Features

The Aftermath of Empire – Reappraisal and Reconciliation (Part 1)

Published

5 years ago

2021/03/7

by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe*

*The author is an Honorary Professor at the University of Buckingham, UK, at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, and also at the National Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka.

He was a former Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, Staff Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, and former Professor at Cardiff University. He is a pioneer of the discipline of Astrobiology and the author of over 450 scientific papers and some 35 books.

In our post-colonial modern world, the restoration of unity and harmony in our ethnically diverse multicultural polities stands out as an important priority. However, we have another task we cannot neglect – to explore and sift the enormous treasures of ancient wisdom and knowledge that have come to light following a long colonial history. An impartial assessment of competing paradigms would be of crucial importance for progress.

The British Empire finally ended in India in 1947, and a year later in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Its legacy – including the use of the English language pervades the modern world. But we also see many unresolved conflicts – conflicts between races in our newly generated polities, as well as clashes between competing paradigms. This article will explore a personal perspective of the decolonisation process focussing in particular on the Indian subcontinent. In this context it is relevant to declare my own personal background. I am very much a part of the British Empire, having grown up in the crown colony of Ceylon during the twilight years of the Raj. I went to a school (Royal College Colombo) that was modelled on Eton, learning Greek and Latin, but regretfully less of my own native mother tongue and culture. My early upbringing epitomises what the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (AD56-120) famously said of conquered people – that they readily adopt novelties of the conqueror’s ‘civilization’ whilst in fact they were adopting features of their own enslavement.

Two generations of my ancestors have epitomised this connection. My paternal grandfather Dionicious Lionel had worked in the office of the Governor General Sir Reginald Edward Stubbs for which he was later honoured with the title Mohandirum. My father Percival Herbert**, who was a Cambridge-trained mathematician obtaining the highest distinctions in the Mathematical Tripos in the 1930’s (being taught by Sir Arthur Eddington), went on to become an Indian Civil Servant with his first posting as “Deputy Collector of Customs” in the Bihar state in India. With such a background and education a more colonially-oriented upbringing could not be imagined. To cap it all my arrival in Cambridge in 1960 and the start of my long career as an astronomer and astrobiologist in the UK began with the award of a Commonwealth Scholarship, a scholarship scheme that was presumably launched as part of a process of post-colonial atonement. However, the process of decolonisation at a much deeper level, which involves accommodation and acceptance of a diversity of races as well as ideas has still a long way to go.

Injustices of Empire

British rule in India has been variously described as benevolent and generous on one the one hand, and replete with cruelty, plunder and pillage on the other. The truth lies somewhere in between. However, the evidence of cruelty, of punitive taxation and concerted attempts at de-industrialising of India throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries abound.

In the pursuance of purely commercial objectives the British administration in India has carried out many acts of violence and cruelty that in modern times would be deemed violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. These include the extraction of punitive taxation from the population of Bengal during two major famines that led to the deaths of millions of people. There was also the deliberated flooding of rice paddy fields in the coastal plains of Ceylon rendering the land unsuitable for paddy cultivation, done it would seem for the sole purpose of enhancing demand for the Empire’s new rice plantations in Burma; and the illegal sale of opium to China leading to addiction and great distress. The impoverished state of the subcontinent when the British finally left India in 1947 was at least in part due the imperial encounter of the preceding 3 centuries.

In my view, one of the most regrettable aspects of colonial rule both in India and Sri Lanka was its implementation of a policy of divide and rule – divide et impera (one that has been originally attributed to the father of Alexander the Great – Emperor Phillip II of Macedon (359-366BC)). The effect of imposing such a policy was to make it easier for the British to rule a religiously and ethnically diverse group of subjects; but on their eventual departure it undoubtedly contributed to many tragic events. The partition of India and its regrettable fallout had roots in the divide et impera policy, as did the ethnic conflicts that erupted between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka in the 1980’s.

Deep History of Empire

Empires in one form or other have existed throughout the history of human civilization. It is a process of colonisation that probably started in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and the Indus region over four thousand years ago. The formation of empires has always brought far-flung peoples and races together under a common banner, and this contributed to the spread of technological and intellectual discoveries over ever larger parts of the globe. But these advantages were often gained at the expense of much hardship and suffering, a feature that tends to go unnoticed in the euphoria of triumphant victories and achievement. We all know that in the recent history of empire, which included genocide, slavery and racism, amongst other evils, there is a great deal that is to be regretted. There is also much to be celebrated. I would not be writing this article in English if it was not for the British Raj that had once coloured a third of the world in its red vermilion hue and dominated world history for at least four centuries (Fig.1).

