability even if individual components were getting to be unstable! But their internal efforts were stalled, and they were systematically expelled from the Party one by one. Kumar David recounted these developments in the obituary he wrote for Bahu.
As I wrote last week, after 1977 and with the presidential system in place, the hitherto left political parties and organizations generally allied themselves with one or the other of the three main political alliances led by the SLFP, the SLPP and even the UNP. A cluster of them gravitated to the NPP that has been set up by the JVP under the leadership of Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Kumar David supported the new JVP/NPP initiative and was optimistic about its prospects. He wrote positively about them in his weekly columns in the Sunday Island and the Colombo Telegraph.
The Social Circles of Politics
Sometime in late 2006, Rohan Edrisinha introduced Kumar and me to Rajpal Abeynayake, who was then the Editor of the Sunday Observer, for the purpose of writing weekly columns for the Paper. Bahu was already writing for the Sunday Observer and for almost an year, Bahu, Kumar and I were Sunday Island columnists, courtesy of Rajpal Abeynayake. In 2007, Prof. Vijaya Kumar introduced us to Manik de Silva, already the doyen of Sri Lanka’s English medium editors, and Kumar and I started writing for the Sunday Island edited by Manik. It has been non-stop weekly writing a full 18 years. For a number of years, we have also been publishing modified versions of our articles in the Colombo Telegraph, the online journal edited by the inimitable Uvindu Kurukulasuriya.
Writing mainstream rekindled old friendships and created new ones. It was gratifying to see many of them show up at the celebration of life for Kumar. That included Rajpal Abeynayake, Bunchy Rahuman, Gamini Kulatunga, Ranjith Galappatti, Tissa Jayatilaka, NG (Tanky) Wickremeratne, and Manik de Silva. Vijaya Chandrasoma, who unfortunately could not attend the meeting, was particularly supportive of the event along with Tanky and Ramathas. Tissa and Manik spoke at the event and shared their memories of Kumar.
Dr. Santhushya Fernando of the Colombo Medical Faculty provided organizational support and created two superb video montages of Kumar’s life in pictures to background theme songs by Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Manoj Rathnayake produced a Video Recording of the event.
In a quirky coincidence, five of those who attended the event, viz. Manik de Silva, Vijaya Kumar, Chris Ratnayake, S. Sivasegaram and K. Vigneswaran were all classmates at Royal College. On a personal note, I have been associated with every one of them in one way or another. Chris and I were also Engineers at the Hantana Housing Development in the early 1980s, for which the late Suren Wickremesinghe and his wife Tanya were the Architects. And Suren was in the same Royal College class as the other five mentioned here.
In the last article he wrote before his passing, Kumar David congratulated Anura Kumara Dissanayake for his magnificent political achievement and expressed cautious optimism for the prospects under an NPP government. Many in the new government followed Kumar David’s articles and opinions and were keen to participate in the celebration of life that was organized for him. That was not going to be possible anyway with the visit of Prime Minister Modi falling on the same day. Even so, Prof. Sunil Servi, Minister of Buddha Sasana, and Religious and Cultural Affairs, was graciously present at the event and expressed his appreciation of Kumar David’s contributions to Sri Lankan politics and society.
by Rajan Philips
Features
53 Years of HARTI- Looking Back and Looking Ahead

C. Narayanasuwami, the first Director of the then Agrarian Research and Training Institute (ARTI).
I am delighted to be associated with the fifty third anniversary celebrations of HARTI. I cherish pleasant memories of the relentless efforts made as the First Director to establish, incorporate, develop, direct, and manage a nascent institute in the 1970s amidst many challenges. The seven-year period as Director remains as the most formidable and rewarding period in my career as a development professional. I have been fortunate to have had a continuing relationship with HARTI over the last five decades. It is rarely that one who played a significant role in the establishment and growth of an institution gets an opportunity to maintain the links throughout his lifetime and provide messages on the completion of its fifth (I was still the director then), the 15th, 50th and 53rd anniversaries.
I had occasion also to acknowledge the contribution of the Institute on its 46th year when I released my book, ‘Managing Development: People, Policies and Institutions’ using HARTI auditorium and facilities, with the able support of the then director and staff who made the event memorable. The book contains a special chapter on HARTI.
