Features

My time at Sussex University in the mid-1970s

Published

2 years ago

2024/08/4

Thilina Walpola

“Culture is like jam; the less you have, the more you spread”

by Jayantha Perera

The Central Bank of Ceylon had stringent forex laws and regulations in the seventies. In 1975, it approved 18 sterling pounds for me to take to England as a student and recorded the amount in my passport. The postgraduate studentship from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) of Sussex University paid my airfare, tuition fees, and living expenses.

I travelled to Karachi from Colombo on October 1. The connecting flight to London was delayed because the plane had engine troubles. I did not have money to make a call to IDS or ARTI about the delay. The plan was for someone from IDS to meet me at Falmer railway station (the nearest to the university) on October 2 in the afternoon.

Pakistan Airlines organised a city tour on the third day for the stranded travellers. I was amazed to see crowded public buses and thousands of pedestrians. At a bazaar, I bought a rosewood pipe and a small tobacco pouch for nine pounds. I visualised how professors at Peradeniya smoked their pipes at the senior common room. I wanted to be a mature, pipe-smoking Marxist scholar at Sussex, which was then known to be a hotbed of Socialists and Marxists.

On October 5, I landed at the Heathrow Airport, tired and disoriented. I remembered it was my father’s eighth death anniversary. I tried to imagine what he would have told me about England. For him, leaving home was a hazardous business. At least, initially, he would have opposed my going to England. He had set ideas of what was suitable for his four sons. He wanted me to study law. Once, I asked him jokingly whether it would be okay to marry after completing my first degree. He was shocked and said I had enough time to think about such matters and should study without “spoiling’ my mind. He blamed my mother for “corrupting” me.

There were several immigration officers on duty, and most of them looked like Indians or Pakistanis. The immigration officer wanted to know my sources of finance at Sussex. He read the studentship offer letter carefully and re-checked the UK visa on my passport. He politely told me to get a chest X-ray at the airport clinic.

At the customs, an officer wanted to know why I was visiting England. I told him about my postgraduate studies at Sussex. He inquired if I had any cooked food in my bag. When I told him I hadn’t, he smiled and said, “Usually, Asian students bring cooked fish, meat, and dried fruits.” I was hungry. I walked to a café and bought a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. (That was the first time I ate ham and drank cold milk from a carton.) I took a double-decker bus to Victoria Railway Station.

I reached London Central Bus Station at 3 pm. A uniformed bus conductor called a taxi and told the driver to drop me at the Victoria railway station. It was a very short ride. I asked the driver how much I owed him and showed him several coins. He carefully checked them, took a 50 pence coin, and said, “This is enough.”

The train to Brighton was an express train, and I could not believe a train could travel that fast. I saw a young woman pushing a trolley on the aisle. She served coffee, tea, and sandwiches. Passengers paid for the food they took from her. I wanted to buy a sandwich, but I did not because I had only a few pounds in my pocket. I needed that money to buy a train ticket from Brighton to Falmer.

The view from the train was breathtaking. I enjoyed the undulating landscape and the mild haze that enveloped distant low mountains and woods. They reminded me of the picturesque English villages I had seen in school English textbooks. Occasionally, I spotted sheep grazing in vast stretches of rolling land. Lines of old houses, narrow streets, and forests with glistening streams uplifted my spirit. I thought about my childhood and adolescence, especially my life after my father’s death. As the train rattled on, I found myself lost in a whirlwind of memories and emotions, each landscape outside the window triggering a new thought or feeling.

There was a connecting local train to Lewis from Brighton, and it reached Falmer railway station in about 20 minutes. When I got off the train, an elderly gentleman greeted me. He introduced himself as the station master. He took my suitcase and led me to a tiny room at the Station. I saw a jar of biscuits, a few slices of cake, a large flask, and two mugs on a small table. He wanted to know why I was late. I told him that the flight was delayed in Karachi. He offered me a slice of cake on a paper plate with a plastic fork and asked whether I wanted a cup of tea.

