Midweek Review

The Gift of Music: Sons and Fathers a film by Sumathy

Published

3 years ago

2023/05/3

“Ecstasy and hypnosis. Colours do not move a people. Flags can do nothing without trumpets… The potential fascism of music” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (A Thousand Plateaux)

“Schuman’s theatre [Bread & Puppet] bypasses individual characterization & motivation. This might be a way for theatre to retrieve its liberty of fabulation, freeing story from the restrictions of plot constructions (as ridiculous nowadays as wilful rhyme).”

Stefan Brecht (son of Weigel and Bertolt)

by Laleen Jayamanne

Sumathy Sivamohan in her three feature films (Ingirunthu, 2013, Sons and Fathers, 2017 and A Single Tumbler, 2021), seeks freedom to tell stories (several in the one film), without tightly plotting a sequence of actions. She appears to have a cinematic project to explore the hidden aspects of Lankan history from the perspectives of its minority communities. But she is indifferent to ‘the arch of a three-act structure’ mandated by script writing manuals, a commonplace now. Not only are her films structured in a manner unusual for Lankan cinema, the stories themselves are as unusual in that they focus on inter-ethnic relationships among Lankans in very specific social environments, marked by the history of racialised violence. In Sons and Fathers, she creates a flexible loose narrative structure, drawing on a hybrid historical ‘archive,’ as well as living memory gathered from oral histories by interviewing relatives of musicians still alive who remember those early days of the film industry, and also from the next generation of musicians, their sons. She is interested in intergenerational transmission of musical skills, traditions and values as much as in the emergence of something new, even unforeseen. Sumathy’s 2021 documentary Amid the Villus; Palaikuli deals with the repatriation of the Muslim population to their homelands in Puttalam and the consequent difficulties, after their near overnight mass expulsion, in 1990, by the LTTE seeking a pure Tamil homeland. Just as the traumatic partition of Bengal at Indian independence became the burning heart of Ritwik Ghatak’s cinema, an exploration of interethnic relations and the violence of Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms, from the point of view of the ethnic minorities and the dispossessed, are part of what drives Sumathy’s film praxis. I use the old-fashioned Marxist term ‘praxis’ to signal the self-reflexive aspect of her political understanding of film history and film theory, especially within India, and this aspect rather unusually combines with a wild (uncensored) imagination. These are some of the reasons why I think of her work as belonging to a tradition of ‘experimental cinema,’ known for its fearless exploration of new ideas and techniques.

Here I wish to explore Sons and Fathers (Puththu saha Piyavaru), which is perhaps the only Lankan film to base itself within a certain ethos of the Sinhala film industry itself in its production of music by a multi-ethnic group of musicians. While from its very inception in 1947, many highly popular Sinhala genre films were produced and directed by Tamils, Sumathy is the first Tamil female director to do so. But her films are not generic, nor are they ‘Art-House films.’ They have modest budgets with access to independent distribution in alternative international circuits, but drawing on a team of professional technicians who work for her at reduced pay and, often, non-actors.

Sons and Fathers

is the story of an ethnically mixed family (consisting of Rex Periyasami, his Sinhala wife Kanthilatha, step-son Luckshman and their biological daughter, Mala) and their relationship to music production in the film industry and elsewhere. It is set within the central events of the July ’83 race riots, both the lead up to it and also its aftermath. We also see how this lower-middle-class family becomes comfortably middle class in the ’70s, through Rex’s talent as a successful music director for profitable films, while the children were still young. He is loosely based on the very highly regarded composer Rocksamy who suffered grave property loss in repeated race riots, including the one in July ‘83. Rocksamy’s real wife, Indrani, is seen reminiscing about her husband with Sivamohan, at the very end of the film, seated below a large framed photograph of the garlanded, bespectacled musician. Rex’s wife Kanthi is a Sinhala widow with a young son (Lucky), from a previous marriage to a Sinhala man and has a natural talent for singing. This love story (within one of the most tender marriages I have seen in the Sinhala cinema), spans the ’70s and the’80s, capturing the direct, devastating impact of the race riots of 1983 on the film industry and ends in the period of the JVP and State terror of the late ’80s. The latter is casually indicated in passing, when we overhear in an eatery that K. Gunaratnam, the owner of Vijay Studio, had just been shot dead by a gunman. His name reverberates to those who know Lankan film history, which I researched for my doctorate. Certainly, the man serving at the eatery and his female customer knew who he was. Lucky, who is also having breakfast there, overhears this exchange. Gunaratnam was a pioneer film producer, (astutely making Lester James Peries’s popular film Sandeshaya, after Gamperaliya flopped at the box office), and the nearest we had to a movie mogul (along with Sir Chittampalam Gardiner of Ceylon Theatres Ltd and Jabir Cader), owning the exhibition circuit Cinemas Ltd and Vijaya Studio which we saw being burned down in the July ’83 riots, shown at the beginning of the film and also repeated later. He controlled all three tiers of the film industry and was also an industrialist who astutely diversified his assets into tourism and plastics (employing hundreds of people), and had escaped the anti-Tamil mobs who hounded him in the July ’83 riots, but was gunned down by Sinhala nationalist JVP terrorists in 1989.

