Features

R.W. IEVERS (1850-1905), EXCEPTIONAL GOVERNMENT AGENT OF ANURADHAPURA (c. 1890).

Published

3 months ago

2026/06/29

On this pious Poson season, I am taking a moment to remember an extraordinary colonial official, R.W. Ievers (1850-1905), Government Agent (GA) of North Central Province (NCP), who was a pioneer, along with a few other British colonial officers in the 19th century in bringing Anuradhapura and the region from out of the darkness that engulfed it for centuries.

Nearly two decades before Ievers started as GA in 1884, Emerson Tennant wrote Anuradhapura as a “city that has shrunk into a few scattered huts that scarcely merit the designation of a village.”

He showed his intellectual versatility and love for such a city fallen on hard times by first writing the Anuradhapura Anthem (1890), a little-known celebratory poem of 12 verses. He followed it with his watermark contribution – The Manual of the North Central Province (1899, 276 pages), which was the first of its kind in the province and sowed the seeds for later generations to study the province’s life, history, and culture.

After working at many stations and positions in Sri Lanka for nearly two decades, Ievers became the longest-serving GA in the province (2 months short of 10 years) between 1884 and 1893, showing us where his heart belonged – Anuradhapura.

He shared the Anthem with his colleague, the first Archaeological Commissioner of Ceylon, H. C. P. Bell (1851-1937), who himself spent 23 continuous years in Anuradhapura as country’s first archaeological commissioner. Ievers’s calling and cohesion with Bell were mighty forces in turning archaeological work in the late 19th century into overdrive.

These poems describe the city and the times before the restoration of its hundreds of archaeological sites, which began in the late 19th century. To some, these quatrains may look like a jovial piece of poetry written to kill time in this dreary province. Still, their grim assessment of the ruined monuments in the city, which in 1900, the Belgian geographer Jules Leclercq called “forgotten solitudes”, and the fervent hope Ievers had for their restoration, are remarkable.

Bell was captivated by the poem’s theme and breadth. After Ievers’s death, Bell sent it to the Times of Ceylon Christmas Number in 1917. He did this because, as Bell’s granddaughters would call decades later, Ievers had been his ‘greatest friend.’

Ievers the Civil Servant and the Literati

According to Leopold McClintock Bunbury Family Histories in Ireland, Robert “Bob” Wilson Ievers graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast, with a B.A. in 1872. Immediately after, he came first in the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) examination and was posted to Sri Lanka. Later he would receive an M.A. degree from the same University.

Until the mid-20th century, there were no native writers who took the time to write about the life and people in the North Central Province. Only a few from the southern parts of the country were drawn to the province to write primarily about its cities’ history. As literary resources in the province were nearly nonexistent, the few elites there were slow to take up the challenge. Ievers, too, faced this frustrating predicament, but fortunately, persistence proved his ally.

But the Manual was also the product when there were no library resources in Anuradhapura. Elsewhere, in Colombo, there were only a handful, such as the Royal Asiatic Society and the Government Oriental Library, established in 1870, which preserved rare manuscripts. The few enthusiastic literati like Ievers could use the library facilities at Colombo Museum, Kandy Government Record Office, and small libraries in some Buddhist temples, which featured mainly Ola books.

To gather information for the exhaustive volume, like the Manual, it is hard to imagine how many trips he made to Colombo (200km) or Kandy (144km), where the few libraries were beginning to stock their shelves and expand the country’s intellectual horizons. He went there by horse-drawn buggy, on bumpy horseback, often a cart ride, on a bony elephant’s back, or just by walking. To give an idea of how hard it must have been: In 1891, John Ferguson, co-editor of Ceylon Observer started from Dambulla at 8 p.m., sitting on a bullock cart, and reached Anuradhapura only at 5 a.m. the next day – a distance of 65 kilometers!

There is no rich body of literature about Ievers, the man who mastered Sinhala on even keel with his friend H. C. P. Bell. J.R. Toussant wrote in Annals of the Ceylon Service (1935) that Ievers was one of the best Sinhala speakers in Sri Lanka. Thus, there was no better person at the time to write a Manual on the province he dearly loved. Manual speaks of the volumes of the harmonious din of his knowledge, tuned with groans and hisses of the people of the province, their politics, language, culture, and history.

