Features

Ravana and a lost history

Published

1 year ago

2025/06/29

Thilina Walpola

Dunuvila

Book Review by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

Soon after I finished Ameena Hussein’s book about Ibn Battuta’s pilgrimage, I opened another that was similar in theme, though written about a period well over a thousand years prior to Ibn Battuta’s day. This was Ravana’s Lanka: The Landscape of a Lost Kingdom by Sunela Jayewardene.

The narrative of her journeys makes it clear that she is close to Ameena, for the two families have travelled together on their journeys of exploration, in the footsteps of the characters who inspired them. For Sunela there is no doubt at all that Ravana is not a mythical character, but a real king, who ruled a magnificent kingdom in Lanka long before the received history of this land, based on the Mahavamsa. She produces a whole range of evidence that more than substantiates her claim.

Even more than Ameena, understandably so for it suppressed the very basis of her argument, she takes issue with the Mahavamsa, which she notes has deliberately suppressed all evidence of a flourishing civilization in this land before Vijaya landed, around 2500 years ago. She cites example after example of sophisticated living indicated by archaeological evidence, and shows how this country was a centre of trade for ages before the simplistic narrative of a country based only on agriculture took over and suppressed all else.

The rest of the world had kept our memory alive. I had known about classical references to links with this country, but it was Sunela’s extensive research that made clear how deep these went, and how sophisticated was the world with which the west had dealt. I had known about the reputation of Lankan steel – and indeed contributed to affirming this through having persuaded the British Overseas Development Administration to fund Gill Juleff’s excavations which established the method of production – but I had not known that this reputation went back two thousand years.

I had known too of Siran Deraniyagala’s discoveries of urban dwelling at Anuradhapura well before its supposed establishment after Vijaya, but I had not known his father had suggested all this previously. Nor did I know of the extensive work done more recently by Robin Coningham, a fresh-faced youth I had been instrumental in bringing down in the early nineties, in the project we had built around Gill. Under the guidance of the redoubtable Raymond Allchin, he discovered much, which Sunela incorporates into her quietly revolutionary narrative.

The book moves through different perspectives, archaeology to begin with, with accounts of different sites, but also travels to sites the potential of which is only dimly discerned, and then collations of historical records, as well as of religious beliefs. Running through much of these is her conviction of a technologically advanced civilization, the most obvious evidence for which is the development of an irrigation system that employed skills which it took many centuries thereafter to establish on a modern scientific basis. And whereas I had known of this in terms of the systems that still function, she looks at their application to irrigation in the area between Anuradhapura and the coast around present day Mannar.

The links through irrigation, between Anuradhapura and the maritime civilization of Mannar, which Sunela describes, are subsumed in the area which is perhaps the most dramatically described in the book. She traces the outline of a large city set slightly back from the coast, which had been the focus of the trading activity of the port which had flourished around Mannar. She shows how its use was facilitated by the current flowing down past the Indian coast, and the shelter offered by Mannar island.

But she also notes how little work has been done in that area, what remains – such as the pillars of what is termed Kuveni’s palace in Wilpattu, which I saw for the first time five years ago – being left virtually untouched, not so much for conservation reasons as because finding more would upset the received history that the Mahavamsa lays down. This is nothing short of tragic, for suppression of the past is a mark of insecurity which inhibits further progress. One reason why I have admired Iran so much is that, while there is no doubt of its commitment to Islam, it celebrates its pre-Islamic past.

Sunela’s account of her explorations of stone pillars and burial sites in Wilpattu is fascinating, but so is her account of a place many miles away, Raksagala on the south east coast, which I had known nothing about previously. There lies the tomb of Arahat Mahinda who, after he had converted Devanampiya Tissa, in the well-known narrative of the Mahavamsa, retired to what had been a previously established monastery for the rest of his days. There is a vivid account of the genius of its landscaping, stairways as well as a host of well-appointed caves for meditation.

As Sunela puts it, such a long-established retreat shows the existence of a sustained civilization that predated not just the official advent of Buddhism but also the advent of the Sinhalese through Vijaya’s arrival. But though there was when she visited a small archaeological team in place, it is nothing like enough to explore the area in the depth it cries out for.