When I said, “Yes, please”, he asked me, “With or without sugar?” I said, “With sugar.” He pushed a container of white sugar cubes towards me. I asked him how many cubes to dissolve in the mug. He said two would be enough.

Then he said, “Oh, I am sorry. Would you like some milk with your tea?” I said, “Yes.” He opened a small packet of milk and poured a little into my tea mug, making tea lukewarm. I ate two slices of cake, and he then offered me a sizeable homemade chocolate biscuit from a jar in the room. He sat before me and said he was a young cadet at the Trincomalee Royal Air Force Base during World War II. He revisited Sri Lanka in the 1960s and stayed with his wife at the Galle Face Hotel for three nights before going to Trincomalee to see the Air Force base.

The station master accompanied me along the narrow path behind the Station to the Brighton-Lewis Highway. He advised me to cross the highway and read students’ graffiti on parapet walls. He waited until I crossed the road. I was thrilled to see the large graffiti on a parapet wall. One read –

‘Culture is like jam

the less you have,

the more you spread!’

I read the graffiti several times, stopping for a minute to absorb its meaning and context. It hinted that British culture was shallow. The British used force to deal with the people they met in the East or the West. China, which invented gunpowder, paper, the compass, and the printing press could have used such ‘weapons’ to conquer other people and build an empire, but they did not.

In five minutes, I reached the front entrance of the university. There was a Student Union kiosk. A student approached me, introduced himself, and welcomed me to the university. He offered me a cup of tea. I told him that I had just had tea at the railway station. Then, a man in a dark suit approached me and asked politely, “Are you Jayantha from Sri Lanka?” I smiled, and he introduced himself as Charlie and welcomed me to IDS. He was a porter at IDS. The stationmaster had phoned IDS to inform them of my arrival. Charlie opened a plastic bag, took out an old black overcoat, and asked me to wear it as it was getting cold. He carried my suitcase on his shoulder. We walked through the central court of the university. I could see the university’s motto – Be Still and Know – enshrined on the horizontal beam that connected two tall towers.

The IDS was a two-storied octagon-shaped building nestled in an undulating grassland that rose rapidly to form a thicket behind the university. Charlie introduced me to his colleagues and took me down to the cafeteria for a cup of tea. I ate a roll and drank a cup of hot chocolate. It reminded me of my mother, who gave me a hot cup of Ovaltine whenever I had a fever. Charlie paid the bill. He took me to the IDS Administrator’s office and told me to collect my suitcase from the porter’s office.

The Administrator was a charming man in his seventies with a disarming smile on his bearded face. He cordially hugged me for a minute or two and asked me, “How are you, son?” He told me he had spent a few weeks in Sri Lanka as a young army officer during the war. He opened a drawer, took out a brown envelope, and gave it to me, saying, “This is your stipend for the first term.” I felt happy and settled. He informed me I could stay at the IDS’ residential wing for two nights at the IDS’ expense. He invited me to dinner at the IDS cafeteria at 7 pm. I met Charlie downstairs, and he carried the suitcase to my suite.

The attached bathroom of the suite mesmerised me. It had a large bathtub and a beautiful wash basin with two taps. I opened one, and boiling water came gushing down; the other gave me ice-cold water. I plugged the washbasin drain and filled it with water from the two taps. I decided to drain water each time I rinse my mouth. I needed help with how to fill the bathtub or control the shower. I stepped out of the suite to get help and saw a tall old man with a beard at a fancy coffee machine in the corridor.

I asked him to show me how to operate the shower knobs to get hot water for a shower. He introduced himself as Dudley Seers, the former IDS director, and welcomed me to the IDS. I introduced myself and told him I had just arrived in the UK from Sri Lanka. He said that he was happy to meet me. He had many great memories of Sri Lanka, where, in the early 1970s, he led the ILO Employment and Development Mission. He remembered hot curries and aappa that he ate at roadside tea kiosks. He turned the knobs and showed me how to control cold and hot water.

I asked him how to operate the machine to get coffee. He inserted a coin, patiently played with several buttons, and produced a creamy coffee. It was different from the half glass of coffee my mother gave me, which had lots of sugar. He gave me two twenty-cent coins to get morning coffee from the machine.