The British Empire and its European counterparts can all trace their cultural ancestry back to the Roman Empire that had dominated for a full millennium, and before that to the city states of classical Greece – “The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome”. Beyond this point in history our westernised collective cultural memory conveniently begins to falter. What about the Persian Empire that preceded the Greeks, and the Mesopotamian and Indus Valley civilisations in the preceding two millennia? It was these most ancient civilizations that had indep0endently laid down the framework for mathematics, science as well as literature.

This is the point at which a Eurocentric culture with its built-in prejudices begin to assert itself most stridently.

Unravelling of Ancient wisdom

There is now little doubt that the Babylonians knew Pythagoras’s theorem and had even invented calculus by at least the 2^nd millennium BCE. These were probably used as tools both for their development of city planning, surveying and engineering, as well as in nurturing their interest in astronomy. The Indians and the Indus valley civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa at about the same time bear a similar testimony to a highly sophisticated scientific culture that included the invention of the so-called Hindu number system with concepts of zero and infinity, both of which were crucial for the later flourishing of mathematics. Throughout the middle ages, long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the cumbersome system of Roman numerals continued to be used throughout Europe for arithmetic as well as for accounts for purely chauvinistic reasons. When the far better ancient system of Hindu numerals came to be discovered in Europe the reluctance to switch to this system is well documented.

The Arab mathematician Al-Khwarizmi in the 9th century was among the first to use Hindu numerals but it took over two centuries before translations of his work appeared in Europe. The great advantages of the new number system very slowly dawned on European mathematicians, although it was not until the 16th century when the Hindu numerals (renamed Hindu-Arabic numerals) completely replaced the old Roman numeral system. The delay in the transition was undoubtedly connected with a deep-rooted suspicion of the alien non-Christian pagan culture from which the system had emanated.

Trade and culture

After the start of the British East India Company in 1600CE a deeper knowledge of the ancient civilization of the subcontinent began to slowly dawn. The intellectual responses to this West-East encounter varied with time. The British colonisers and traders were initially surprised to find the Moghul empire of India far richer and more sophisticated than they might ever have imagined. Throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries the technological difference between India and Britain was minimal. Moreover, the economy of India based on its long-established supremacy in cloth weaving, combined with a thriving steel and ship-building industries, made India among the richest countries of the world.

There can be no doubt that Britain’s trade with India over the next two centuries served to greatly increase its own prosperity at home. The planned demolition of the centuries-old cloth weaving industry in Bengal (allegedly including the chopping off of the weaver’s thumbs) was directly connected with the growth of similar industries in the north of England in the 18^th century.

The development of an intellectual culture that was centred around Coffee houses (and later Tea houses) in London was also directly the result of the tea and coffee trade with India and later Ceylon. But despite all the beneficial developments that followed from Empire, responses to the encounter between Britain and India remained fraught with a deep sense of ambivalence. It was clear that Britain was dealing with an exceedingly sophisticated and very ancient civilization – albeit in straightened circumstances – one that was considerably older than any in the West. And this fact remained very difficult to admit and come to terms with.

Unravelling the treasures of Sanskrit

The realisation of the great literary and cultural heritage of the Indian subcontinent began to fully dawn through the work of the British Orientalist and Philologist Sir William Jones who arrived in Calcutta in March 1783 to take up a post as Judge in the Supreme Court of India. Besides quickly mastering Sanskrit and assiduously translating a vast body of ancient Indian literature, Jones as a philologist unravelled the ancestral relationship between Sanskrit several European languages of later date including Greek and Latin. His work is seen today as the starting point of comparative linguistics and the birth of the idea of an Indo-European family of languages. The genres of Sanskrit literature that were unravelled by Jones included epic poetry, drama, history that in its total volume far exceeds the combined content of the surviving Greek and Latin literature of Europe.

The European colonial rulers at this time found it exceedingly difficult to accept that their own languages and literature had any ancestral debt to any language that belonged to the dark-skinned people of the subcontinent, people who in their view were only fit to be servants and slaves. Although this sounds a harsh indictment today it remains a fact and one that we have to grasp.