Cooler Intellect and Harsh Living

While introducing the poems in 1917, the Times of Ceylon summarised the working environment Ievers endured while compiling them. In Anuradhapura, he lived in “semi-isolation.” The Northern Railway line would reach the city only 15 years after the Anthem. But the humility with which he worked is well documented in his writings. Once, he regretted the “incompleteness” of his work and urged his successors to bring it up to date. But those who followed him found it as complete as any of its kind could be.

As early as the first decade of the 19th century, when pedagogical investment in Jaffna, 200 km north of Anuradhapura, with nearly 3000 students in missionary schools, was thriving, the first school in Anuradhapura was started only in 1850, and a missionary school in 1853. Still, it would take nearly half a century before the province’s academic and literary landscape began to show signs of enlightenment. With those kinds of shortcomings and life simple and in remote control, for Ievers, completing the Manual must have been like eating an elephant one bite at a time.

Thus, Ievers worked in a region that was not a fertile ground for learning. Professor Ukkubanda Karunananda refers to an anecdote that in 1863, R.W. Morris, Assistant Agent for Nuwarakalaviya, wrote to the Government Agent in the Northern Province (Nuwarakalaviya was part of the Northern Province then), citing difficulty in finding a person for the position of Arachchirala, the headman, who is fluent in reading and writing the mother tongue of the country! The reach of education to rural areas was ancient and minimal. My grandfather, S. K. Dingiri Banda (b. 1901), told me a colonial school inspector riding a horse to Kahapathwilagama school with only 12 boys, including him, 8 km east of Galkulama on the gravel road that would become A-9 in 1985.

As hinted in the Anthem, the recreational activities of the colonial officers were primitive, so much so that at an impromptu golf link in a recently cleared forest area between Ruwanweli Seya and Thuparama, they chipped golf balls onto greens separated by exquisitely carved stone pillars half buried in the earth. But Ievers resented golfing in the sacred city.

Ievers worked under the most difficult and dangerous conditions for himself and his family. Danger from wild animals was everywhere, and colonial officers and their families faced life-threatening situations. A few times, family faced threats from bears and snakes, a familiar sight in those days.

R. W. “Bob” Ievers (c. 1890). Photo: Turtle Bunbury

It was a time in the NCP when diseases like malaria and cholera were rampant. Paul Goldsmidt, who was appointed in 1875 to record stone inscriptions in the NCP, died of malaria two years later. In the mid-19th century, even government offices in Anuradhapura were temporarily closed when there was a threat of disease or flooding of the Malwathu Oya. Sometime after 1902, Ievers himself, then Acting Colonial Secretary, fell ill and returned to the UK on sick leave, where he died in 1905.

Ievers watched as often some communities were decimated. Villagers abandoned their homes outright due to torments like diseases. My grandfather once told me that when he was a teenager, he was familiar with the small village of Kidapolagama, two kilometers south of my village of Maradankalla (then called Maradankadawala) in Kanadara Korale. Census records show this was a lonely village of four homes (17 people) in 1901, three (10 people) in 1911, in an elephant-infested area. At the time of the 1921 census, Kidapolagama village had been deserted. It still is. Grandfather told me that, sometime after the 1911 census, a cholera outbreak in Kidapolagama killed six of the ten residents in two weeks. Scared of the dreaded fever and death, and probably for superstitious reasons, the other four residents picked up and walked out of the village.

Ingenuity, Honesty & Mischief

The grit and ingenuity of colonial officers working in ruined cities in Sri Lanka were their brands. Friend of Ievers, Bell, never used a measuring pole to depict in photographs the layout of structures or statues they dug out or cleared of brush. He used a human figure instead in the photo to convey the site’s proportional size and its structure(s).

On the other hand, Ievers showed an extraordinary dedication to duty that even a friend would dare stand in the way. Once, he recommended that Bell be prohibited from continuing his fieldwork for failing to submit a report on a previous project, and even recommended that his promotion be held in abeyance! But during Bell’s formative years, when he wrote to Governor threatening to resign over salary issues, Ievers prudently wrote to the Governor, stressing the value of Bell’s work.