Soon after I had a shower, there was a knock on the door. At the door was an old woman who introduced herself as the manager of the residential wing. She called me ‘my glamour,’ and I did not know how to respond. She smiled and told me she would return to take me down to dinner in an hour. Her sailor husband had visited Sri Lanka many times and once brought her a blue sapphire ring from Colombo.

I had a cold draft beer at the IDS bar, and it was like amurtha (nectar). I studied how the bartender siphoned beer into a large mug from a hidden barrel while debating with a customer on the British economy. The dinner was lavish. First, I had soup with bread and butter. This reminded me of issaraha kaema (a slice of bread served with a bowl of soup) at Sri Lankan weddings before lunch or dinner. I chose a steak covered with baked vegetables and fried onions. Then I had cheeses and crackers and, finally, a glass of Port.

The next day, I visited the Chairperson of the Sociology Department to introduce myself and to get the first term timetable. He sat behind a beautiful dark table. On it, there was a carved bamboo container with several pipes of different colours and shapes, neatly arranged according to their length. He asked me to sit down, picked a pipe, and fumbled with it without looking up. He then lighted his pipe and started smoking. His eyes got smaller, and I thought he was asleep, but he was awake. He welcomed me to the MA Sociology course and asked me about my preferred two courses for the term. I selected Marxist Sociology and Sociology of Development from the list he gave me. He was sad that I would not follow his course on European Radical Sociology, which focused on Jews and their persecution.

My principal teacher, Tom Bottomore, was a Marxist scholar. When I met him in his office room, I was overwhelmed by heavy pipe smoke. He was a friendly teacher. He told me he had spent time writing the well-known Sociology textbook for Indian students. He wore a thick tweed jacket with leather patches on his elbows. The other teacher was Prof Ron Dore, a development expert who published many books on Japan’s land reforms, city life, and industrial development. His famous book, ‘ Diploma Disease’, discussed the pitfalls of the traditional education system in Sri Lanka. He did not smoke. Once, he saw me smoking, and a few days later, when I visited him, he sarcastically remarked that pipe smoking is an emblem of the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat. Ron was the only IDS Fellow who did not profess Marxist thoughts.

By the end of the first term, I was well-adjusted to the university community, which was warm and friendly. Listening to debates over a pint of beer at the IDS bar in the evenings became my habit. I learned a lot from such debates and discussions. Two doctoral students from Sri Lanka often joined me at the bar. One of them, Newton, urged me to read Das Kapital as early as possible. It was a pleasure to listen to his stories and to watch how he explained complicated social theories with his fieldwork findings in the Kandyan countryside in Sri Lanka.

Tilak, the other doctoral student, told me to avoid visiting Brighton City on Sunday mornings. He said droves of ‘punks’ descended on the Brighton beach from London on Sundays, and the two piers were their favourite joints. They came in noisy motorcycles and wore dark denim jackets and silver chains. They had heavy boots with silver buckles. Their hairstyle, Tilak said, was short and coloured, which gave them the title of ‘punks.’ They were loud and carefree. He said that he had lived in an apartment not far from the Brighton Piers and avoided the town on Sundays.

I became curious about the punks and their subculture, which emerged in the 1970s in the UK. It was a youth subculture, and the youth wanted a cultural revolt and believed it was underway in the UK. People feared punks and thought that they would target, harass, and assault them. But punks were not hooligans or criminals. They demanded a cultural space for the youth to play a vital role in society. In this sense, the label ‘punk’ is for young people who want space to reimagine, discover, and challenge the society in which they are coming of age.

One Sunday morning, I went to Brighton Beach to see them. Around 10 am, I could hear motorcycles coming along the railway station road to the city’s heart. I counted 21 motorcycles, each carrying two punks. They parked their motorbikes and walked around shouting and laughing. One punk got knocked down by a car when he tried to cross the road recklessly. He was limping but refused to seek medical help.

