Features

The Ceylon Civil Service

Published

4 years ago

2022/02/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Gamini Seneviratne

(continued)

And then, quite suddenly, I was posted to Nuwara Eliya.

Such sudden moves tended to become a part of my stay in the public service. In this case it had been due (truthfully) to ‘exigencies of service’: the headquarters DRO (Divisional Revenue Officer) had been transferred out, the Kachcheri was short of a land officer, the assistant food controller (AFC) had been interdicted – an extra hand was needed and readily available next door in Badulla.

My boss, Nissanka Wijewardena, decided to take me over himself en route to his weekly visit home. He introduced me to the people I should know – the District Judge cum Magistrate, the Police Superintendent (SP), the Secretary of the Tennis Club, a Miss Callender (?). And to the family he (and I) were staying with for the night, friends of his and relatives of the Prime Minister, Mrs. Bandaranaike.

It was a very pleasant place. Conversation at dinner though tended to be about ‘that’ or ‘this’ nice girl from Ladies or Kandy High School or Bishops or – well I don’t recall any mention of goday schools like Visakha. “’She’ wanted to ‘do law’ or something. ‘What’s the point, aney? – it’s not as if they are starving!” At Badulla, despite the protection I had, living with a family, there were some feelers about “that lovely girl who plays tennis – and her father, myee, the best Advocate in all of Uva and rich-when-you-say!”

The next morning, I moved into the Kachcheri – along with Amarawansa Bandara Elkaduwa, the new GA. We walked into a right nasty row between two MPs of the ruling party on how the assets of the Nuwara Eliya/Walapane Cooperative Union were to be divided when they split up. I came to know more about it when my friend at the Archives, Haris de Silva, threatened with the prospect of being ‘floored’ in his own room, found a room for me in the chummery where his senior, A Dewarajah lodged together with P B W Kinigama the ACCD (Assistant Commissioner of Cooperative Development).

I shall return to that scene later; right here I shall dispose of the ‘referees’ I was given. The Tennis Club was not my scene though my father had distinguished himself at that sport. (He defeated the All-Ceylon Champion, Koo de Saram, in an exhibition game a bare week after Koo had defeated Frank Sedgman also in an exhibition game. Sedgman was returning home to Oz after winning Wimbledon and may have been a bit bow-legged after weeks on the ship).

I had never played that game and the only acquaintance we had with each other was when friend Jothilingam, our college Captain, at a loss because his players were late, asked me to serve to him. My first serve spun past him and the second was a spinning slice that took his glasses off and there was Jothi pursuing my bicycle demanding that I come for practices. (That was in the 1950s – yes, long before Evonne Goolagong used them to win Wimbledon: tennis historians, please note).

The District Judge cum Magistrate was not at all like Badulla’s Mr. Swaris. On the second day on the bench with him, the court stenographer being absent, he began recording the proceedings himself in long hand. His mis-recording favoured the guilty party, the plantation manager, and when I suggested that I be excused from court duty he did not lift his head.

As for the SP, Superintendent of Police, I discovered that protocol required him to salute me, as being the next in line to the GA, there being no AGA. The OA, Thomas Ranasinghe, (incidentally a devotee of Black Arrack then at Rs. 5/- and of a quality unobtainable today except at Dankotuwa and Paiyagala) told me that within his district the GA, and in his absence the AGA, out-ranked the heads of the armed forces and the police.

Nissanka departed early that morning. I next met him at my wife’s maternal grandmother’s funeral in Malkaduwawa and discovered that his brother, Aravinda, was married to my wife’s junior first cousin. Aravinda proved to be an unusual entrepreneur – he produced pencils for school children and others entirely from raw material obtainable here. (When I moved to Industries I ‘put the question’ to the Ceylon Pencil Company, an entirely foreign-owned monopoly and, red with embarrassment, they managed to make pencils using local materials – the wood, the graphite, the gum from the cashew.) Nissanka died last year at 95+.

In its early years the Divisional Revenue Officers (DRO) were, in ‘the Kandyan Districts’ an off-shoot of the Sinhala system of Rate Mahattayas. Unlike the others who came in through a competitive examination, the Kandyan DROs were recruited by what might be said to be an interview. They were of or from around the areas they served, knew the MPs, monks, vidanes and others who, consciously or not, commanded such power as was needed for the conduct of affairs. The Kandyan DROs also took part in the election of the Diyawadana Nilame (DN) – and that, in itself conferred a marker of prestige on them. As will be seen below they did a good job on the whole.

To return to the lodging arrangements that followed, the headquarters DRO, George Abeygoonasekera, was in the process of moving out of that bungalow on Lady McCullum’s Drive and his successor, D Ramanayake, did not wish to move in there. I came to know George and his predecessor, T B M Ekanayake (self-styled ‘Te Bona Mudiyanselage’ – TBM) rather well over the next few months. George saw me not long before the general election of 1965 when I was at the Ministry of Finance handling establishment matters for the lower orders of the new Ceylon Administrative Service (CAS).

He looked quite ill, told me that he’d like to retire on medical grounds. I have related that interview in its particulars in these pages a decade or more ago. (I next met him when he was Chairman of COPE – I was head of a State Corporation at the time). His successor at Nuwara Eliya misread the gaetum between public servants and politicians, chose to challenge the MP of Walapane, the Division to which he had himself moved. He lost at every parliamentary election there and J R finally gave him the sinecure that the Land Reform Commission had by then become.