Defending the works of colonial civil servants like Ievers in remote provinces, Senarath Paranawithana fittingly wrote that, “great credit (are) due to these pioneers for their contribution to our knowledge of ancient culture of the Island, which often the result of work undertaken at great personal risk and sacrifice, and in circumstances of which the difficulties can hardly be imagined by those who pursue their studies of Ceylon history in well-equipped libraries in Europe.”

Ruwanveli Seya pre-1871 Photo: Joseph Lawton & British Museum

Ievers was drawn to the forest and its people to such an extent that he had three tenures totalling seven years as GA in the NCP. The only other colonial officer who loved the village so much was Leonard Woolf, who came to Sri Lanka a year after Ievers left. Woolf wrote what Ievers had already seen and experienced – “a world of great beauty, ugliness, and danger. The beauty was extraordinary, and you never knew behind what tree or bush or rock you might not suddenly see it.”

In such a trying, charming, and tempting environment, it is not unusual for one to act in a silly or unbecoming way. Ievers was not immune to this dictum. He was ready to accept responsibility for his letdowns. His critics once blamed him for digging a trench at Abhayagiriya. Once, while proposing the vote of thanks for Bell’s first Interim Report on Sigiriya at the Royal Asiatic Society meeting in 1896, Ievers publicly admitted the shame of scratching his own name on the Mirror Wall Gallery at Sigiriya. How vexed Bell must have been to hear this. In those days, after climbing rickety ladders precariously hung by creaking ropes for dear life to reach the centuries-old frescoes chamber under the scorching heat of the rock, a man, resorting to childish mischief to scratch his name on the wall amidst hundreds of etchings, got a pass from me.

To Honour the man

In my view, while Ievers’s Manual is the primus and the masterpiece of documenting the life and history of the province until then, his most original and singular contributions are the two elements in it – the Plan of a village paddy field (facing page 172), structured transcription of it on paper for the first time in Sri Lanka, and enriching the linguistic fingerprints of the province – compilation of the first ever glossary of its native words (p. 264). The Plan is a linear illustration of a field from the horowwa (sluice) to the end of the field at kurulu paluwa, with parts named in all sections in between, all the way to kattakaduwa, the land below the fields awaiting asvaddumization. Every writer since then has used this Plan, in some form or another, to describe aspects of paddy cultivation in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka.

John Still, who assisted Bell in deciphering the Sigiri graffiti (poems) inscribed on the Mirror Wall at the rock fortress, called the colonial officers working in the NCP, such as R. H. Freeman, Government Agent (1915-1919) at Anuradhapura, ‘Knights-errant and Champions of the Jungle People’s rights.’ Ievers fell into this category decades before Freeman made a name for himself. Freeman chose to retire in the NCP, committing himself to politics and social service. He was so popular in Anuradhapura that he was called “Preeman Mahattaya,” and the city rightfully named a street after him. Ievers, too, is every bit deserving of a street or a square named after him!

It is disheartening that Sri Lanka’s celebrated ballad genre, known as Sandesa Kavya, letter carrier poems, makes no mention of an avian messenger flying over Anuradhapura, describing in verses the beauty of the city. R.W. Ievers, working under harsh and dreaded conditions, corrected that disappointment by writing his poem, an Anthem no less, about Anuradhapura, a remarkable feat and an honor the Sandesa poets failed to bestow upon this mother of all Sri Lankan cities.

Ievers garnishes his poem with the physical condition of the ruined structures, some buried and out of sight, or scattered across the old city landscape at the time, giving us a vivid picture of a millennia-old civilization, under meters of earth and half in decay, surviving without any royal or government patronage. Verse below starts Anuradhapura Anthem:

Anuradhapura! City grand and vast,

Lanka’s famous Capital, in ages of the

past:

In the “Mahawansa” the story has been

told,

Of thy palaces, and temples, and

pinnacles of gold.