Bands such as Sex Pistols and the Damned were popular in the UK in the 1970s. They gave punks some recognition and respect among the youth. Skirmishes with authorities were the centre pieces of the subculture that exposed chaos, ugliness, and outrage against the state in the 1970s. They showed anti-establishment sentiments and their desire for personal freedom. They hated hippies’ laid-back attitudes. Punks thought hippies who guided some youth in the 1960s to seek freedom just sat around and got high on drugs rather than getting out to act.

While settling down in England, I felt hidden and persisting ambivalence among some locals in Brighton towards towards South Asians. Once, at a small shop in Brighton, its owner told me that he would not sell anything to Asians, especially to Pakis. He thought I was a Pakistani. He felt I should live in my own country, not his country.

I thought he had expressed a general feeling among the English about Asians. An Indian friend at the university told me she had a similar experience at a bric-a-brac store in Brighton where the shopkeeper told her to “go home to your country. This is not your country.” When she ignored him, he became aggressive and started telling her rude jokes about Asian women, and my friend did not understand most of what he had said.

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Features

Following the Money: Tourism’s revenue crisis behind the arrival numbers – PART II

Published

14 hours ago

2026/02/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

(Article 2 of the 4-part series on Sri Lanka’s tourism stagnation)

If Sri Lanka’s tourism story were a corporate income statement, the top line would satisfy any minister. Arrivals went up 15.1%, targets met, records broke. But walk down the statement and the story darkens. Revenue barely budges. Per-visitor yield collapses. The money that should accompany all those arrivals has quietly vanished, or, more accurately, never materialised.

This is not a recovery. It is a volume trap, more tourists generating less wealth, with policymakers either oblivious to the math or unwilling to confront it.

Problem Diagnosis: The Paradox of Plenty:

The numbers tell a brutal story.

Read that again: arrivals grew 15.1% year-on-year, but revenue grew only 1.6%. The average tourist in 2025 left behind $181 less than in 2024, an 11.7% decline. Compared to 2018, the drop is even sharper. In real terms, adjusting for inflation and currency depreciation, each visitor in 2025 generates approximately 27-30% less revenue than in 2018, despite Sri Lanka being “cheaper” due to the rupee’s collapse. This is not marginal variance. This is structural value destruction. (See Table 1)

The math is simple and damning: Sri Lanka is working harder for less. More tourists, lower yield, thinner margins. Why? Because we have confused accessibility with competitiveness. We have made ourselves “affordable” through currency collapse and discounting, not through value creation.

Root Causes: The Five Mechanisms of Value Destruction

The yield collapse is not random. It is the predictable outcome of specific policy failures and market dynamics.

1. Currency Depreciation as False Competitiveness

The rupee’s collapse post-2022 has made Sri Lanka appear “cheap” to foreigners. A hotel room priced at $100 in 2018 might cost $70-80 in effective purchasing power today due to depreciation. Tour operators have aggressively discounted to fill capacity during the crisis recovery.

This creates the illusion of competitiveness. Arrivals rise because we are a “bargain.” But the bargain is paid for by domestic suppliers, hotels, transport providers, restaurants, staff, whose input costs (energy, food, imported goods) have skyrocketed in rupee terms while room rates lag in dollar terms.

The transfer is explicit: value flows from Sri Lankan workers and businesses to foreign tourists. The tourism “recovery” extracts wealth from the domestic economy rather than injecting it.

2. Market Composition Shift: Trading European Yields for Asian Volumes

SLTDA data shows a deliberate (or accidental—the policy opacity makes it unclear) shift in source markets. (See Table 2)

The problem is not that we attract Indians or Russians, it is that we attract them without strategies to optimise their yield. As the next article in this series will detail, Indian tourists average approximately 5.27 nights compared to the 8-9 night overall average, with lower per-day spending. We have built recovery on volume from price-sensitive segments rather than value from high-yield segments.

This is a choice, though it appears no one consciously made it. Visa-free entry, aggressive India-focused marketing, and price positioning have tilted the market mix without any apparent analysis of revenue implications.