Songs and Sinhala film fans

Sumathy

Songs are central to Sons and Fathers, just as they were to the South Indian-derived Sinhala genre films’ appeal, where 10 songs were not uncommon. The difference here is that just four songs, (two written by Sivamohan herself and one written and sung by the director of music, Anthony Surendra, and one popular Sinhala song, ‘Pita Deepa Desa’ from the 40s), are repeated as leitmotifs. This principle of orchestrated repetition of the few songs, in counterpoint to films mounting political violence, deepens their expressive powers. Though simple and lyrical in melody, one in particular (sung by Kanthi, referred to by Lucky as his ’mother’s song’), through its complex repetition by different voices, feels like Indian ragas created for particular moods, sensitive to time of day and the seasons and the exact present moment. All the songs carry a historical memory of Sinhala cinema’s link to Indian cinema and the contributions of Muslim, Malay and Tamil musicians and singers to the success and immense popularity of Sinhala genre cinema in the first two or three decades of the industry. Also, the popular songs became ways of expressing feelings, pathos, which are not easy to express more directly through plotted, enacted narrative scenes of the melodramatic genre films, without often falling into bathos (trivial, ridiculous). However sentimental or simple, the genre cinema’s popular movie music had the power to engage audiences and became very popular in those early days through Radio Ceylon broadcasts across the island, availability on gramophone records and the attractively produced song sheets, with images, sometimes in colour, sold cheaply at the cinemas. This large fan base sustained a film industry in the first two or three decades of Sinhala cinema (no mean feat), in a country where Indian films and Hollywood had controlling interests in distribution and exhibition.

It’s this period of the popular cinema, with its connections to South Indian films, which is the musical milieu of Sons and Fathers, where Rex Periyasami is a successful composer, addressed as Master. At the same time, the film presents a not entirely smooth intergenerational transmission of musical knowledge from a Tamil stepfather to Lucky his talented Sinhala stepson who at first resists it, refusing to practice the keyboard saying, ‘why should I learn music, you are not my father!’ His unexpected, quietly delivered, measured response is exemplary of this musician; ‘Whatever you think, you have to live with us son. Life is a beautiful song, but there will be discords, too.’ The second part of the film is more focused on the direct effects of the ’83 anti-Tamil pogrom on the family and on both Rex and Lucky in relation to their music itself. Kanthi, who sings Rex’s love song (Tharuka Hanga), tries to mediate and calm them while Mala is mostly folded into a book, perhaps in defence, as Rex’s employment is threatened and he says the music has dried up in his soul, directly changing his personality, becoming more inward and brooding. When Mala comes over to show him that she can now play a chord on his guitar, he snatches the instrument and yells at her never to play it, violently pushing aside Kanthi who tries to intervene. Lucky has become a musician playing the guitar and singing in a band in both English and Sinhala but is repeatedly taunted as a ‘Tiger cub,’ excluded from it by his musical friends, despite his protestations; ‘I am not Tamil, I am Sinhala, my father has a coconut estate.’ ‘Then why do you play that guitar!’ is his friend’s retort. Though Sinhala, at home both he and his mother do speak Tamil with Rex at tense moments and we learn that Lucky has a Malay and a Burgher friend, both living in their rather seedy lower-middle-class, multi-ethnic neighbourhood.