I am unable to fathom that there is no monument of any kind to remember and celebrate these Colonial pioneers who worked tirelessly and fearlessly to bring the NCP out of obscurity in the late 19th century. Now, when we visit the sacred city of Anuradhapura, let us not forget people like Ievers, in the window of time they were at the NCP, who made contributions with enthusiasm that are more than any one of us could make in a lifetime.

Lokubanda Tillakaratne writes about ethnography and history of Nuwarakalaviya.

Lokubanda Tillakaratne

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Features

Beyond traditional jobs: Why Sri Lanka needs to facilitate the gig economy

Published

21 hours ago

2026/09/25

Thilina Walpola

Image courtesy Oxford University

by Kapila Chinthaka Premarathne
Head of the Department of Agricultural Systems and a Senior Lecturer in Agricultural Economics at the Faculty of Agriculture,
Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Beyond the Graduate Unemployment Number

Sri Lanka’s economic recovery has improved macroeconomic stability, but youth unemployment remains a significant labour-market concern. Around 43% of Sri Lankan youth aged 15–24 with postsecondary education are unemployed, the highest among the Asian economies compared in the IMF analysis, compared with about 36% in Bangladesh and 13.2% in Thailand. This reflects a problem of skills mismatches and the difficulty of connecting higher education with changing labour-market demand. The concern goes beyond unemployment itself. Sri Lanka has invested heavily in educating its younger population, yet the conventional labour market is not creating enough opportunities to convert these qualifications into income. Many young people possess degrees, technical knowledge and growing digital familiarity, but remain outside formal employment because suitable jobs may not exist in the right place, at the right time or under conditions compatible with their circumstances. This makes it necessary to think beyond traditional employment models and explore new ways of connecting Sri Lanka’s educated youth with economic opportunities.

This is where Sri Lanka needs to reconsider how it understands employment

Employment has traditionally been viewed through the employer–employee relationship, with qualifications leading to a formal job and regular salary. While this model remains important, digital platforms are creating new ways to generate income, allowing individuals to work for multiple clients across geographical boundaries without permanent employment. Sri Lanka therefore needs to look beyond simply creating conventional jobs and consider whether it is building the conditions for its educated population to participate in the growing global market for digital services.

The Opportunity of the Gig Economy

The gig economy extends far beyond ride-hailing and delivery services. Digital platforms increasingly connect skilled individuals with opportunities in software development, design, accounting, data analysis, digital marketing, translation, online education, research and consultancy. This is particularly relevant to Sri Lanka, where a highly educated population faces a relatively limited domestic market for specialised skills. Digital platforms can overcome geographical constraints by connecting Sri Lankan workers directly with international clients.

As highlighted in my previous LSE South Asia article on women and the gig economy, such work should not replace formal employment but can create additional income opportunities when supported by appropriate skills, digital infrastructure, training and institutional support. A skilled person in Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Batticaloa or Monaragala could potentially serve clients in London, Melbourne or Dubai without first relocating to Colombo. This makes the gig economy relevant not only to employment but also to Sri Lanka’s emerging digital services-export strategy.

A Digitally Familiar Generation

Sri Lanka’s younger generation is growing up with smartphones, social media, online learning, digital applications and digital financial services, giving them a level of digital familiarity that previous generations did not have. However, digital familiarity does not automatically translate into digital employability. The challenge is to transform everyday digital use into productive skills such as data analysis, artificial intelligence, software development, digital marketing, financial analysis and online professional services.

Sri Lanka therefore needs to move young people from being consumers of digital services to producers of digital value. Universities, vocational institutions and training providers can play an important role in converting existing digital familiarity into marketable skills that connect young people with both domestic and international opportunities. This is increasingly important as technological change and AI reshape labour markets and intensify the need for skills that match emerging forms of work.

The Gender Dimension

The gig economy may be particularly relevant to women, who often face barriers to conventional employment arising from childcare, eldercare, mobility, social expectations and rigid working arrangements. For mothers and women living outside major urban centres, fixed working hours and daily commuting can make formal employment difficult even when suitable jobs exist.