3. Length of Stay Decline and Activity Compression

Average length of stay has compressed. While overall averages hover around 8-9 nights in recent years, the composition matters. High-yield European and North American tourists who historically spent 10-12 nights are now spending 7-9. Indian tourists spend 5-6 nights.

Shorter stays mean less cumulative spending, fewer experiences consumed, less distribution of value across the tourism chain. A 10-night tourist patronises multiple regions, hotels, guides, restaurants. A 5-night tourist concentrates spending in 2-3 locations, typically Colombo, one beach, one cultural site.

The compression is driven partly by global travel trends (shorter, more frequent trips) but also by Sri Lanka’s failure to develop compelling multi-day itineraries, adequate inter-regional connectivity, and differentiated regional experiences. We have not given tourists reasons to stay longer.

4. Infrastructure Decay and Experience Degradation

Tourists pay for experiences, not arrivals. When experiences degrade, airport congestion, poor road conditions, inadequate facilities at cultural sites, safety concerns, spending falls even if arrivals hold.

The 2024-2025 congestion at Bandaranaike International Airport, with reports of tourists nearly missing flights due to bottlenecks, is the visible tip. Beneath are systemic deficits: poor last-mile connectivity to tourism sites, deteriorating heritage assets, unregistered businesses providing sub-standard services, outbound migration of trained staff.

An ADB report notes that tourism authorities face resource shortages and capital expenditure embargoes, preventing even basic facility improvements at major revenue generators like Sigiriya (which charges $36 per visitor and attracts 25% of all tourists). When a site generates substantial revenue but lacks adequate lighting, safety measures, and visitor facilities, the experience suffers, and so does yield.

5. Leakage: The Silent Revenue Drain

Tourism revenue figures are gross. Net foreign exchange contributions after leakages, is rarely calculated or published.

Leakages include:

· Imported food, beverages, amenities in hotels (often 30-40% of operating costs)

· Foreign ownership and profit repatriation

· International tour operators taking commissions upstream (tourists book through foreign platforms that retain substantial margins)

· Unlicensed operators and unregulated businesses evading taxes and formal banking channels

Industry sources estimate leakages can consume 40-60% of gross tourism revenue in developing economies with weak regulatory enforcement. Sri Lanka has not published comprehensive leakage studies, but all indicators, weak licensing enforcement, widespread informal sector activity, foreign ownership concentration in resorts, suggest leakages are substantial and growing.

The result: even the $3.22 billion headline figure overstates actual net contribution to the economy.

The Way Forward: From Volume to Value

Reversing the yield collapse requires

systematic policy reorientation, from arrivals-chasing to value-building.

First

, publish and track yield metrics as primary KPIs. SLTDA should report:

· Revenue per visitor (by source market, by season, by purpose)

· Average daily expenditure (disaggregated by accommodation, activities, food, retail)

· Net foreign exchange contribution after documented leakages

· Revenue per room night (adjusted for real exchange rates)

Make these as visible as arrival numbers. Hold policy-makers accountable for yield, not just volume.

Second

, segment markets explicitly by yield potential. Stop treating all arrivals as equivalent. Conduct market-specific yield analyses:

· Which markets spend most per day?

· Which stays longest?

· Which distributes spending across regions vs. concentrating in Colombo/beach corridors?

· Which book is through formal channels vs. informal operators?

Target marketing and visa policies accordingly. If Western European tourists spend $250/day for 10 nights while another segment spends $120/day for 5 nights, the revenue difference ($2,500 vs. $600) dictates where promotional resources should flow.

Third

, develop multi-day, multi-region itineraries with compelling value propositions. Tourists extend stays when there are reasons to stay. Create integrated experiences:

· Cultural triangle + beach + hill country circuits with seamless connectivity

· Themed tours (wildlife, wellness, culinary, adventure) requiring 10+ days

· Regional spread of accommodation and experiences to distribute economic benefits

This requires infrastructure investment, precisely what has been neglected.