Experiments in story-telling

The song, in the dance sequence which opens Sons and Fathers, is a pastiche of a song from the hugely popular Indian Tamil film, Chinthamani (but with original satirical lyrics in Sinhala on the national addiction to all things foreign). A short clip from the original film is shown sung in a classical style, with a very chastely dressed star walking through landscapes. The Sinhala version was a hit song sung by Laskshmi Bai (of Malay ethnicity), at the Tower Hall Theatre of the’40s, with a large fan base. It was also popular on radio and is still heard, I gather. Not being the usual love song, it sets an unusual tone to the opening dance sequence of Sons and Fathers, modelled on routines familiar from the ’50s and ’60s Tamil cinema which the Sinhala films copied. The dance by Sumathy’s niece Maitreyei (a trained dancer from Britain) takes the cue from the satirical lyrics and adds a parodic edge to its seductive gestures when she smoothly adds an original clawed ‘lion mudra’ (with a mischievous smile) at the mention of the ‘Sinhala people.’ This song and dance sequence, chiding Sinhala folk for their lack of jathi ale (love of race), is repeated at the very end of the film in a most startling and baffling sequence, to which I will return later.

Filmic overture

Rex, Lucky, Kanthi

The opening 10 or so minutes of the film works really as an overture (realised only on a second viewing), introducing fragments of scenes as motifs, which are later elaborated on in the body of the film. It is thereby creating a remembrance of things past. I list the segments to clearly understand how Sivamohan structures her several stories focusing on the racism and violence of July ’83, through Rex’s family. Rex and Kanthi’s family story connected to the film industry can’t be told without the intersecting history of political violence based on ethnicity bleeding into each other.

1. The opening song and dance sequence (in b and w), discussed above.

2. A recording studio (in b and w). A singer (in a sari with her head covered like Lakshmi Bai), sings, in accented Sinhala, the opening song, Pita Deepa Desa with an orchestra, establishing an audio-visual montage between the dubbed song and the dance.

3. A mob of men in sarongs, carrying fire torches, run around shouting.

4. Rex Periyasami and family (who we have not yet been introduced to), are hiding submerged in water, in a lake, in the dark, while shouting anti-Tamil mobs run wild.

5. Repeat of opening song and dance sequence.

6.Vijaya film studio sign and building are set on fire by a Sinhala mob.

7. K.Venkat, a Tamil film director of genre films (including a film about the Buddha’s Sacred Footprint called Sri Pathula), is dragged out of a building by a mob.

8. A white car is set on fire

9. Repetition of the mob with firebrands.

10. Repetition of Rex and family submerged in water, hiding from the mob.

11. Repetition of burning car, with someone inside it screaming, who is later identified as Venkat.

12. A room seen through a broken glass pane, darkly, as Rex and family return to their trashed home.

13. Inside the room the four family members stand around traumatised by the violence, but find strength to speak. The following exchange marks the end of the overture and the beginning of the main story Rex was determined to tell, which desire sivamohan actualises in her film, Sons and Fathers.

Kanthi (wife/mother): We must begin again (amidst the debris of their possessions).

Rex (husband/father/step-father): Are we not human? Are we refugees?

There is no more music, it’s all a dirge. Yes, I must tell my story to the world.

(The stepson Lucky then speaks to his stepfather in Tamil).

Lucky: Appa, what will you say? To whom? In what language?

Where is your music now? Did it save you? Or did it save us?

Kanthi: No, the music saved us!

‘Appa … in what language?’

Sivamohan takes up the challenge of Lucky’s anguished question, spoken softly but felt like a wounding rebuke to his Tamil stepfather, because the only language he knows is the now proscribed music. Focusing on an ethnically mixed family, Sivamohan creates her own language, a cinematic language replete with songs, honouring the memory of our much-maligned popular cinema, woefully derivative though it was of Indian genres, but what the people did embrace as our own. In attempting to do this, the film opens up our ethnically polarised minds to new possibilities through the power of music and song, integral to the popular Lankan cinema and the livelihood of its multi-ethnic technicians, entrepreneurs, actors and musicians and the lowly working-class men who ran and cleaned the cinemas. This is a very ambitious film in that Sivmohan has dared to go out of her linguistic comfort zone (she says her mother tongues are Tamil and English between which she translates), and worked with a multi-ethnic cast and crew to create a film in Sinhala (encoding a historical memory), about the virtual potential for a rich multi-ethnic hybridised Lankan culture (‘Thuppahi’ Baila like Bombay meri hai also included). The multi-sensory powers of film ‘language’ (freed from constraints of plot) is Sivamohan’s answer to Lucky’s question, ‘Appa, in what language?’