Digital gig work can provide greater flexibility, allowing women to undertake professional assignments from home or their communities and potentially serve international clients without relocating. As discussed in my earlier LSE South Asia article, this opportunity is most meaningful when supported by digital infrastructure, skills training, virtual work hubs, mentorship and appropriate institutional support. However, flexibility should expand women’s economic choices rather than simply add paid work to existing unpaid household responsibilities.

Pressure on Labour-Market Opportunity

The value of a job cannot be judged by salary alone, as commuting, working hours and household responsibilities can significantly affect its real economic value. Flexible digital work can potentially reduce some of these costs by allowing people to work from home or nearby digital hubs and participate in employment on a part-time or project basis. While gig work cannot solve all household pressures, a more flexible organisation of work can create additional employment opportunities while helping households manage their limited time and resources more effectively.

A Possible Third Option Between Unemployment and Migration

Sri Lanka’s migration and brain-drain concerns highlight the need to explore employment opportunities beyond the domestic labour market. While overseas migration will remain an important individual and economic choice, digital work can provide another pathway by allowing skilled Sri Lankans to serve international clients without physically leaving the country. Software developers, designers, analysts, researchers, translators and consultants can potentially earn from global markets while remaining in Sri Lanka. Digital gig work cannot eliminate migration or reverse brain drain, but it can create an additional option between domestic unemployment and physical migration—working for the world while remaining in Sri Lanka.

Recognising and Making Digital Work Reputable

A major institutional gap is that conventional systems are designed around salaried employment, while a freelancer may earn from multiple clients without a single employer or salary certificate. This can make legitimate digital workers difficult to recognise when they seek loans, leasing, insurance or business finance. Sri Lanka could address this through a voluntary digital-worker or independent-professional registration mechanism, providing a recognised economic identity based on qualifications, verified skills, platform activity and documented income, without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Such recognition should also make digital income bankable. Banks could assess verified platform earnings, bank transactions, contracts, invoices, tax records, savings and repayment history alongside conventional employment documents. A standardised digital income statement could further help workers demonstrate their financial capacity. The key shift is from asking “Who is your employer?” to asking “Can your income be verified and is it sufficiently stable?”. This would allow successful digital workers to build financial credibility and use their earnings to access credit, acquire assets and develop their own businesses.

Digital Payments Are Part of the Labour Market

Access to reliable international payment systems is essential if Sri Lankans are to participate effectively in the global digital economy. Recent developments in PayPal’s local banking arrangements, including its partnerships with Sampath Bank and Commercial Bank, indicate progress in this direction. However, the broader priority should be a regulated and efficient digital-payment ecosystem that allows workers to receive international earnings, transfer them to Sri Lankan bank accounts, document their income and meet relevant financial and tax requirements with minimal friction. International payment infrastructure is therefore not simply a technology issue; it is an essential component of Sri Lanka’s emerging services-export economy.

Building Infrastructure Outside Colombo

Digital familiarity alone is insufficient without reliable internet, electricity, computers, software and suitable working environments, particularly in rural and underserved areas. To ensure that the gig economy supports regional development rather than becoming another Colombo-centred opportunity, Sri Lanka could establish regional digital-work hubs through universities, vocational institutions, libraries and public-private partnerships. These hubs could provide connectivity, equipment, training, mentoring and assistance with platform registration and international payments. If graduates must migrate to Colombo simply to access such infrastructure, the geographical advantage of digital work is significantly reduced.

From Freelancer to Entrepreneur

Gig work should not be viewed as an end in itself. A person may begin with small online assignments, develop regular clients and professional credibility, and eventually establish a small digital enterprise. This creates a potential pathway from graduate to freelancer, professional service provider and entrepreneur, allowing individuals to create markets around their own skills rather than waiting for conventional vacancies. Universities can support this transition by teaching students not only subject knowledge but also portfolio development, market identification, client communication, digital platforms and contract management. A degree demonstrates educational attainment, while a professional portfolio demonstrates what a graduate can offer to the market.