One element that shines through her narrative is the dedication to their work of the many members of the archaeological department she meets, not surprising given that their gurus were Siran, and Senaka Bandaranayake, and Sudharshan Seneviratne, whose commitment to truth was paramount. But publicizing their findings, and ensuring more discoveries, has not been managed at all effectively by those who decide on received wisdom, and sadly none of this is taught in schools. There what I termed the Anuradhapura-centric concept of this land, as I termed it when I tried so hard to change things, still dominates – though I now realise that it is not just Anuradhapura-centric, it relies on a vision of Anuradhapura that Anuradhapura itself, that magnificent city older than time, sustained in its grandeur for well over a millennium, would not itself understand.

The steady accumulation of the evidence Sunela has gathered, on the ground and in different narratives, establishes beyond doubt the accuracy of her principal thesis, namely the existence well before Vijaya, and well before Buddhism began – and she argues that it had arrived in Sri Lanka long before the conversion of Devanampiya Tissa, following visits of the Buddha himself – of an advanced civilization in this country.

Less unquestionable is her account of how that civilization developed. She believes that there were indigenous inhabitants here from prehistoric times, but she also argues that there were then waves of immigrants, who came across the sea and also by land from what she loosely describes as Persian areas, beyond the Indus. They she believes, though through interactions with the wisdom of those whose lands they came through or to, developed both the Indus civilization, and that of Lanka

She declares that in the period preceding recorded history, this land was inhabited by three tribes, the Rakusas, the Nagas and the Yakas. The first were the original inhabitants, who contributed their detailed knowledge of the land to the civilization that developed. The last were the dominant race, deriving from Persian immigration though with a healthy admixture of Rakusas, whose contribution to the physical basis of technological achievement – metallurgy for instance and the lie of the land – was invaluable, and which led to partnership in the national heritage, albeit at a lower level.

Different from these were the Nagas, who in an imaginative leap that is nevertheless most convincing she places on the coast, the repositories of a maritime culture they had derived from the voyages from other lands which had led to their settlement here. She argues convincingly that they dominated the Kelaniya kingdom, where the Buddha had preached – before going on to the Yaka kingdom in the hills – and that they were the people from whom Vihara Maha Devi and thence her son Dutugemunu derived.

All this is convincingly laid out in the second part of the book, entitled ‘Divided we fall’. That had been preceded by a description of the transition from cave dwellers to urbanization, though it is heralded by an account of the situation of the island and how and why migration had played such a large part in its development. Reading her account, one realizes how laughable it is to suppose that Vijaya was one of a kind, and that his advent brought civilization to a primitive dispensation. Indeed, she notes that the very fact that Kuveni was weaving suggests that Lanka had moved far beyond the simple life of the first cave dwellers and nomads.

The last section of the second part is about the Arya Sinhala and recounts how Vijaya’s advent led to consolidation of a kingdom at Anuradhapura of which he was seen as the only begetter. And that perhaps was true as far as Anuradhapura went as a capital, though Sunela also makes clear its long history as a trading centre between east and west.

The capital, Sunela argues, had been in the hills before Vijaya arrived. The third part of the book is entitled ‘The Time of the Yakas, but it is the shortest, and has just the one chapter, ‘Ravana of the Mayurangas’. Sunela claims that the Mayurangas were born of marriages of Yakas and Rakusas, and notes that Ravana’s mother was a Rakusa princess: in a footnote she mentions that, as late as the time of the Kandyan kingdom, crown princes were married to the daughters of Veddha chieftains, which she believes a reprise of this old tradition.

This chapter darts about the past, but interestingly, for instance in its assertion that Ravana married a princess from Gujarat – a link between what Sunela has described as Persian immigrants, who settled in various places on the long route southward – and that her father was the renowned architect mentioned in the Mahabharata as having built the palace of the Pandavas. But all this, featuring a close link between characters in the two great Indian epics, is shadowy, a prey to Sunela’s habit of not clearly identifying her sources. Rather she employs a discursive style, here and throughout the book, with annotations rather than footnotes, for instance simply declaring here that ‘Oral histories in Gujarat and Rajasthan maintain the presence of the Yaka and even feature King Ravana’.

Given that Sunela’s principal thesis is the suppression of history that does not fit in with a dominant narrative, one can understand her reliance on what is described as oral history and traditions. But it would have been more convincing had she cited the record of the name of Queen Mandodhari’s father in the Ramayana as well as in the Mahabharata, and also her evidence for the manner in which Ravana inherited the kingdom from Kumba Karna his half-brother, and how she relates that name to Kuvera, deified as a symbol of wealth.