Fourth

, regulations to minimise leakages. Enforce licensing for tourism businesses. Channel bookings through formal operators registered with commercial banks. Tax holiday schemes should prioritise investments that maximise local value retention, staff training, local sourcing, domestic ownership.

Fifth

, stop using currency depreciation as a competitive strategy. A weak rupee makes Sri Lanka “affordable” but destroys margins and transfers wealth outward. Real competitiveness comes from differentiated experiences, quality standards, and strategic positioning, not from being the “cheapest” option.

The Hard Math: What We’re Losing

Let’s make the cost explicit. If Sri Lanka maintained 2018 per-visitor spending levels ($1,877) on 2025 arrivals (2.36 million), revenue would be approximately $4.43 billion, not $3.22 billion. The difference: $1.21 billion in lost revenue, value that should have been generated but wasn’t.

That $1.21 billion is not a theoretical gap. It represents:

· Wages not paid

· Businesses not sustained

· Taxes not collected

· Infrastructure not funded

· Development not achieved

This is the cost of volume-chasing without yield discipline. Every year we continue this model; we lock in value destruction.

The Policy Failure: Why Arrivals Theater Persists

Why do policymakers fixate on arrivals when revenue tells the real story?

Because arrivals are politically legible. A minister can tout “record tourist numbers” in a press conference. Revenue per visitor requires explanation, context, and uncomfortable questions about policy choices.

Arrivals are easy to manipulate upward, visa-free entry, aggressive discounting, currency depreciation. Yield is hard, it requires product development, market curation, infrastructure investment, regulatory enforcement.

Arrivals theater is cheaper and quicker than strategic transformation. But this is governance failure at its most fundamental. Tourism’s contribution to economic recovery is not determined by how many planes land but by how much wealth each visitor creates and retains domestically. Every dollar spent celebrating arrival records while ignoring yield collapse is a waste of dollars.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Sri Lanka’s tourism “boom” is real in volume, but it is a value bust. We are attracting more tourists and generating less wealth. The industry is working harder for lower returns. Margins are compressed, staff are paid less in real terms, infrastructure decays, and the net contribution to national recovery underperforms potential.

This is not sustainable. Eventually, operators will exit. Quality will degrade further. The “affordable” positioning will shift to “cheap and deteriorating.” The volume will follow yield down.

We have two choices: acknowledge the yield crisis and reorient policy toward value creation or continue arrivals theater until the hollowness becomes undeniable.

The money has spoken. The question is whether anyone in power is listening.

Features

Misinterpreting President Dissanayake on National Reconciliation

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been investing his political capital in going to the public to explain some of the most politically sensitive and controversial issues. At a time when easier political choices are available, the president is choosing the harder path of confronting ethnic suspicion and communal fears. There are three issues in particular on which the president’s words have generated strong reactions. These are first with regard to Buddhist pilgrims going to the north of the country with nationalist motivations. Second is the controversy relating to the expansion of the Tissa Raja Maha Viharaya, a recently constructed Buddhist temple in Kankesanturai which has become a flashpoint between local Tamil residents and Sinhala nationalist groups. Third is the decision not to give the war victory a central place in the Independence Day celebrations.

Even in the opposition, when his party held only three seats in parliament, Anura Kumara Dissanayake took his role as a public educator seriously. He used to deliver lengthy, well researched and easily digestible speeches in parliament. He continues this practice as president. It can be seen that his statements are primarily meant to elevate the thinking of the people and not to win votes the easy way. The easy way to win votes whether in Sri Lanka or elsewhere in the world is to rouse nationalist and racist sentiments and ride that wave. Sri Lanka’s post independence political history shows that narrow ethnic mobilisation has often produced short term electoral gains but long term national damage.

Sections of the opposition and segments of the general public have been critical of the president for taking these positions. They have claimed that the president is taking these positions in order to obtain more Tamil votes or to appease minority communities. The same may be said in reverse of those others who take contrary positions that they seek the Sinhala votes. These political actors who thrive on nationalist mobilisation have attempted to portray the president’s statements as an abandonment of the majority community. The president’s actions need to be understood within the larger framework of national reconciliation and long term national stability.