On HARTI’s 15th anniversary I was called upon to offer some thoughts on the Institute’s future operations. The following were some of my observations then, “ARTI has graduated from its stage of infancy to adolescence….Looking back it gives me great satisfaction to observe the vast strides it has made in developing itself into a dynamic multidisciplinary research institution with a complement of qualified and trained staff. The significant progress achieved in new areas such as marketing and food policy, data processing, statistical consultancies, information dissemination and irrigation management, highlights the relevance and validity of the scope and objectives originally conceived and implemented”.
It may be prudent to review whether the recommendations contained in that message, specifically (a) the preparation of a catalogue of research findings accepted for implementation partially or fully during policy formulation, (b) the relevance and usefulness of information services and market research activities in enhancing farmer income, and (c) the extent to which the concept of interdisciplinary research- a judicious blend of socio-economic and technical research considered vital for problem-oriented studies- was applied to seek solutions to problems in the agricultural sector.
The thoughts expressed on the 15th anniversary also encompassed some significant management concerns, specifically, the need to study the institutional capabilities of implementing agencies, including the ‘human factor’ that influenced development, and a critical review of leadership patterns, management styles, motivational aspects, and behavioural and attitudinal factors that were considered vital to improve performance of agrarian enterprises.
A review of HARTI’s current operational processes confirm that farmer-based and policy-based studies are given greater attention, as for example, providing market information service for the benefit of producers, and undertaking credit, microfinance, and marketing studies to support policy changes.
The changes introduced over the years which modified the original discipline-based research units into more functional divisions such as agricultural policy and project evaluation division, environmental and water resources management division, and agricultural resource management division, clearly signified the growing importance attached to functional, action-oriented research in preference to the originally conceived narrowly focused discipline-based research activities.
HARTI has firmly established its place as a centre of excellence in socio-economic research and training with a mature staff base. It is pertinent at this juncture to determine whether the progress of HARTI’s operations was consistently and uniformly assessed as successful over the last five decades.
Anecdotal evidence and transient observations suggest that there were ups and downs in performance standards over the last couple of decades due to a variety of factors, not excluding political and administrative interventions, that downplayed the significance of socio-economic research. The success of HARTI’s operations, including the impact of policy-based studies, should be judged on the basis of improved legislation to establish a more structured socio-economic policy framework for agrarian development.
Looking Ahead
Fifty-three years in the life of an institution is substantial and significant enough to review, reflect and evaluate successes and shortcomings. Agrarian landscapes have changed over the last few decades and national and global trends in agriculture have seen radical transformation. Under these circumstances, such a review and reflection would provide the basis for improving organisational structures for agricultural institutions such as the Paddy Marketing Board, development of well-conceived food security plans, and above all, carefully orchestrated interventions to improve farmer income.
New opportunities have arisen consequent to the recent changes in the political horizon which further validates the role of HARTI. HARTI was born at a time when Land Reform and Agricultural Productivity were given pride of place in the development programs of the then government. The Paddy Lands Act provided for the emancipation of the farming community but recent events have proven that the implementation of the Paddy Lands Act has to be re-looked at in the context of agricultural marketing, agricultural productivity and income generation for the farming community.
Farmers have been at the mercy of millers and the price of paddy has been manipulated by an oligopoly of millers. This needs change and greater flexibility must be exercised to fix a guaranteed scale of prices that adjust to varying market situations, and provide adequate storage and milling facilities to ensure that there is no price manipulation. It is time that the Paddy Lands Act is amended to provide for greater flexibility in the provision of milling, storage and marketing services.
The need for restructuring small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) recently announced by the government warrants greater inputs from HARTI to study the structure, institutional impediments and managerial constraints that inflict heavy damages leading to losses in profitability and organisational efficiency of SMEs.
Similarly, HARTI should look at the operational efficiency of the cooperative societies and assess the inputs required to make them more viable agrarian institutions at the rural level. A compact research exercise could unearth inefficiencies that require remedial intervention.
With heightened priority accorded to poverty alleviation and rural development by the current government, HARTI should be in the forefront to initiate case studies on a country wide platform, perhaps selecting areas on a zonal basis, to determine applicable modes of intervention that would help alleviate poverty.