This type of sliding over interesting elements is what makes one wish she had had a better editor – who might also then have ensured that she wrote in sentences, rather than in hanging clauses, designed perhaps to enhance the intensity of her narrative but more likely arising from carelessness. Unfortunately, I suspect she intended the book to be simply a record of a personal quest, rather like Ameena’s account of Ibn Batutta’s travels. But whereas that was clearer in its admittedly less momentous argument, and well evidenced, this reads at times like the retailing of a personal mythology, drawing strands from all over but leaving a lot of loose ends.

Still, these are undoubtedly fascinating. Thus, Kubera’s next startling appearance in the book, as a squat figure in relief at the top of the Nalanda Gedige. Sunela compares this to Cambodian architecture, and dates it to the last Mahayana era, noting erotica but also ‘the only officially accepted identification of any character related to the Mayuranga dynasty’. But when she asks, ‘Who revered Ravana’s sibling?’ one realizes she has allowed predilection to triumph over science – unlike the Yakas she praised – and leaped from Kumba Karna to an Asian symbol of wealth to reverence for Ravana’s brother.

Her account of the Nalanda Gedige occurs in the fourth part of the book, ‘The Landscape of a Lost Kingdom’, which relates her travels to different parts of the island in search of traces of Ravana and of the prehistoric period. I have already mentioned her account of the grand trading city on the northwest coast and the quiet monastic retreat in the south east. Then she also writes about Anuradhapura, with a striking account of the discoveries of the team led by Robin Coningham, and about the surroundings in the Dumbara Valley of the assumed location of Ravana’s palace and its defences.

She talks about Budhuruvagala, that beautiful Mahayana monastery near Monaragala, about cemeteries in Wilpattu around her grand western city, and also about Adam’s Peak. Here she cites a possible reason for it having been held sacred by so many for so long, and its alleged proximity to paradise: it seems it is in the place on the earth where gravity is least forceful, which would explain the assumption that it was a possible take off point for the heavens.

She also describes here what I gather was also put forward in her first book, The Line of Lanka, that the mountain is at the centre of lines that connect four shrines sacred to God Saman, the titular deity of the mountain. She argues that he is derived from Rama’s brother Lakshmana, who was left to look after the land soon after Ravana had been conquered, though he soon went back to join his brother in India, leaving the kingdom to Ravana’s brother Vibhishana, who had joined Rama.

Sunela claims that the four shrines, including the famous devale near Ratnapura, are at the ends of a cross, centred on Adam’s Peak. Earlier she had shown that the Nalanda Gedige was at the very centre of the island. This mathematical precision she claimed was evidence for the technological capacity of the Yakas – and not only did this allow them to measure across mountains, they were also able to measure across seas, for she takes the line on to an island in the Maldives which has ruins reminiscent of the tomb of Mahinda at Raksagala.

After the tour de force of this fourth part, Sunela comes to ‘The Death of a King’, and describes vividly the way she believes Rama overcame Ravana. She argues that his bow shot not an arrow but some sort of explosive, and she describes the collapse of part of the mountain where Ravana was supposed to have had his palace. She notes the collapse of the entrance to a cave through which Ravana’s son Indrajit was, she argues, coming to the support of a garrison. Her case she believes is strengthened by the tales of villagers in the area, around the lake of Dunvila, ‘the lake of the bow’, by which she has a home, for whom Ravana’s kingdom is still a historical rather than mythical reality.

She is condign in her criticism of Vibhishana, to whom Rama left the kingdom, who she argues was hated, so that it was not surprising it was in a shambles when a few decades later Vijaya appeared. But even more interesting is her suggestion that Ravana had not lusted after Sita, but was instead trying to rescue his long-lost daughter – sent away when it was foretold that she would destroy the kingdom – when he heard she was living in the jungles.

What Sunela does not do is connect Sita with a daughter of Ravana, who is attested in an inscription as having gifted a cave to the Sangha on a rocky outcrop in Kumana in the southeast of the country. Her name was Shohili, and one wonders if she might have been the daughter left behind when Sita was sent away.