William Jones founded the Asiatic Society on 15 January 1784 (later to become “The Royal Asiatic Society”) based in structure on the Royal Society of London. Its declared aim was ‘…….the investigation of subjects connected with, and for the encouragement of science, literature and the Arts in relation to Asia’. It perhaps came as no surprise that native Sanskrit scholars were initially excluded from membership of the society, a society that was ostensibly dedicated to unravelling their own indigenous intellectual culture and traditions! This constraint was lifted in later years but the racist overtones of the entire venture became clear at the outset and echoes of it rumbled long after.

A more recent shock to Eurocentric pride came in 1905 with the discovery in India of a Sanskrit text dating back to the 3^rd century BCE dealing with statecraft which was amazingly similar in spirit and content to Niccolo Machiavelli’s classic work “The Prince” published in the 16^th century of the common era. This was Kautiliya’s Arthashastra which was a comprehensive treatise on how a king should rule so as to enlarge his empire and his treasury as well as to bring happiness to his subjects. In one memorable statement Kautiliya recommends scrutiny of accounts supplied by his staff because: “Just as it is impossible to know when a swimming fish is drinking water, so it is impossible to find out when a government servant is stealing money”. This book that predated Machiavelli by nearly two millennia was a bitter pill for Western scholars to swallow. But the lesson to be learnt from the experience of Empire became clear – that no single polity or civilization can claim a monopoly of intellectual attainments of any kind.

(To be continued)

All News Advertisement

Features

Iain Douglas-Hamilton: Science, courage, and the battle for elephants

Published

2 hours ago

2025/12/22

Thilina Walpola

Iain Douglas-Hamilton

Passing of Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a man who dedicated his life to conservation and whose life’s work leaves a lasting impact on our appreciation for, and understanding of, elephants.

– Prince William

In Africa on 08 December, 2025, when the sun slipped below the horizon, it did not only give an end for that day, but it also marked the end of a man whose knowledge and courage saved Africa’s elephants. This gentleman was none other than Iain Douglas-Hamilton! There is a beautiful African proverb that says, “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground,” and it resonates well with Iain’s demise.

Iain pioneered behaviour research on elephants, and he was the first to highlight the elephant poaching crisis in Africa. Also, the adventures he went through to save the elephants will inspire generations.

From Oxford to Africa

The Life of the Last Proboscideans: Elephants”, authored by Muthukumarana, stands as an awardwinning, comprehensive study that integrates elephant evolution, anthropology, biology, behaviour, and conservation science.

Iain was born on 16 August, 1942, into an aristocratic family, the son of Lord David Douglas-Hamilton and Ann Prunella Stack. His parents were a distinguished couple in Britain: his father, a Scottish nobleman, served as a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, while his mother was a pioneering figure in physical fitness and a prominent advocate for women’s rights. After finishing his school, Iain was admitted to Oxford University to study zoology. At the age of 23, for his PhD, Iain travelled to Tanzania to study the behaviour of elephants at Lake Manyara National Park. This was a daring and humble beginning that would change how the world understood elephants. He learnt to recognise individual animals based on their tusks and ears. He observed their family bonds, their grief, and their intelligence. These findings made the scientific community identify elephants as sentimental beings. During this period, he married Oria Rocco, and together they had two children, Saba and Mara.

Battle for the elephants

When ivory poaching swept across Africa and devastated elephant populations, Iain did not withdraw in despair. He confronted the crisis head-on, guided by science, rigorous data, and unwavering resolve. Through extensive aerial counts and field studies, he laid bare the scale of the tragedy—revealing that Africa’s elephant numbers had collapsed from an estimated 1.3 million to just about 600,000 in little more than 10 years.

It was largely thanks to his work that the global community saw—perhaps for the first time—the full scope of the crisis. His efforts played a pivotal role in pushing forward the 1989 international ban on ivory trade, a landmark moment for wildlife conservation.

In 1993, Iain founded Save the Elephants (STE), an organisation that would become the heart of elephant conservation efforts in Kenya and across Africa.

At STE, he pioneered the use of GPS-tracking and aerial survey techniques to monitor elephant movements, protect them from poaching, and plan safe corridors for them in increasingly human-dominated landscapes. These methods have since become standard tools in wildlife conservation worldwide.