Facilitation Must Be Matched by Protection

Promoting the gig economy without appropriate safeguards could simply transfer employment risks from institutions to individuals. Digital workers may face uncertain incomes, weak bargaining power and limited social protection. Sri Lanka should therefore facilitate digital work while also ensuring opportunities for independent workers to build savings, access insurance and participate in portable social-protection mechanisms. Flexibility should create greater economic choice without compromising long-term financial security, particularly for women.

A regional Example from India: Think Globally and act Locally

India provides a useful regional example of how the gig economy can be approached as a policy issue rather than simply as informal or temporary work. NITI Aayog has estimated the size and future employment potential of India’s gig and platform economy and has developed recommendations covering employment generation, skills, financial inclusion and social protection. More importantly, India has begun creating institutional mechanisms around these workers. Its e-Shram portal provides a national database of unorganised workers, including gig and platform workers, creating a recognised identity through which workers can potentially access employment, skills development and social-security services. India has also explored platform-led skills development through skill certificates, skill passports and on-the-job training, while NITI Aayog has proposed cash-flow-based lending models that could allow platform workers to demonstrate creditworthiness through their earnings rather than conventional employment or collateral.

Social protection has also entered the policy framework. India’s Code on Social Security, 2020 formally recognises gig and platform workers and provides a basis for schemes covering areas such as accident insurance, health, maternity, disability and old-age protection. India is still developing and refining these arrangements, and Sri Lanka need not replicate the Indian model.

However, the experience demonstrates an important policy lesson: the gig economy can be supported through a system that identifies workers, develops their skills, makes their income more visible to financial institutions and extends appropriate social protection. Sri Lanka could develop its own simpler framework suited to its smaller economy, beginning with recognising digital workers and building the institutional conditions that allow their skills and earnings to become part of the formal economy.

Rethinking Employment and the Next Opportunity

The 43 percent figure for educated young Sri Lankans should encourage a wider discussion about the changing nature of work. Sri Lanka will continue to need conventional employment through firms, industries, farms, professional organisations and public institutions, but the changing labour market also requires new opportunities to connect educated Sri Lankans with global digital markets. The gig economy can provide an additional pathway to increase female labour-force participation, reduce the pressure for migration and brain drain, and connect Sri Lankan skills with markets beyond geographical boundaries.

This does not require a complicated bureaucracy. It requires recognising legitimate digital workers, facilitating access to international platforms and payment systems, allowing verified digital income to support credit assessment, developing portable social protection, and strengthening digital infrastructure and skills beyond major urban centres. Better data on digital workers would also help policymakers develop evidence-based interventions.

The future of work is therefore not only about creating more jobs, but about creating more ways for Sri Lankans to work, earn and build livelihoods while continuing to live and contribute in Sri Lanka. The gig economy should be recognised as part of an emerging digital labour market and services-export economy, where workers can build professional identities, earn internationally, access finance and eventually develop their own enterprises.

Features

Are religions getting redundant in the modern world?

Published

21 hours ago

2026/09/25

Thilina Walpola

by Dr Upul Wijayawardhana

We are living in an era of astonishingly rapid scientific advancement. From the time Apple launched the ‘iPhone’ in January 2007, the first targeting the mass market, smartphones have taken over the world, making them indispensable. According to the latest statistics, there are around 8.1 billion mobile phones with 7.4 billion active smartphones, for the world population of 8.25 billion. Except for a tiny minority of the very poor, most people have at least one smartphone.

We are now entering the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smart robots. Recently, a ‘Chinese’ robot ran 100 metres faster than Usain Bolt! Though Alan Turing proposed the idea of ‘Thinking Machines’ way back in 1950, the real AI boom commenced with the release of the generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, by OpenAI in November 2020. Number of technology firms in the US as well as in China have joined the race, China catching up very fast, quite unexpectedly. There is a frenzy at the moment, raising expectations, as the imminent floating of these companies is likely to value the two leaders, OpenAI and Anthropic, trillion dollars each!