Such speculation is in line with the joyous creativity of the book. It is well worth reading, and most informative, though I do wish standard practices had been followed, including an index, to make it easier to absorb, and also to render the links Sunela makes easier to follow.

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Features

Human dignity comes centre stage in Afghan refugee deportation crisis

Published

4 hours ago

2026/09/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Afghan refugees in bordering countries: ‘Long-suffering’ . Copyright: AFP or licensors, Credit

The mounting mute and unmitigated suffering of the ordinary people of Afghanistan is coming to the fore once again in ongoing efforts by some neighbouring states to deport tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to their country of origin. As in the case of the majority of refugees the world over the Afghan refugees too are caught up in cataclysmic wars and conflicts not at all of their making.

International reports indicate that some six million Afghan refugees have been virtually pressured, to date, to return to Afghanistan by Pakistan and Iran, for instance, on the basis apparently of stringent policies on refugees adopted by the latter. Many refugees are on record that although they are officially identified as of Afghan origin this is the first occasion on which they are seeing the inside of Afghanistan, since thus far they have been living, particularly in Pakistan, as virtual natives of the latter.

‘They are part of the biggest cross border movement of people in recent history, a UNHCR source was quoted saying. However, barring the latter UN agency and a few well wishers, the refugees are being seen as a virtual parasitic and unwanted presence by sections of the publics who have thus far been compelled to have the refugees among them.

The refugees’ haplessness is compounded by the fact that they have been reduced to almost destitution. Having possessed virtually nothing by way of material assets they are getting back to Afghanistan a dis-empowered, dispossessed people.

For well over a century Afghanistan has been at the centre of the big power rivalries of South Asia. The country has been intensely coveted by the majority of major extra-regional powers from the turn of the last century primarily on account of its strategic geographical location, besides some of its natural resources.

Those powers that gain a military foothold in the country would be enabled to bring the majority of Afghanistan’s neighbours within their sphere of influence and power. Some of these are, China, Pakistan, Iran and India. Besides there are the one time Soviet Central Asian Republics, control over whom would be of considerable value, from a number of viewpoints, to expansionist powers.

These attractions account for the appeal Afghanistan has continued to exercise over the majority of extra-regional powers whose presence has proved decisive in the shaping of international politics over the decades. Those powers who have featured majorly and are continuing to do so are, the US, Russia, China and the UK to a lesser degree.

However, the Afghan refugee issue or the ‘Long- suffering’ of the ordinary people of Afghanistan could be considered as having gained exceptional prominence with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan of 1979.

The latter event needs to be seen as a notable turning point in the last century’s international politics. The initial disintegrative cracks in the Soviet Union were beginning to appear and Islamic fundamentalism was seen by the Soviet authorities as making divisive inroads into their Central Asian Republics.

The influence of Islamic fundamentalism had to be stymied following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and Afghanistan came to be seen by the Soviet authorities as a potential hotbed of such religious revolutionary fervour. Thus came about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its subsequent degeneration into a military quagmire for both the Soviet Union and the US.

Thus it was only a matter of time before Afghan refugees began to swell in numbers in neighbouring states. They were haplessly caught up in the ‘cross-fire’ between the Soviet backed Afghan security forces and the Afghan militant resistance which evolved into the Taliban.

As is known, the Afghan resistance came to be armed and backed by the US subsequent to Afghanistan being over-run by the Soviet Union. Thus, Afghanistan became the last proxy war theatre in the long -running Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. More than a decade of blood-letting convinced the Soviets that there was no choice but to quit Afghanistan.

Thus, to a considerable extent, the Afghan refugees are the victims of big power armed rivalries which are continuing to render the world a most ‘dangerous place’ for ordinary people. The UN agencies seem to be doing their best for the refugees of Afghanistan and most other refugee categories but the continued humiliation of such victims of war would need to be mitigated by the international community to the extent possible. Forcible deportation of refugees in particular may need to be eschewed and outlawed.

Being subjected to an acid test at this juncture is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is the latter seminal convention that made the protection of human dignity a cardinal value for the world community.

All those sections that subscribe to international humanitarian law and democratic opinion world wide need to come together, may be under the aegis of the UN, to work out how primacy could be attached to the UDHR and its principal mandate of protecting and perpetuating human dignity and worth.

This is no easy challenge to meet but it needs to be addressed urgently before currently rampant ‘international disorder’ grows well out of control.