Beyond technology and science, Iain was a mentor. He inspired — and continues to inspire — generations of conservationists, researchers, and everyday people who care deeply about wildlife. Through his books (such as Among the Elephants and Battle for the Elephants), documentaries, lectures, and personal example, he invited the world to see elephants not as trophies or commodities, but as sentient beings — worthy of awe, study, and protection.

Iain and Sri Lanka

In 2003 Iain came to Sri Lanka for the first time to attend the “Symposium on Human-Elephant Relationships and Conflict” as the keynote speaker. On that day he concluded his address by saying, “When I hear the talk of Problem Animal Control, I always wonder whether our species has the capacity for its own self-regulation or Problem Human Control in a humane and wise manner. HEC stands for Human Elephant Conflict, one of our focuses of this conference. How I wish it could come to stand for Human Elephant Coexistence, based on a recognition that other beings also need their space to live in. We are a long way from that, but I am sure that many of the findings of the talented body of researchers in this room will begin a stepwise progress in answering some of these fundamental problems.”

A few years ago Iain’s organisation STE collaborated with the Sri Lankan Wildlife Conservation Society for research activities aimed at reducing human-elephant conflict. In 2016 when the Sri Lankan government was going to destroy the confiscated illegal African elephant ivory, I made a request for Iain to write a congratulatory message to Sri Lanka’s President and Prime Minister for the wise decision they had taken. Iain sent me a four-page meaningful letter written by him, and he was joined by 18 other conservation organisations. In his letter he mentioned, “I want to offer my congratulations to the government of Sri Lanka for the laudable decision to destroy ivory stocks…” Sri Lanka is sending a message to the world that ivory should be without worth; elephants have value when alive. This is a critical message to send, particularly to the religious world, as they are sensitised about the threat religious ivory poses to elephant populations in Africa.”

Fortunately, Iain’s conservation is taken up by his children, especially his eldest daughter, Saba. In 2016 and 2024 she came to Sri Lanka for a lecture hosted by the Galle Literary Festival. Also in 2019, for the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society’s 125th Anniversary, Saba and her husband visited a gala dinner that was held to fundraise for conservation projects.

A difficult path

Iain’s path was never easy. He endured personal peril many times: from hostile terrain and unpredictable wild animals to being shot at by poachers while conducting aerial patrols over war-torn national parks.

Yet despite the danger, despite setbacks — flooded camps, lost data, shifting political tides — his conviction never wavered. His was a life marked by resilience. He refused complacency. He refused to surrender. And through every hardship, he remembered why he began: to give elephants a future.

Iain was also a pilot, and as the old English saying goes, “Pilots don’t die; they simply fly higher.” In that spirit, I wish the same peaceful ascent for Iain. My heartfelt condolences are with Iain’s family.

by Tharindu Muthukumarana ✍️
tharinduele@gmail.com
(Author of the award-winning book “The Life of Last Proboscideans: Elephants”)

Features

Awesome power of gratitude

Published

2 hours ago

2025/12/22

Thilina Walpola

When you hear the word gratitude the first impression you get is a tail-wagging dog. If you feed a dog one day, it will wag its tail even if you meet it after a few years. That is gratitude. In addition, dogs are great teachers. They are at home in the world. They live in the moment and they force us to stay with them. Dogs love us and remain grateful unconditionally not for our bodies or bank accounts.

Small children are taught to say ‘Thank you’ for any favour they receive from others. They do not know that the two words can have positive effects on your health and the well-being of others.

Some time ago I had to call emergency services as I found one of my family members was unconscious. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and the paramedics whisked the patient away to the nearest hospital. He was in intensive care for a few days and returned home. We were marvelled at the impact of a handful of strangers who took charge of the patient at a critical time. I immediately wrote thank you notes to those who saved the patient’s life. I knew that it was a small gesture on my part. However, it was the only way I could express my gratitude to a dedicated team.

Selfless people

Later I realized that there are a large number of selfless people who do life-saving work, but they never expect anything in return. How volunteers saved a large number of flood victims is a case in point. The flood victims may not have expressed their gratitude in so many words. However, they would have felt a deep sense of gratitude to the volunteers who saved them.