The objective should be to work with implementing line agencies to identify structural and institutional weaknesses that hamper implementation of poverty reduction and rural development policies and programs.
The role played in disseminating marketing information has had considerable success in keeping the farming community informed of pricing structures. This should be further expanded to identify simple agricultural marketing practices that contribute to better pricing and income distribution.
HARTI should consider setting up a small management unit to provide inputs for management of small-scale agrarian enterprises, including the setting up of monitoring and evaluation programs, to regularly monitor and evaluate implementation performance and provide advisory support.
Research and training must get high level endorsement
to ensure that agrarian policies and programs constitute integral components of the agricultural development framework. This would necessitate a role for HARTI in central planning bodies to propose, consider and align research priorities in line with critical agricultural needs.
There is a felt need to establish links with universities and co-opt university staff to play a role in HARTI research and training activities-this was done during the initial seven-year period. These linkages would help HARTI to undertake evaluative studies jointly to assess impacts of agrarian/agricultural projects and disseminate lessons learned for improving the planning and execution of future projects in the different sectors.
In the overall analysis, the usefulness of HARTI remains in articulating that research and analysis are crucial to the success of implementation of agrarian policies and programs.
In conclusion, let us congratulate the architects and the dynamic management teams and staff that supported the remarkable growth of HARTI which today looks forward to injecting greater dynamism to build a robust institution that would gear itself to meeting the challenges of a new era of diversified and self-reliant agrarian society. As the first director of the Institute, it is my wish that it should grow from strength to strength to maintain its objectivity and produce evidence-based studies that would help toward better policies and implementation structures for rural transformation.
Features
Keynote Speech at the Launch of The Ceylon Journal, by Rohan Pethiyagoda

“How Rubber Shaped our Political Philosophy”
The Ceylon Journal was launched last August. Its first issue is already out of print. Only a handful of the second issue covering new perspectives of history, art, law, politics, folklore, and many other facets of Sri Lanka is available. To reserve your very own copy priced Rs. 2000 call on 0725830728.
Congratulations, Avishka [Senewiratne]. I am so proud of what you have done. Especially, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see and hear all of us stand up and actually sing the National Anthem was such a pleasure. Too often on occasions like this, the anthem is played, and no one sings. And we sang so beautifully this evening that it brought tears to my eyes. It is not often we get to think patriotic thoughts in Sri Lanka nowadays: this evening was a refreshing exception.
I’m never very sure what to say on an occasion like this, in which we celebrate history, especially given that I am a scientist and not a historian. It poses something of a challenge for me. Although we are often told that we must study history because it repeats itself, I don’t believe it ever does. But history certainly informs us: articles such as those in The Ceylon Journal, of which I read an advance copy, help us understand the context of our past and how it explains our present.
I want to take an example and explain what I am on about. I’m going to talk about rubber. Yes rubber, as in ‘eraser’, and how it crafted our national political identity, helping, even now seven decades later, to make ‘capitalism’ a pejorative.
As I think you know already, rubber came into general use in the middle of the 19th century. Charles Macintosh invented the raincoat in 1824 by placing a thin sheet of rubber between two sheets of fabric and pressing them together. That invention transformed many things, not least warfare. Just think of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in the winter of 1812. His troops did that without any kind of waterproof clothing. Some 200,000 of them perished, not from bullets but from hypothermia. Waterproof raincoats could have saved thousands of lives. Not long after rubber came to be used for waterproofing, we saw the first undersea telegraph cable connecting Europe to North America being laid in the 1850s. When the American civil war broke out in 1860, demand for rubber increased yet further: the troops needed raincoats and other items made from this miracle material.
At that time rubber, used to be collected from the wild in the province of Pará in Northern Brazil, across which the Amazon drains into the Atlantic. In 1866, steamers began plying thousands of kilometres upriver, to return with cargoes of rubber harvested from the rainforest. Soon, the wild trees were being tapped to exhaustion and the sustainability of supply became doubtful.