The US and Russia are especially obliged to go to the rescue of the Afghan refugees since the Afghan crisis is of their making to a considerable extent but no help could be expected from them because their governments are strongly right wing in orientation. It would be far-fetched to expect of them a strong social conscience.

However, the UN and like-minded organizations need to dialogue strongly with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with a view to bettering the well being of Afghan civilians. No longer could the lot of the latter be allowed to be dismissed by the Taliban government as ‘an internal matter.’

If the Taliban regime is being assisted by the UN, the former is strongly obliged to be accountable to the international community. The UN would need to non-obtrusively convince the Taliban government that it cannot ignore the essential needs of its civilian populace and the empowering of women forms a central component of this broad programme of work. The UN’s diplomatic finesse needs to come to figure here in a major way.

Refugees everywhere should ideally be re-accommodated in their countries of origin or native lands. However, unless and until their dignity is ensured by governments and other quarters that matter such endeavours would prove to be self-defeating.

Features

A Defence Minister after 38 years: Partnership without capture

Published

5 hours ago

2026/09/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake with Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s arrival in Colombo is not a ceremonial call. It is the political face of a security relationship that has been rebuilt, layer by layer, since 2024. Sri Lanka should take the capability on offer, and keep the right to say no.

by Mahil Dole
Senior Superintendent of Police (Retd.)

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is in Colombo for a three-day official visit, the first by an Indian Defence Minister in 38 years. The last such call was by K. C. Pant in 1988. That long silence itself tells a story. For nearly four decades, defence business between the two neighbours was handled by service chiefs, training colleges and quiet staff talks. New Delhi has now chosen to put a political minister at the centre of the relationship, and to do so immediately after a dense sequence of Indian visits and against a harder contest in the Indian Ocean.

The visit will be read, in Delhi, Beijing and Washington, as a signal. Our task in Colombo is narrower and more serious: to convert the signal into national capability without converting the island into a platform.

Not an isolated visit

Singh’s programme is the latest layer in an unusually concentrated Indian engagement since President Anura Kumara Dissanayake assumed office in September 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit in April 2025 was the first by any foreign head of government after the new presidency. Seven documents were signed. Among them was the first comprehensive India–Sri Lanka Defence Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding, a five-year umbrella covering joint exercises, training, port calls, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, information exchange and possible defence-industry cooperation. Either side may terminate it with three months’ notice. That exit clause is not a detail. It is the difference between a structured partnership and a treaty alliance.

What followed was a rhythm, not a one-off. The eighth Annual Defence Dialogue was held in Colombo in June 2025. The Indian Navy Chief called in September 2025. After Cyclone Ditwah, India arrived as a first responder and later announced a reconstruction package of some 450 million US dollars; External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar came as Special Envoy. In January 2026 the Indian Army Chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, handed over vehicles and training aids, opened a friendship corner at the Defence Services Command and Staff College, and laid a wreath at the IPKF memorial in Battaramulla. The Indian Vice-President visited in April. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri was in Colombo on 5 August with rupee lines of credit for railways and other priorities. Later that month, Sri Lanka’s Navy Commander, Vice-Admiral Damian Fernando, made his first overseas visit in command, to New Delhi, and met the Chief of Defence Staff, the Defence Secretary and the Navy Chief.

Singh therefore arrives not as a stranger opening a file, but as the political seal on work already in motion. He met President Dissanayaie, who holds the defence portfolio, the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary. The itinerary also takes in the IPKF memorial, the Defence Ministry, the parliamentary precincts, Gangaramaya Temple, a likely reception on an Indian Navy ship, the National Defence College, and the Sita Amman Kovil in Nuwara Eliya. Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha has said relations have “never been better” in decades. The visit calendar, at least, is not an invention.

What already stands on the defence floor

It is important to be precise about what already exists, so that we do not mistake institutionalisation for a sudden tilt.

Training is the deepest bond. India is the largest foreign trainer of the Sri Lankan armed forces, offering on the order of a thousand to twelve hundred vacancies a year. One naval accounting records more than two thousand Sri Lankan naval personnel passing through Indian courses over nine years. Shared classrooms produce shared language, shared drills and personal networks that outlast any single government. Reports ahead of this visit point to three new memoranda, one likely on air-defence guns, one on cadet-corps links, and one on cooperation between the Sri Lanka Defence College and Indian defence institutions. If signed, those instruments would push the relationship into the next generation of officers, not only today’s operators.