However, trouble is brewing in the AI field. On top of the concerns raised by environmentalists regarding the huge power drain by AI centres, there are recent reports of some AI models hacking independently into other systems, without human input. Worse still, a senior researcher at Anthropic, who has previously worked for OpenAI as well, resigned in early September on ethical grounds stating that the way the two companies are fast-tracking AI poses an existential threat to humanity. Surprisingly, instead of a rebuttal the head of Anthropic supported his view, soon joined by three more heads of leading AI developers. Whilst they agreed on slowing progress, President Trump has claimed that slowing is totally unnecessary as long as a super intelligent President like himself is at the helm! There does not seem to be an end to Trump’s grandiosity! He was joined by Tony Blair. In contrast, King Charles held a summit with representatives of all AI developers to find a way AI could be developed without a threat to humanity. That is how wise leaders act!

Less sophisticated AI tools are already in widespread use and installed in computers, laptops and smartphones. Some of us are using these automatically. However, the more advanced AI tools like ChatGPT can change even reality. For instance, AI can generate videos hardly distinguishable from real ones. What you enjoy watching on YouTube may be just the creations of AI! Some people use AI to write articles; only a few of them admit that they do so. Very soon we may be reading stories AI creates and listening to music, courtesy of AI. Technology seems to be fast becoming the new religion? Or, will the existential threat move us more towards religion?

Religion, perhaps, is as old as humanity itself; various belief systems evolving and disappearing coupled with the fortunes of the associated civilizations. Just like AI, religion is also a creation of the human mind which our ancestors did to explain many phenomena which appeared, at that time, to be supernatural. Starting with Animism, perceiving the divine in the natural world around, humans went on to Polytheism, believing in many gods like in Hinduism, culminating in the concept of Monotheism.

World’s oldest religion, Hinduism, still in wide practice, is devoid of a founder or a single text. The earliest scriptures, Rigveda, is considered to be around 3,500 years old but archaeologists have discovered symbols of importance to Hinduism as far back as 7,000 BCE. Though it is considered to be Polytheistic, it can be argued that it was the precursor of Monotheism, the concept of a creator God, as Brahma was the creator in the triad, Trimurti, Vishnu being the preserver and Shiva being the destroyer. It seems to be a sensible balancing act; create, destroy and repair with improvements.

It is pretty obvious that as science expands, the importance of religion contracts but it is hardly likely religions would be totally redundant. We have no choice as to which family we are born to and that invariably determines what your religion would be, if any. Religion is the first brainwashing a child encounters and most remain in the same faith, often trying to defend even the indefensible, but some change through conviction or conversion due to one of many reasons. Further, religious rituals have social values and religious practices often come to one’s solace at times of distress. Therefore, many will continue with the religion they were born to but with declining enthusiasm, at times. However, some religions seem to be facing problems like falling attendances in places of worship. With education and tech savviness expanding, one would expect the youth to be less enthusiastic about religion but the converse is true in some religions, some youth becoming very militant unfortunately.

While most religions make you subservient to a supernatural power, the Buddha was wise and bold enough to remove those shackles. He proclaimed that one’s destiny is in one’s own hands. However, many Buddhists appear to attach greater significance to rituals than to practising the Dhamma.

Buddhism as a religion may become less relevant as the frontiers of science expands but the Buddha Dhamma, especially Abhidhamma and Vipassana, would receive increasing recognition, the Buddha remaining an authority on consciousness and the mind.

Scientific progress should be for the betterment of society but AI developers are taking huge risks, taking massive loans threatening the world economy, for one aim: profit! Some do not seem to care even if their actions pose an existential threat to humanity.

Perhaps, if the Four Sublime Attitudes (Sathara Brahma Vihara) expounded by the Buddha; loving kindness (Metta), compassion (Karuna), empathetic joy (Muditha) and equanimity (Upekkha) are adopted as universal values, the world would become a safer place to live in, with or without AI.

Features

‘The Bullet that Missed’

Published

21 hours ago

2026/09/25

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 21

by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

Another book that is part of a series, today—one that is fun without the brooding concentration on criminality in different forms that marks the Rebus novels. This one about the Thursday Murder Club, is a romp as its two predecessors were interspersed with deaths and what might be deaths.

The Bullet that Missed

begins with a meeting with the presenter of ‘South East Tonight’, a programme about the area, in which Coopers Chase is situated. The meeting is held because the club has decided to look into the murder of the producer’s assistant, Bethany Waites, whose car was found at the bottom of a cliff ten years ago. There was blood in it, but the body was never found.