Why do people come forward to help those facing natural disasters and other dangerous situations? A recent research in the United States shows that sharing thoughts of gratitude and performing acts of kindness can boost your mood and have other positive effects on your health. Almost all religions teach that gratitude does have a good impact on your happiness. Professor of Psychology Willibald Ruch says that gratitude is among the top five predictors of happiness.

By showing gratitude you can make positive changes in your own life. If you feel a sense of gratitude whenever you receive something that is good for you, it will be a healthy sign. You cannot get such a feeling in a vacuum because others have to play their roles. They can be your loved ones, friends, strangers or even people in authority. Gratitude is how you relate to them when you see yourself in connection with things larger than yourself.

Gratification lifestyle

Strangely, many people do not pause to appreciate what others are doing for them. For this you have to blame your gratification lifestyle. With the popularity of social media the young people feel that they are the centre of the universe. They seem to think there is no necessity to thank those who help them.

Why should we thank others even for minor favours? Recent studies show that those who express gratitude increase their own happiness levels. They also lower their blood pressure levels to a great extent. On the other hand, they will be able to sleep well and improve their relationships. They are also less affected by pain because of the positive impact on their depression.

They may not know that positive effects of gratitude are long lasting. Research shows that those who write thank you notes improve their mental health. There was also a decrease in their bodily pains. What is more, they feel more energetic in completing their daily activities. Unfortunately, schools and universities do not teach the value of gratitude since it is fairly a new field of study. Researchers are still trying to find out its cause and effect relationship. We know that those who perform acts of gratitude can sleep well. However, we do not know the reason for it. Researchers are wondering whether gratitude leads to better sleep or sleep leads to more gratitude. They also probe whether there is another variable that leads to gratitude and improved sleep.

Children

Despite such controversies, we know for certain that gratitude can benefit people at any stage of life. Most elderly people remain grateful for their children and grandchildren who support them. Elderly people cannot regain their physical strength or mental agility. Therefore they focus on gratitude. They are thankful to their children and grandchildren for their present situation.

How do gratitude recipients react? Research shows that those who receive thank you notes or acts of kindness experience positive emotions. You feel happy when someone holds a door open for you. Similarly, you are happy if you receive some unexpected help. Recently I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone has credited a big sum of money to my bank account in appreciation of a small favour I had done.

When you thank someone they are more likely to return the favour or pay kindness forward. Psychologically, people feel very happy when you thank them. However, some people hesitate to say thank you. The give-and-take of gratitude deepens relationships. In a close relationship husbands and wives do not thank each other. However, there are other ways of showing gratitude. A wife can make her husband feel appreciated. Such a feeling of appreciation will go a long way to strengthen their relationship.

Some people are ungrateful by nature. However, they can learn the art of being grateful. Such people will do well to maintain a gratitude journal. It is something similar to Pinpotha maintained by Buddhists in the past. They can record positive events in the journal. At the beginning this may not be easy. With practice, however, you can do it well. I knew of a man who kept a gratitude journal. Although his family members laughed at him, he did not give up the habit. When he was diagnosed with a terminal disease he used to read his gratitude journal very happily.

By R.S. Karunaratne ✍️

Features

Another Christmas, Another Disaster, Another Recovery Mountain to Climb

Published

1 day ago

2025/12/21

Thilina Walpola

In line with its overall response to Cyclone Ditwah that devastated many parts of Sri Lanka, India has undertaken to set up temporary Bailey Bridges at selected locations. Work on the first such bridge has begun in Kilinochchi on the Paranthan–Karaichi–Mullaitivu A35 road. Indian Army engineers are working with their counterparts. The Indian HC said that 185 tonnes of Bailey Bridge units were airlifted to restore critical connectivity, along with 44 engineers (Pic courtesy IHC)

The 2004 Asian Tsunami erupted the day after Christmas. Like the Boxing Day Test Match in Brisbane, it was a boxing day bolt for Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and Maldives. Twenty one years later, in 2025, multiple Asian cyclones hit almost all the old victims and added a few more, including Malayasia, Vietnam and Cambodia. Indonesia and Sri Lanka were hit hard both times. Unlike the 2004 Tsunami, the 2025 cyclones made landfalls weeks before Christmas, during the Christian Season of Advent, the four-week period before Christmas preparing for the arrival of the Messiah. An ominously adventus manifestation of the nature’s fury.