Exercises are now routine rather than ceremonial. The twelfth edition of SLINEX, the bilateral naval exercise, was held in Colombo from 14 to 18 August 2025, with a harbour phase of professional exchanges and a sea phase of gunnery, boarding, replenishment and communications. MITRA SHAKTI, the army exercise with air elements, held its eleventh edition in Belagavi last November. A fourth bilateral diving exercise was conducted in Colombo in April 2026. The two navies and coast guards continue International Maritime Boundary Line meetings. An Indian Navy Dornier was based here for maritime surveillance from August 2022 to August 2025. A Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre was commissioned with an Indian grant of about six million dollars. INS Vikrant and INS Udaygiri took part in the International Fleet Review marking the Sri Lanka Navy’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

None of this is trivial. None of it, by itself, is alignment. Hardware, hours at sea and staff-college seats are instruments. What they become depends on command, data and political purpose.

National security questions that matter

Three questions should govern Colombo’s handling of the Indian Defence Minister’s visit.

The first is maritime domain awareness. Sri Lanka’s core security geography is not a land frontier. It is the exclusive economic zone and the sea lanes that pass our shores. The live threats are narcotics, people-smuggling, illegal fishing, and the possible relocation of cyber-fraud compounds. Conventional naval war is not on this year’s operational list. Indian help with sensors, hydrography, diving, boarding drills and search-and-rescue is therefore rational. The test is who owns the picture. Shared awareness is useful. Exclusive dependence on one partner’s fusion centre is a vulnerability. Australia’s Disi Rela programme against irregular maritime movement, Japanese passage exercises, and the United States capacity support, cutters, aircraft, humanitarian exercises, already exist. They should remain in the mix. Maritime security should be a Sri Lankan-led coalition of convenience, not an Indian franchise.

The second is the air and coastal defence gap. Talk of Indian air-defence guns is not abstract after the 2026 conflict in West Asia reached our own waters, the sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Galle, and later Iranian hulls lingering near the exclusive economic zone. The government’s public line was the correct one: no combat use of our territory, airspace or waters by any party; humanity first; sailors rescued. That posture only works if the state can see, and if necessary contest, its approaches. Accepting guns, radars or training is compatible with an independent foreign policy if command, basing and rules of engagement remain Sri Lankan. Integrating them into another country’s kill-chain would not be.

The third is internal security. Easter Sunday accountability, narcotics networks that run through ports and prisons, and communal peace are not separate from geopolitics. Partners price political risk. A state that cannot govern its harbours, its financial system and its extremist ecosystems will be offered “help” that looks like tutelage. India’s interest in counter-terror coordination and drugs overlaps with genuine Sri Lankan needs. The discipline required is the same as in any sound intelligence relationship: cooperate on targets; do not outsource the service.

The wreath at the IPKF memorial will be watched, as it was when the Indian Army Chief stood there in January. The years 1987 to 1990 remain raw in our political memory. The only stable line is professional honour to the dead, not a political rehabilitation of an intervention that divided this country.

How the region will read Colombo

India’s motive is not mysterious. Sri Lanka sits on the approaches to India’s southern seaboard. Chinese commercial and dual-use presence at Hambantota and Colombo Port City, and continuing engagement with the People’s Liberation Army Navy, is the backdrop. Pakistani naval units calling at Colombo, including a Chinese-built Hangor-class submarine earlier this year, only sharpen New Delhi’s preference for a denser security habit with us. Neighbourhood First and MAHASAGAR, Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions, are the language. The operational aim is that extra-regional navies do not treat Sri Lankan harbours as a default logistics base against Indian interests.

Our motive should be equally clear, and different. Geography makes India the permanent neighbour. Crisis behaviour, liquidity and fuel in 2022, the cyclone in 2025, the energy and remittance shock of 2026, has already shifted public sentiment. That is a political fact. It does not require Colombo to adopt India’s threat picture of China, or to freeze other relationships.