Reconciler’s Duty

When the president referred to Buddhist pilgrims from the south going to the north, he was not speaking about pilgrims visiting long established Buddhist heritage sites such as Nagadeepa or Kandarodai. His remarks were directed at a specific and highly contentious development, the recently built Buddhist temple in Kankesanturai and those built elsewhere in the recent past in the north and east. The temple in Kankesanturai did not emerge from the religious needs of a local Buddhist community as there is none in that area. It has been constructed on land that was formerly owned and used by Tamil civilians and which came under military occupation as a high security zone. What has made the issue of the temple particularly controversial is that it was established with the support of the security forces.

The controversy has deepened because the temple authorities have sought to expand the site from approximately one acre to nearly fourteen acres on the basis that there was a historic Buddhist temple in that area up to the colonial period. However, the Tamil residents of the area fear that expansion would further displace surrounding residents and consolidate a permanent Buddhist religious presence in the present period in an area where the local population is overwhelmingly Hindu. For many Tamils in Kankesanturai, the issue is not Buddhism as a religion but the use of religion as a vehicle for territorial assertion and demographic changes in a region that bore the brunt of the war. Likewise, there are other parts of the north and east where other temples or places of worship have been established by the military personnel in their camps during their war-time occupation and questions arise regarding the future when these camps are finally closed.

There are those who have actively organised large scale pilgrimages from the south to make the Tissa temple another important religious site. These pilgrimages are framed publicly as acts of devotion but are widely perceived locally as demonstrations of dominance. Each such visit heightens tension, provokes protest by Tamil residents, and risks confrontation. For communities that experienced mass displacement, military occupation and land loss, the symbolism of a state backed religious structure on contested land with the backing of the security forces is impossible to separate from memories of war and destruction. A president committed to reconciliation cannot remain silent in the face of such provocations, however uncomfortable it may be to challenge sections of the majority community.

High-minded leadership

The controversy regarding the president’s Independence Day speech has also generated strong debate. In that speech the president did not refer to the military victory over the LTTE and also did not use the term “war heroes” to describe soldiers. For many Sinhala nationalist groups, the absence of these references was seen as an attempt to diminish the sacrifices of the armed forces. The reality is that Independence Day means very different things to different communities. In the north and east the same day is marked by protest events and mourning and as a “Black Day”, symbolising the consolidation of a state they continue to experience as excluding them and not empathizing with the full extent of their losses.

By way of contrast, the president’s objective was to ensure that Independence Day could be observed as a day that belonged to all communities in the country. It is not correct to assume that the president takes these positions in order to appease minorities or secure electoral advantage. The president is only one year into his term and does not need to take politically risky positions for short term electoral gains. Indeed, the positions he has taken involve confronting powerful nationalist political forces that can mobilise significant opposition. He risks losing majority support for his statements. This itself indicates that the motivation is not electoral calculation.

President Dissanayake has recognized that Sri Lanka’s long term political stability and economic recovery depend on building trust among communities that once peacefully coexisted and then lived through decades of war. Political leadership is ultimately tested by the willingness to say what is necessary rather than what is politically expedient. The president’s recent interventions demonstrate rare national leadership and constitute an attempt to shift public discourse away from ethnic triumphalism and toward a more inclusive conception of nationhood. Reconciliation cannot take root if national ceremonies reinforce the perception of victory for one community and defeat for another especially in an internal conflict.

BY Jehan Perera

Features

Recovery of LTTE weapons

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Sri Lanka Navy in action

I have read a newspaper report that the Special Task Force of Sri Lanka Police, with help of Military Intelligence, recovered three buried yet well-preserved 84mm Carl Gustaf recoilless rocket launchers used by the LTTE, in the Kudumbimalai area, Batticaloa.

These deadly weapons were used by the LTTE SEA TIGER WING to attack the Sri Lanka Navy ships and craft in 1990s. The first incident was in February 1997, off Iranativu island, in the Gulf of Mannar.