Or, rather, the book begins with an account of Bethany Waites deciding, on the night she vanished, to meet someone in connection with a case of massive fraud that she had been investigating, after sending the producer, Mike Waghorn, a message that she had found new evidence though he had no idea what it was. The night she died, she sent him another message: “I don’t say this often enough, but thank you.”

CCTV cameras showed her leaving her place, but then the vehicle vanished, before being sighted near the cliff, with two people in it. Investigation of the fraud had led to the imprisonment of a woman, Heather Garbutt, though it proved impossible to pin anything on Jack Mason, the mastermind for whom she had worked.

The Club conducts investigations on several fronts, including through Connie Johnson, the drug dealer they had helped imprison in the earlier book. The psychiatrist Ibrahim, the most respectable member of the Club, interviews her in an attempt to get her to find out more from Heather, who is in the same prison as she. They also investigate the CCTV record of the night Bethany vanished, and deduce that she went to an apartment block and exited from its other side, and that is why she was not seen leaving the town. But some time had elapsed between her being seen in the town and then on the cliff.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been kidnapped, along with her husband, and taken to a house in Staffordshire, where she is told by a man called the Viking that she must kill a former KGB agent now in London, who has a profitable career in money laundering. The Viking tells her he will inform Viktor that she was responsible for stealing the diamonds, the story of which is told in the previous Murder Club Mystery, and Viktor will then kill her.

Elizabeth, who has an affair with Viktor, knows he will not kill her, but when the Viking says he will also send Viktor a picture of Joyce, she decides she must act, and goes to see Viktor, and fires when she gets him in the bathroom. But, of course, she fired into the ceiling, and Viktor is then taken to Coopers Chase, to stay with Joyce until they have dealt with the Viking. And Viktor then enjoys the camaraderie of the retirement home so much that he wonders whether he too should settle there.

Elizabeth does trace the Viking, or rather her husband does, for he has noticed rare books on the shelves in his library, and an antiquarian book dealer friend managed to find out who bought them. But before they could confront him, he comes to Coopers Chase, for he has seen the bullet hole in the bathroom of Viktor’s flat and realized he was fooled.

But he cannot bring himself to kill Joyce straight away, and she knocks him out with a drug in a cup of tea. When he meets Viktor, they both decide to fall in with the plans of the Club.

Before this, Heather has been found dead in her cell, with a note saying that ‘they’ were going to kill her, and only Connie could help. Before that she had admitted that she was frightened to name the man behind the fraud. Jack Mason said the same, after Ron had won his confidence. The Club had deduced by then that the body was buried in the garden of Heather’s house which Jack had bought, after she had been jailed, and digging reveals a gun and money, but no body. Jack tells them that the mastermind had said that Bethany was buried with a bullet with his DNA on it.

The Club is now working with the Chief Constable of Kent, Andrew Everton, who writes thrillers himself, but in the form of e-books. He is in search of a publisher, and delighted when Mike Waghorn puts him on his programme, as is Donna, who is substituted at the last minute for Chris.

The Club finds out whom Bethany visited in the apartment block—Mike’s assistant Pauline, who tells them later what she and Bethany had been doing. But this is after the man behind the fraud has been unmasked up in the house in Staffordshire, where he was trying to hire the Viking and Viktor to find the money that he had stashed away, using accounts that he could no longer trace. He has also confessed to murdering Bethany, hoping this will persuade the two money launderers to help him, but it turns out that he did not do this. Nor did he kill Heather, the incriminating note having been placed in her room by Connie, who decided that Heather’s suicide should be treated as murder so that the person who had been blackmailing her should be found out.

It was Jack Mason’s murder that was brought home to the crook. It turns out that Bethany, her appearance altered by Pauline, has vanished, to a new life in Dubai, where she has taken control of the missing millions. She has gone there because the threat, she received through the bullet she was looking at in the preamble, was to Mike and she wanted him out of danger.

Yet another whimsical conclusion to a whimsical book with enough loose ends left hanging for another sequel.