Yet it was not the “day of wrath and doom impending … heaven and earth in ashes ending” – heavenly punishment for government lying, as an opposition politician ignorantly asserted. By that token, the gods must have opted to punish half a dozen other Asian countries for the NPP government’s lying in Sri Lanka. Or all those governments have been caught lying. Everyone is caught and punished for lying, except the world’s Commander in Chief for lying – Donald J. Trump. But as of late and none too sooner, President Trump is getting his punishment in spades. Who would have thought?

In fairness, even the Catholic Church has banished its old hymn of wrath (Dies irae, dies illa) that used to be sung at funerals from its current Missals; and it has on offer, many other hymns of peace and joy, especially befitting the Christmas season. Although this year’s Christmas comes after weeks of havoc caused by cyclonic storms and torrential rains, the spirit of the season, both in its religious and secular senses, will hopefully provide some solace for those still suffering and some optimism to everyone who is trying to uplift the country from its overflowing waterways and sliding slopes.

As the scale of devastation goes, no natural disaster likely will surpass the human fatalities that the 2004 Tsunami caused. But the spread and scale of this year’s cyclone destruction, especially the destruction of the island’s land-forms and its infrastructure assets, are, in my view, quite unprecedented. The scale of the disaster would finally seem to have sunk into the nation’s political skulls after a few weeks of cacophonic howlers – asking who knew and did what and when. The quest for instant solutions and the insistence that the government should somehow find them immediately are no longer as vehement and voluble as they were when they first emerged.

NBRO and Landslides

But there is understandable frustration and even fear all around, including among government ministers. To wit, the reported frustration of Agriculture Minister K.D. Lalkantha at the alleged inability of the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) to provide more specific directions in landslide warnings instead of issuing blanket ‘Level 3 Red Alerts’ covering whole administrative divisions in the Central Province, especially in the Kandy District. “We can’t relocate all 20 divisional secretariats” in the Kandy District, the Minister told the media a few weeks ago. His frustration is understandable, but expecting NBRO to provide political leaders with precise locations and certainty of landslides or no landslides is a tall ask and the task is fraught with many challenges.

In fairness to NBRO and its Engineers, their competence and their responses to the current calamity have been very impressive. It is not the fault of the NBRO that local disasters could not be prevented, and people could not be warned sufficiently in advance to evacuate and avoid being at the epicentre of landslides. The intensity of landslides this year is really a function of the intensity and persistence of rainfall this season, for the occurrence of landslides in Sri Lanka is very directly co-related to the amount of rainfall. The rainfall during this disaster season has been simply relentless.

Evacuation, the ready remedy, is easier said than socially and politically done. Minister Lal Kantha was exasperated at the prospect of evacuating whole divisional secretariats. This was after multiple landslides and the tragedies and disasters they caused. Imagine anybody seriously listening to NBRO’s pleas or warnings to evacuate before any drop of rainwater has fallen, not to mention a single landslide. Ignoring weather warnings is not peculiar to Sri Lanka, but a universal trait of social inertia.

I just lauded NBRO’s competence and expertise. That is because of the excellent database the NBRO professionals have compiled, delineating landslide zones and demarcating them based on their vulnerability for slope failure. They have also identified the main factors causing landslides, undertaken slope stabilization measures where feasible, and developed preventative and mitigative measures to deal with landslide occurrences.

The NBRO has been around since the 1980s, when its pioneers supplemented the work of Prof. Thurairajah at Peradeniya E’Fac in studying the Hantana hill slopes where the NHDA was undertaking a large housing scheme. As someone who was involved in the Hantana project, I have often thought that the initiation of the NBRO could be deemed one of the positive legacies of then Housing Ministry Secretary R. Paskaralingam.

Be that as it may, the NBRO it has been tracking and analyzing landslides in Sri Lanka for nearly three decades, and would seem to have come of age in landslides expertise with its work following 2016 Aranayake Landslide Disaster in the Kegalle District. Technically, the Aranayake disaster is a remarkable phenomenon and it is known as a “rain-induced rapid long-travelling landslide” (RRLL). In Kegalle the 2016 RRLL carried “a fluidized landslide mass over a distance of 2 km” and caused the death of 125 people. International technical collaboration following the disaster produced significant research work and the start of a five-year research project (from 2020) in partnership with the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL). The main purpose of the project is to improve on the early warning systems that NBRO has been developing and using since 2007.