T B M ‘rose’ as is said, in the public service and ten years after we had left Nuwara Eliya he, as a Senior Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Defense and External Affairs, phoned to tell me that the Prime Minister (Mrs. Bandaranaike again) was looking for an energetic officer to set up a new Department for the Registration of Persons, would I come? I had been moved to the Ministry of Industries a bare month before and suggested he take up that task himself. Which he did and made a marvelous job of it.

Nuwara Eliya also boasted of another DRO who achieved distinction in another field: Wimalaratne Kumaragama, one of the great poets of the Colombo school. He presided over Kotmale from offices and a bungalow in Sankilikpalama. Those two structures need to be mentioned kind of in tandem, one on either side of the road facing each other. Kumaragama worked from home. The Chief Clerk brought up to him such files, letters, petitions as he thought the boss needed to see; he dealt with the rest himself in one way or another.

It was always good to see him – at the Kachcheri or the Public Servants Club or in Kotmale. As happened, my transfer out of Nuwara Eliya coincided with his death. To the next issue of ‘Peradeni Kavi’ / Poetry Peradeniya, I contributed ‘A Salute to Kumaragama’.

Nuwara Eliya was being served at the time by a colourful group of public servants, most of them there on a bachelor basis. Our chummery was always full, well, for the few days each week or fortnight each of them found work in the district. The interstices were occupied by ‘circuits’ to inspect on-going work/problems, usually close to the district boundary in one direction or another, on the way home to Kandy, Colombo or somewhere in between.

Among them were Kinigama, aforementioned, Neil Fernando (Lumpy) the Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services (ACAS) and Leslie Herath, Assistant Superintendent of Surveys who stayed at Bernard Goonaratnayake’s. Renowned in his schooldays as a ruggerite, Bernard was a Land Officer. Lokka Dissanaike, Vet Surgeon, lived some distance away with his young family. Sonny Kiridena, Park Superintendent, and his wife offered us pleasant hours and sumptuous meals from time to time.

In due course Sonny became an advisor to ruling Sheikhs, Leslie, whose expertise was in underground surveys, became Chairman of the CEB and also head os an environmental agency based in Bangkok and Neil became head of Public Administration and a UN functionary in Nepal.

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Features

Misinterpreting President Dissanayake on National Reconciliation

Published

23 hours ago

2026/02/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake

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

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

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

Reconciler’s Duty

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

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

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

High-minded leadership

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

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

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

BY Jehan Perera

Features

Recovery of LTTE weapons

Published

23 hours ago

2026/02/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Sri Lanka Navy in action

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

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

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

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

Carl Gustaf recoilless rocket launchers

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

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

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

LOCATION: OFF IRANATHIVE.

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

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

OPERATED FROM KKS.

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

TARGET WAS DESTROYED AND ONE LTTE MEMBER WAS CAPTURED.

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

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

Sea Tigers

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

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

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

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

Features

Yellow Beatz … a style similar to K-pop!

Published

23 hours ago

2026/02/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Yes, get ready to vibe with Yellow Beatz, Sri Lanka’s awesome girl group, keen to take Sri Lankan music to the world with a style similar to K-pop!

With high-energy beats and infectious hooks, these talented ladies are here to shake up the music scene.

Think bold moves, catchy hooks, and, of course, spicy versions of old Sinhala hits, and Yellow Beatz is the package you won’t want to miss!

According to a spokesman for the group, Yellow Beatz became a reality during the Covid period … when everyone was stuck at home, in lockdown.

“First we interviewed girls, online, and selected a team that blended well, as four voices, and then started rehearsals. One of the cover songs we recorded, during those early rehearsals, unexpectedly went viral on Facebook. From that moment onward, we continued doing cover songs, and we received a huge response. Through that, we were able to bring back some beautiful Sri Lankan musical creations that were being forgotten, and introduce them to the new generation.”

The team members, I am told, have strong musical skills and with proper training their goal is to become a vocal group recognised around the world.

Believe me, their goal, they say, is not only to take Sri Lanka’s name forward, in the music scene, but to bring home a Grammy Award, as well.

“We truly believe we can achieve this with the love and support of everyone in Sri Lanka.”

The year 2026 is very special for Yellow Beatz as they have received an exceptional opportunity to represent Sri Lanka at the World Championships of Performing Arts in the USA.

Under the guidance of Chris Raththara, the Director for Sri Lanka, and with the blessings of all Sri Lankans, the girls have a great hope that they can win this milestone.

“We believe this will be a moment of great value for us as Yellow Beatz, and also for all Sri Lankans, and it will be an important inspiration for the future of our country.”

Along with all the preparation for the event in the USA, they went on to say they also need to manage their performances, original song recordings, and everything related.

The year 2026 is very special for Yellow Beatz

“We have strong confidence in ourselves and in our sincere intentions, because we are a team that studies music deeply, researches within the field, and works to take the uniqueness of Sri Lankan identity to the world.”

At present, they gather at the Voices Lab Academy, twice a week, for new creations and concert rehearsals.

This project was created by Buddhika Dayarathne who is currently working as a Pop Vocal lecturer at SLTC Campus. Voice Lab Academy is also his own private music academy and Yellow Beatz was formed through that platform.

Buddhika is keen to take Sri Lankan music to the world with a style similar to K-Pop and Yellow Beatz began as a result of that vision. With that same aim, we all work together as one team.

“Although it was a little challenging for the four of us girls to work together at first, we have united for our goal and continue to work very flexibly and with dedication. Our parents and families also give their continuous blessings and support for this project,” Rameesha, Dinushi, Newansa and Risuri said.

Last year, Yellow Beatz released their first original song, ‘Ihirila’ , and with everything happening this year, they are also preparing for their first album.