Admiral Cecil Tissera took over as Commander of the Navy on 27 January, 1997, from Admiral Mohan Samarasekara.

The fight against the LTTE was intensified from 1996 and the SLN was using her Vanguard of the Navy, Fast Attack Craft Squadron, to destroy the LTTE’s littoral fighting capabilities. Frequent confrontations against the LTTE Sea Tiger boats were reported off Mullaitivu, Point Pedro and Velvetiturai areas, where SLN units became victorious in most of these sea battles, except in a few incidents where the SLN lost Fast Attack Craft.

Carl Gustaf recoilless rocket launchers

The intelligence reports confirmed that the LTTE Sea Tigers was using new recoilless rocket launchers against aluminium-hull FACs, and they were deadly at close quarter sea battles, but the exact type of this weapon was not disclosed.

The following incident, which occurred in February 1997, helped confirm the weapon was Carl Gustaf 84 mm Recoilless gun!

DATE: 09TH FEBRUARY, 1997, morning 0600 hrs.

LOCATION: OFF IRANATHIVE.

FACs: P 460 ISRAEL BUILT, COMMANDED BY CDR MANOJ JAYESOORIYA

P 452 CDL BUILT, COMMANDED BY LCDR PM WICKRAMASINGHE (ON TEMPORARY COMMAND. PROPER OIC LCDR N HEENATIGALA)

OPERATED FROM KKS.

CONFRONTED WITH LTTE ATTACK CRAFT POWERED WITH FOUR 250 HP OUT BOARD MOTORS.

TARGET WAS DESTROYED AND ONE LTTE MEMBER WAS CAPTURED.

LEADING MARINE ENGINEERING MECHANIC OF THE FAC CAME UP TO THE BRIDGE CARRYING A PROJECTILE WHICH WAS FIRED BY THE LTTE BOAT, DURING CONFRONTATION, WHICH PENETRATED THROUGH THE FAC’s HULL, AND ENTERED THE OICs CABIN (BETWEEN THE TWO BUNKS) AND HIT THE AUXILIARY ENGINE ROOM DOOR AND HAD FALLEN DOWN WITHOUT EXPLODING. THE ENGINE ROOM DOOR WAS HEAVILY DAMAGED LOOSING THE WATER TIGHT INTEGRITY OF THE FAC.

THE PROJECTILE WAS LATER HANDED OVER TO THE NAVAL WEAPONS EXPERTS WHEN THE FACs RETURNED TO KKS. INVESTIGATIONS REVEALED THE WEAPON USED BY THE ENEMY WAS 84 mm CARL GUSTAF SHOULDER-FIRED RECOILLESS GUN AND THIS PROJECTILE WAS AN ILLUMINATER BOMB OF ONE MILLION CANDLE POWER. BUT THE ATTACKERS HAS FAILED TO REMOVE THE SAFETY PIN, THEREFORE THE BOMB WAS NOT ACTIVATED.

Sea Tigers

Carl Gustaf 84 mm recoilless gun was named after Carl Gustaf Stads Gevärsfaktori, which, initially, produced it. Sweden later developed the 84mm shoulder-fired recoilless gun by the Royal Swedish Army Materiel Administration during the second half of 1940s as a crew served man- portable infantry support gun for close range multi-role anti-armour, anti-personnel, battle field illumination, smoke screening and marking fire.

It is confirmed in Wikipedia that Carl Gustaf Recoilless shoulder-fired guns were used by the only non-state actor in the world – the LTTE – during the final Eelam War.

It is extremely important to check the batch numbers of the recently recovered three launchers to find out where they were produced and other details like how they ended up in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka?

By Admiral Ravindra C. Wijegunaratne
WV, RWP and Bar, RSP, VSV, USP, NI (M) (Pakistan), ndc, psn, Bsc (Hons) (War Studies) (Karachi) MPhil (Madras)
Former Navy Commander and Former Chief of Defence Staff
Former Chairman, Trincomalee Petroleum Terminals Ltd
Former Managing Director Ceylon Petroleum Corporation
Former High Commissioner to Pakistan