Meanwhile, England was at the zenith of its colonial power, and colonial strategists thought rather like corporate strategists do today. The director of the Kew Gardens at the time, Joseph Hooker, felt there might be one day be a greater potential for rubber. He decided to look into the possibility of cultivating the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, in Britain’s Asian colonies. So, he dispatched a young man called Henry Wickham to the Amazon to try to secure some seeds. In 1876, Wickham returned to Kew with 70,000 rubber seeds. These were planted out in hothouses in Kew and by the end of that year, almost 2000 of them had germinated.
These were dispatched to Ceylon, only a few weeks’ voyage away now, thanks to steamships and the Suez Canal. The director of the Peradeniya Botanic Garden at the time was George Henry Kendrick Thwaites, a brilliant systematic botanist and horticulturalist. Thwaites received the seedlings and had to decide where to plant them. He read the available literature—remember, this was 1876: there was no internet—and managed to piece together a model of the climatic conditions in the region of the Amazonian rainforest to which rubber was native. He decided that the plants would need an elevation of less than 300 metres and a minimum annual rainfall of at least 2000mm. In other words, the most suitable region for rubber would be an arc about 30 kilometres wide, extending roughly from Ambalangoda to Matale. Despite his never having seen a rubber plant until then, astonishingly, he got it exactly right.
Thwaites settled on a site in the middle of the arc, at Henarathgoda near Gampaha. That became the world’s first rubber nursery: the first successful cultivation of this tree outside Brazil. The trees grew well and, eight years later, came into seed. Henry Trimen, Thwaites’ successor, used the seeds to establish an experimental plantation near Polgahawela and also shared seeds with the Singapore Botanic Garden. Those would later become the foundation of the great Malaysian rubber industry.
But up to that time, Sri Lanka’s rubber plantation remained a solution looking for a problem. Then, in 1888, the problem arrived, and from a completely unexpected quarter: John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire. Soon, bicycles came to be fitted with air-filled tires, followed by motorcars. In 1900, the US produced just 5,000 motorcars; by 1915, production had risen to half a million. The great rubber boom had begun.
Meanwhile, the colonial administration in Ceylon had invited investors to buy land and start cultivating rubber to feed the growing international demand. But by the early 1890s, three unusual things had happened. First, with the collapse of the coffee industry in the mid-1870s, many British investors had been bankrupted. Those who survived had to divert all their available capital into transitioning their failing coffee plantations into tea. They were understandably averse to risk. As a result, the British showed little interest in this strange tree called rubber that had been bought from Brazil.
Second, a native Sri Lankan middle class had by then emerged. The Colebrooke-Cameron reforms had led to the establishment of the Royal academy, later Royal College, by 1835. Other great schools followed in quick succession. From the middle of the 19th century, it was possible for Sri Lankans to get an education and get employment in government service, become professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, civil servants, clerks, and so on. And so, by the 1890s, a solid native middle class had emerged. The feature that defines a middle class, of course, is savings, and these savings now came to be translated into the capital that founded the rubber industry.
Third, the British had by then established a rail and road network and created the legal and commercial institutions for managing credit and doing business—institutions like banks, financial services, contract law and laws that regulated bankruptcy. They had made the rules, but by now, Sri Lankans had learned to play the game. And so, it came to be that Sri Lankans came to own a substantial part of the rubber-plantation industry very early in the game. By 1911, almost 200,000 acres of rubber had been planted and world demand was growing exponentially.
In just one generation, investors in rubber were reaping eye-watering returns that in today’s money would equate to Rs 3.6 million per acre per year. It was these people who, together with the coconut barons, came to own the grand mansions that adorn the poshest roads in Cinnamon Gardens: Ward Place, Rosmead Place, Barnes Place, Horton Place, and so on. There was an astonishingly rapid creation of indigenous wealth. By 1911, the tonnage at shipping calling in Sri Lankan ports—Colombo and Trincomalee—exceeded nine million tons, making them collectively the third busiest in the British Empire and the seventh busiest in the world. By comparison, the busiest port in Europe is now Rotterdam, which ranks tenth in the world.
We often blame politicians for things that go wrong in our country and God knows they are responsible for most of it. But unfortunately for us, the first six years of independence, from 1948 to 1954, were really unlucky years for Sri Lanka. As if successive failed monsoons and falling rice crops weren’t bad enough, along came the Korean war. In the meantime, the Sri Lankan people had got used to the idea of food rations during the war and they wanted rations to be continued as free handouts. Those demands climaxed in the ‘Hartal’ of 1953, a general strike demanding something for nothing. Politicians were being forced to keep the promises they had made when before independence, that they would deliver greater prosperity than under the British.