Sri Lankan landslides are rain induced and occur in hilly and mountainous areas where there is rapid weathering of rock into surface soil deposits. Landslide locations are invariably in the wet zone of the country, in 13 districts, in six provinces (viz., the Central, Sabaragamuwa, Uva, Northwestern, Western and Southern, provinces). The Figure below (from NBRO’s literature) shows the number of landslides and fatalities every year between 2003 and 2021.

Based on the graphics shown, there would have been about 5,000 landslides and slope failures with nearly 1,000 deaths over 19 years between 2003 and 2021. Every year there was some landslide or slope failure activity. One notable feature is that there have been more deaths with fewer landslides and vice-versa in particular years. In 2018, there were no deaths when the highest number (1,250) of landslides and slope failures occurred that year. Although the largest number in an year, the landslides in 2018 could have been minor and occurred in unpopulated areas. The reasons for more deaths in, say, 2016 (150) or 2017 (250+), could be their location, population density and the severity of specific landslides.

NBRO’s landslide early warning system is based on three components: (1) Predicting rainfall intensity and monitoring water pressure build up in landslide areas; (2) Monitoring and observing signs of soil movement and slope instability in vulnerable areas; and (3) Communicating landslide risk level and appropriate warning to civil authorities and the local public. The general warnings to Watch (Yellow), be Alert (Brown), or Evacuate (Red) are respectively based on the anticipated rainfall intensities, viz., 75 mm/day, 100 mm/day; and 150 mm/day or 100 mm/hr. My understanding is that over the years, NBRO has established its local presence in vulnerable areas to better communicate with the local population the risk levels and timely action.

Besides Landslides

This year, the rain has been relentless with short-term intensities often exceeding the once per 100-year rainfall. This is now a fact of life in the era of climate change. Added to this was cyclone Ditwah and its unique meteorology and trajectory – from south to north rather than northeast to southwest. The cyclone started with a disturbance southwest of Sri Lanka in the Arabian Sea, traversed around the southern coast from west to east to southeast in the Bay of Bengal, and then cut a wide swath from south to north through the entire easterly half of the island. The origin and the trajectory of the cyclone are also attributed to climate change and changes in the Arabian Sea. The upshot again is unpredictability.

Besides landslides, the rainfall this season has inundated and impacted practically every watershed in the country, literally sweeping away roads, bridges, tanks, canals, and small dams in their hundreds or several hundreds. The longitudinal sinking of the Colombo-Kandy Road in the Kadugannawa area seems quite unparalleled and this may not be the only location that such a shearing may have occurred. The damages are so extensive and it is beyond Sri Lanka’s capacity, and the single-term capacity of any government, to undertake systematic rebuilding of the damaged and washed-off infrastructure.

The government has its work cutout at least in three areas of immediate restoration and long term prevention. On landslides warning, it would seem NBRO has the technical capacity to do what it needs to do, and what seems to be missing is a system of multi-pronged and continuous engagement between the technical experts, on the one hand, and the political and administrative powers as well as local population and institutions, on the other. Such an arrangement is warranted because the landslide problem is severe, significant and it not going to go away now or ever.

Such an engagement will also provide for the technical awareness of the problem, its mitigation and the prevention of serious fallouts. A restructuring could start from the assignment of ministerial responsibilities, and giving NBRO experts constant presence at the highest level of decision making. The engagement should extend down the pyramid to involve every level of administration, including schools and civil society organizations at the local level.

As for external resources, several Asian countries, with India being the closest, are already engaged in multiple ways. It is up to the government to co-ordinate and deploy these friendly resources for maximum results. Sri Lanka is already teamed with India for meteorological monitoring and forecasting, and with Japan for landslide research and studies. These collaborations will obviously continue but they should be focused to fill gaps in climate predictions, and to enhance local level monitoring and prevention of landslides.

To deal with the restoration of the damaged infrastructure in multiple watershed areas, the government may want to revisit the Accelerated Mahaweli Scheme for an approach to deal with the current crisis. The genesis and implementation of that scheme involved as many flaws as it produced benefits, but what might be relevant here is to approach the different countries who were involved in funding and building the different Mahaweli headworks and downstream projects. Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Germany are some of the countries that were involved in the old Mahaweli projects. They could be approached for technical and financial assistance to restore the damaged infrastructure pieces in the respective watershed areas where these countries were involved.

by Rajan Philips ✍️