A workable posture is polyalignment with a spine. India is the deepest security and connectivity partner, domain awareness, disaster response, training, Trincomalee energy cooperation, grid links and rupee credit, on the condition that ports, exclusive economic zone access and intelligence fusion remain under Sri Lankan law. China remains a major economic and infrastructure partner; new exclusive strategic footholds should not be created, and debt and operational control must stay visible. The United States, Japan, Australia and Europe matter for markets, green shipping, extra training pipelines and non-traditional maritime threats. Ordinary naval diplomacy with Pakistan and others is manners, not signalling.

The government’s stated doctrine, an independent policy that does not favour any country, and territory that will not be used against a third party, is the right public frame. This week will test whether that frame can coexist with deeper, more structured Indian defence cooperation. It can, if the new memoranda are capability contracts with exit clauses, not political alignment documents.

Take help. Keep the choice

Colombo should treat the expected instruments as a capability audit.

On air defence, welcome sensors and guns that Sri Lanka can man, maintain and switch off. Reject any arrangement that requires foreign crews, foreign rules of engagement, or data that only flows one way. In cadet corps and staff colleges, take the training and keep a parallel pipeline with other professional schools so that the officer corps is not a single-source product. On the 2025 Defence Memorandum, measure implementation by Sri Lankan readiness, hours of maritime coverage, time-to-rescue, interdiction rates in the exclusive economic zone, disaster lift, not by the number of Indian ship-days in harbour.

Joint training should emphasise humanitarian assistance, counter-narcotics, hydrography, diving and lawful boarding. Those are the missions that serve the public and do not lock us into someone else’s contingency. Scenarios that only make sense in an India–China or India–Pakistan crisis should be declined politely and firmly.

Defence talks must also be bound to the prosperity agenda. Trincomalee as an energy and industrial node, electricity interconnection, port productivity and cyclone reconstruction are where security cooperation either pays the citizen or looks like militarisation. A Defence Minister’s visit that produces only wreaths and signed paper will be read in the region as alignment. A visit that also moves energy storage, disaster systems and maritime safety will be read as statecraft.

I write as a former police officer who spent a working lifetime on intelligence, counter-terrorism and the unglamorous work of keeping a multi-religious island in one piece. Geography gave us a seat at the table of Indian Ocean commerce and security. Institutions, energy policy, port performance and social cohesion will decide whether that seat produces prosperity, or merely more invitations to other people’s contests.

Singh’s visit should be received with courtesy, used with discipline, and remembered for what it adds to Sri Lanka’s ability to stand on its own water. Take the neighbour’s hand. Keep the island’s choices. Make sure every exercise, every gun and every training slot leaves us more able to say no the next time a great power asks to use our sea, our air or our soil. (18 sources)

This analysis is offered in the interest of national security, institutional reform, and public safety)

The writer is a retired Senior Superintendent of Police. He served as Deputy Director in charge of the Counter Terrorism Desk, State Intelligence Service, and later as Intelligence Coordinator to the Inspector General of Police. He is the author of Security Beyond Enforcement: Practical Approaches for a Safer Nation.

Features

Lost for 90 years: Rare Goby resurfaces in Jaffna

Published

5 hours ago

2026/09/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Discovery site Karainagar, Karaitivu Island

Rediscovery highlights rich, unexplored aquatic biodiversity in Northern Province

By Ifham Nizam

A small fish that vanished from Sri Lanka’s scientific records for nearly 90 years has resurfaced in the waters of Jaffna, providing researchers with a remarkable rediscovery and fresh evidence that the Northern Province still holds significant, unexplored aquatic biodiversity.

The Yellow-stripe Goby, Mugilogobius chulae (Smith, 1932), was recently found in the Karainagar area of Karaitivu Island during a biodiversity survey, almost nine decades after it was last scientifically recorded from Sri Lanka.

The discovery is particularly significant because the species had previously been known from the country only through a single historical specimen collected from Pedduru Thuduwa, Jaffna.

Discovery moment

Research scientist Janamina Bandara, a member of the team that made the discovery, told The Island that the fish was not initially identified as the long-lost species.

“We came across an unidentified Goby during our fieldwork, and it was only after a detailed examination of its external morphology that we were able to establish its identity as Mugilogobius chulae,” Bandara said.

“For us, it was an exciting moment because this species had not been confirmed from Sri Lanka for almost 90 years.”

The fish has a particularly interesting history in Sri Lankan ichthyology.