So, by 1949, D. S. Senanayake was forced to devalue the rupee, leading to rapid price inflation. Thankfully we didn’t have significant foreign debt then, or we might have had to declare insolvency much earlier than we finally did, in 2022. And then, because of failing paddy harvests, we were forced to buy rice
from China, which was in turn buying our rubber. But as luck would have it, China entered the Korean war, causing the UN, at the behest of the US, to embargo rubber exports to China.
This placed the D. S. Senanayake and John Kotelawala governments in an impossible predicament. There was a rice shortage; people were demanding free rice, and without rubber exports, there was no foreign exchange with which to buy rice. Kotelawala flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Eisenhower and plead for either an exemption from the embargo or else, for the US to buy our rubber. Despite Sri Lanka having provided rubber to the Allies at concessionary prices during the war and having supported the Allies, Eisenhower refused. British and American memories were short indeed. In India, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party had chosen the moment, in August 1942 when Japan invaded Southeast Asia and were poised to invade Bengal, to demand that the British quit India, threatening in the alternative that they would throw their lot in with the Japanese. The Sri Lankan government, by contrast, had stood solidly by the Allies. But now, those same allies stabbed the fledgling nation in the chest. Gratitude, it seemed, was a concept alien to the West.
In these circumstances, Sri Lanka had no choice but to break the UN embargo and enter into a rice-for-rubber barter agreement with China. This resulted not only in the US suspending aid and the supply of agricultural chemicals to Sri Lanka, but also invoking the Battle Act and placing restrictions on US and UK ships calling at the island’s ports.
Understandably, by 1948, Sri Lankans entertained a strong disdain for colonialism. With the Cold War now under way, the USSR and China did all they could to split countries like Sri Lana away not just from their erstwhile colonial masters but also the capitalist system. If any doubt persisted in the minds of Sri Lankan politicians, Western sanctions put an end to that. The country fell into the warm embrace of the communist powers. China and the USSR were quick to fill the void left by the West, and especially in the 1950s, there was good reason to believe that the communist system was working. The Soviet economy was seeing unprecedented growth, and that decade saw them producing hydrogen bombs and putting the first satellite, dog and man in space.
As a consequence of the West’s perfidy in the early 1950s, ‘Capitalism’ continues to have pejorative connotations in Sri Lanka to this day. And it resulted in us becoming more insular, more inward looking, and anxious to assert our nationalism even when it cost us dearly.
Soon, we abolished the use of English, and we nationalized Western oil companies and the plantations. None of these things did us the slightest bit of good. We even changed the name of the country in English from Ceylon to Sri Lanka. Most countries in the world have an international name in addition to the name they call themselves. Sri Lanka had been ‘Lanka’ in Sinhala throughout the colonial period, even as its name had been Ceylon in English. The Japanese don’t call themselves Japan in their own language, neither do the Germans call themselves Germany. These are international names for Nihon and Deutschland, just like Baharat or Hindustan is what Indians call India. But we insisted that little Sri Lanka will assert itself and insist what the world would call us, the classic symptom of a massive inferiority complex. While countries like Singapore built on the brand value of their colonial names, we erased ours from the books. Now, no one knows where Ceylon tea or Ceylon cinnamon comes from.
Singapore is itself a British name: it should be Sinha Pura, the Lion City, a Sanskrit name. But Singapore values its bottom line more than its commitment to terminological exactitude. Even the name of its first British governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, has become a valued national brand. But here in Sri Lanka, rather than build on our colonial heritage, not the least liberal values the British engendered in us, together with democracy and a moderately regulated economy, we have chosen to deny it and seek to expunge it from our memory. We rejected the good values of the West along with the bad: like courtesy, queuing, and the idea that corruption is wrong.
We have stopped fighting for the dignity of our land, and I hope that as you read the articles in The Ceylon Journal that are published in the future, we will be reminded time and time again of the beautiful heritage of our country and how we can once again find it in ourselves to be proud of this wonderful land.
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