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Midweek Review

Aragalaya: GR blames CIA in Asanga Abeyagoonasekera’s explosive narrative

Published

14 hours ago

2026/02/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Asanga

Did CIA chief William Burns visit Colombo in Feb 2023? Sri Lanka and the US refrained from formally confirming the visit. The Opposition sought confirmation of the then CIA Chief’s visit to Colombo in terms of the Right to Information Act but the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government sidestepped the query. A former Republican congressman from Texas and Director of National Intelligence (2020–2021) John Ratcliffe succeeded Burns in late January 2025.

On the sheer weight of new evidence presented by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera’s ‘Winds of Change’, readers can get a clear picture of the forces that overthrew President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022.

Even five years after the political upheaval, widely dubbed ‘Aragalaya,’ controversy surrounds the high-profile operation that forced wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa to literally run for his dear life.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, formerly of the Army but a novice to party politics, comfortably won the 2019 November presidential election against the backdrop of the Easter Sunday carnage that caused uncertainty and suspicions among communities. The economic crisis, also clandestinely engineered from abroad, firstly by crippling vital worker remittances from abroad, almost from the onset of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency, overwhelmed the government and created the environment conducive for external intervention. Could it have been avoided if the government, that enjoyed a near two-thirds majority in Parliament, sought the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

The costly and well-funded book project, undertaken at the time Abeyagoonasekera was working on a governance diagnostic report for the IMF, in the wake of the change of government in Sri Lanka, meticulously examined the former Lieutenant Colonel’s ouster, taking into consideration regional as well as global developments. Abeyagoonasekera dealt efficiently and furiously with rapidly changing situations and developments before the unprecedented 03 January, 2026, US raid on Venezuela.

Lt. Col. (retd) Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for some unexplainable reason and a considerable time after the events, has chosen to blame his ouster on the United States. We cannot blame him either, by the way we have seen how other regime changes had been engineered, in our region, by Washington, since and before Gotabaya’s ouster. The accusation is extraordinary as Gotabaya Rajapaksa in his memoirs ‘The conspiracy to oust me from presidency’ refrained from naming the primary conspirator, though he clearly alluded to an international conspiracy.

April 8, 2019 meeting

Launched in March 2024, in the run-up to the presidential election that brought Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) to power, almost in a dream ride, if not for the intervening outside evil actors, ‘The conspiracy to oust me from presidency’ discussed the international conspiracy, but conveniently failed to name the primary conspirator. What made the former President speak so candidly with Abeyagoonasekera, the founding Director-General of the national security think tank, the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSS), under the Ministry of Defence, from 2016 to 2020?

Abeyagoonasekera also served as Executive Director at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute (LKI), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2011–2015), during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term as the President. The author, both precisely and furiously, dealt with issues. Readers may find very interesting quotes and they do give a feeling of the author’s general hostility towards the US, India, as well as to the US-India marriage of convenience. Those who sense so may end up thinking ‘Change of Winds’ being supportive of the Chinese strategy. Among the highly sensitive quotes that underlined the Indian approach were attributed to Indian Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra. The author quoted Mitra as having declared: “We need the MRCC centre [Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre], and you cannot give it to another nation.” As pointed out by the author, it was not a request but an order given to Sri Lanka on 8 April, 2019, meant to prevent Sri Lanka from even considering a competing proposal from China. Against that background, the author, who had been present at that meeting at which the Sri Lanka delegation was led by then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, questioned the failure on the part of the delegations to take up the Easter Sunday attacks. Terrorists struck two weeks later. Implications were telling.

That particular quote reveals the circumstances India and the US operated here. No wonder the incumbent government does not want to discuss the secret defence MoUs it has entered into with India and the US as they would clearly reveal the sellout of our interests.