In 1936, renowned Sri Lankan zoologist P. E. P. Deraniyagala described a new fish from Pedduru Thuduwa in Jaffna in his paper,

“Two New Fishes from Ceylon”, published in The Ceylon Journal of Science.

He named the species Vaimosa valigouva. Subsequent taxonomic revisions established that Vaimosa valigouva was a synonym of Mugilogobius chulae, the currently accepted scientific name of the Yellow-stripe Goby.

However, no further confirmed records emerged from Sri Lanka for decades.

With the species absent from subsequent surveys and inventories, it eventually disappeared from the country’s national fish lists and from much of the scientific literature relating to Sri Lankan fishes.

The prolonged lack of records was also closely linked to the difficulties of conducting biological research in northern Sri Lanka.

Yellow-stripe Goby, Mugilogobius chulae

For decades, the civil conflict, restricted access, security concerns and limited opportunities for field surveys prevented scientists from systematically investigating many of the region’s aquatic habitats.

Consequently, while considerable advances were made in documenting biodiversity elsewhere in the island, northern Sri Lanka remained comparatively poorly explored.

Bandara said the rediscovery should, therefore, be viewed in a much wider context than the finding of a single fish.

He told The Island: “An absence of records does not necessarily mean that a species is absent. In the case of northern Sri Lanka, there have been enormous gaps in field data because large areas could not be studied systematically for many years.”

“This finding demonstrates how important it is to return to these habitats and carry out detailed surveys. There could be many more species, range extensions and rediscoveries waiting to be documented.”

The research team’s findings did not end with the Yellow-stripe Goby.

During the same study, the researchers also documented the Black-spotted Snubnose Goby, Pseudogobius melanostictus (Day, 1876), providing what they describe as the first confirmed northernmost record of the species in Sri Lanka.

The species had previously been reported mainly from lagoonal and brackish coastal environments in the western part of the country, while recent verified records were limited.

The new finding consequently extends the known geographical range of Pseudogobius melanostictus and adds an important northern record to Sri Lanka’s fish fauna.

Together, the two findings significantly expand the known distribution of both Goby species within Sri Lanka.

They also highlight the importance of small and often overlooked coastal, tidal and inland aquatic habitats in documenting the island’s biodiversity.

Goby species are generally small fishes that occupy a variety of marine, brackish and freshwater environments. Their habitats can include rocky shores, tidal pools, lagoons, estuaries, mangroves and other transitional aquatic ecosystems.

Black-spotted Snubnose Goby, Pseudogobius melanostictus

Because of their small size and preference for habitats that are often overlooked during large-scale biodiversity surveys, some Goby species can remain undocumented for long periods.

The latest research is, therefore, particularly relevant to understanding the aquatic biodiversity of the Jaffna Peninsula and surrounding islands.

According to Bandara, the discovery also demonstrates the importance of combining historical scientific literature with modern field research.

“The old records gave us an important historical reference, while the current fieldwork allowed us to connect that history with what is actually present in these habitats today,” he said.

The rediscovery of Mugilogobius chulae effectively reconnects modern Sri Lankan ichthyological research with Deraniyagala’s 1936 record.

It also establishes the new finding as the westernmost known occurrence of the species in the Indian Ocean, according to the researchers.

The study’s authors — Janamina Bandara, Sahan Randeniya and Aravind Manoj — say their findings underline the need for continued biological surveys in northern Sri Lanka.

The region’s aquatic ecosystems remain insufficiently studied, particularly in areas that were inaccessible or difficult to investigate for extended periods.

Bandara said the team expected that further exploration could produce more unexpected findings.

“We should not assume that we have a complete picture of Sri Lanka’s fish diversity. Particularly in the north, there are habitats that have received very little scientific attention,” he said.

“Every field survey can potentially change what we know about the distribution of a species. That is why continued exploration and proper documentation are so important.

The researchers have expressed particular concern about the need to document such species before changes to their habitats make future identification more difficult.

Coastal development, changes in water quality, habitat degradation and other pressures can affect small aquatic ecosystems, making baseline biodiversity information increasingly important for conservation planning.

The latest study, therefore, provides not merely two new distribution records but also a reminder of the value of maintaining and updating national biodiversity inventories.

The researchers thanked Dr. Helen Larson, Rohan Pethiyagoda, Madhura de Silva, Dr. Kasun Bandara and Neluka Fernando for their assistance with various aspects of the study.