The following line says a lot about the circumstances under which Gotabaya Rajapaksa was removed: “In Singapore, a senior journalist recounted how Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation was scripted, under duress, at a hotel, facilitated by a foreign motorcade.”

In the first Chapter that incisively dealt with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the author was so lucky to secure an explosive quote from the ousted leader in an exclusive, hitherto unreported, interview in June 2024, a few months after the launch of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s memoirs. The ex-President hadn’t minced his words when he alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated his removal. He also claimed that he had been under US surveillance throughout his presidency.

The ousted leader has confidently cleared India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of complicity in the operation. What made him call Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval ‘a good man,’ in response to Abeyagoonasekera’s pointed query. Abeyagoonasekera quoted Gotabaya Rajapaksa as having said: “… he would never do such things.” The ex-President must have some reason to call Doval a good friend, regardless of intense pressure exerted on him and the Mahinda Rajapaksa government by the Indians to do away with large scale Chinese-funded projects. (Doval in late October last year declared “poor governance” was the reason behind uprisings that led to change of governments in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka over the period of past three-and-a-half years. The media quoted Doval as having said, during a function in New Delhi, that democracy and non-institutional methods of regime change in countries, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, created their own set of problems. That was the first time a senior Indian government official made remarks on Nepal’s government change, followed by the Gen Z uprising in early September, 2025.)

Gotabaya Rajapaksa also cleared the Chinese of seeking to oust him. It would be pertinent to mention that China reacted sternly when at the onset of the Gotabaya presidency, the President suggested the need to re-negotiate the Hambantota Port deal.

During the treacherous ‘Yahapalana’ administration (2015 to 2019) Gotabaya Rajapaksa told me how Doval had pressed him to halt not only the Colombo Port City project but to take back Hambantota Port as well. By then, the Chinese had twisted the arms of the Yahapalana leaders Mairthpala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe and secured the Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease in a one-sided USD 1.2 bn deal. The Colombo Port City project, that had been halted by the Yahapalana government, too, was resumed possibly under Chinese threat or for some money incentive.

Once Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, declared, at a hastily arranged media briefing at Sri Lanka Foundation (SLF), that Sri Lanka would be relentlessly targeted as long as the Chinese held the Hambantota Port. The writer was present at that media briefing.

Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe said so in the aftermath of the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage, while disclosing his abortive bid to convince the Yahapalana government to abrogate the Hambantota Port deal. Did the parliamentarian know something we were not aware of? The author’s assessment, regarding the Easter Sunday attacks, based on interviews with Chinese officials and scholars, is frightening and an acknowledgement of a possible Western role in Sri Lanka’s destabilisation plot.

The ousted leader, in his lengthy interview with Abeyagoonasekera, made some attention-grabbing comments on the then US Ambassador here, Julie Chung. The ex-President questioned a particular aspect of Chung’s conduct during the protest campaign but his decision not to reveal it all in his memoirs is a mystery. Perhaps, one of the most thought-provoking queries raised by Abeyagoonasekera is the rationale in Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s claim that he didn’t want to suppress the protest campaign by using force against the backdrop of his own declaration that the CIA orchestrated the project.

Author’s foray into parliamentary politics

Gotabaya

For those genuinely interested in post-Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga developments, pertaining to international relations and geopolitics, may peruse ‘Winds of Change’ as the third of a trilogy. ‘Sri Lanka at Crossroads’ (2019) dealt with the Mahinda Rajapaksa period and ‘Conundrum of an Island’ (2021) discussed the treacherous Sirisena–Wickremesinghe alliance. The third in the series examined the end of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s (SLPP) President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s rule and the rise of Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) whom the author described as a Marxist, though this writer is of the view the JVP and NPP leader AKD is not so. AKD has clearly aligned his administration with US-India while trying to sustain existing relationship with China.

Among Asanga Abeyagoonasekera’s other books were ‘Towards a Better World Order’ (2015) and ‘Teardrop Diplomacy: China’s Sri Lanka Foray’ (2023, Bloomsbury).

Had Abeyagoonasekera succeeded in his bid to launch a political career in 2015, the trilogy on Sri Lanka may not have materialised. Abeyagoonasekera contested the Gampaha district at the August 2015 parliamentary election on the UNP ticket but failed to garner sufficient preferences to secure a place in Parliament. That dealt a devastating setback to Abeyagoonasekera’s political ambitions, but the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena administration created the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSS), under the Ministry of Defence, for him. Abeyagoonasekera received the appointment as the founding Director-General of the national security think tank, from 2016 to 2020.

Several persons dealt with ‘Aragalaya’ (the late Prof. Nalin de Silva used to call it (Paragalaya) before Abeyagoonasekera though none of them examined the regional and global contexts so deeply, taking into consideration the relevant developments. Having read Wimal Weerawansa’s (Nine: The hidden story), Sena Thoradeniya’s (Galle Face Protest; Systems Change or Anarchy?). Mahinda Siriwardena’s (Sri Lanka’s Economic Revival – Reflection on the Journey from Crisis to Recovery) and Prof. Sunanda Maddumabandara’s (Aragalaye Balaya), the writer is of the opinion Abeyagoonasekera dealt with the period in question as an incisive insider.

Abeyagoonasekera, as a person who left the country, under duress, in 2021, painted a frightening picture of a country with a small and vulnerable economy trapped in major global rivalries. The former government servant attributed his self–imposed exile to two issues.

The first was the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage. Why did the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena government ignore the warning issued by Abeyagoonasekera, in his capacity as DG INSS, in respect of the Easter Sunday bombing campaign? There is absolutely no ambiguity at all in his claim. Abeyagoonasekera insists that he alerted the government four months before the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) bombers struck. The bottom line is that Abeyagoonasekera had issued the warning several weeks before India did but those at the helm of that inept administration chose to turn a blind eye.

The second was the impending economic crisis that engulfed the country in 2022. Abeyagoonasekera is deeply bitter about his arrest on 21 July, 2024, at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) over an alleged IRD –related offence as reported at that time, especially because he was returning home to visit his sick mother.

Asanga’s father Ossie, a member of Parliament and controversial figure, was killed in an LTTE suicide attack at Thotalanga in late Oct. 1994. The Chairman and leader of Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya had been on stage with then UNP presidential election candidate Gamini Dissanayake when the woman suicide cadre blasted herself. The assassination was meant to ensure Kumaratunga’s victory. The LTTE probably felt that it could manipulate Kumaratunga than the experienced Dissanayake who may have had reached some sort of consensus with New Delhi on how to deal with the LTTE.

Let me reproduce a question posed to Asanga Abeyagoonasekera and his response in ‘Winds of Change’ as some may believe that the author is holding something back. “Didn’t they listen?” a US intelligence officer had asked me incredulously after the bombings. Years later, during my role as a technical advisor for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) amid Sri Lanka’s collapse, the question resurfaced: “How did you foresee the collapse of a powerful regime with a majority in parliament?” My answer remained the same—patterns. Rigorously gathered data and relentless analysis reveal the arcs of history before they unfold.

Perhaps, readers may find what former cashiered Flying Officer Keerthi Ratnayake had to say about ‘Aragalaya’ and related developments (https://island.lk/ex-slaf-officer-sheds-light-on-developments-leading-to-aragalaya/)

Bombshell claim

Essentially, Abeyagoonasekera, on the basis of his exclusive and lengthy interview with former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, confirmed what Wimal Weerawansa and Sena Thoradeniya alleged that the US spearheaded the operation.

But Prof. Maddumabandara, a confidant of first post-Aragalaya President Ranil Wickremesinghe has bared the direct Indian involvement in the regime change operation. In spite of Gotabaya Rajapaksa confidently clearing Indian NSA Doval of complicity in his ouster, Prof. Maddumabandara is on record as having said that the then Indian High Commissioner here Gopal Baglay put pressure on Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to take over the government for an interim period. (https://island.lk/dovals-questionable-regional-stock-taking/)

Obviously, the US and India worked together on the Sri Lanka regime change operation. That is the undeniable truth. India wanted to thwart Wickremesinghe receiving the presidency by bringing in Speaker Abeywardena. That move went awry in spite of some sections of both Buddhist and Catholic clergy throwing their weight behind New Delhi.

The 2022 violent regime change operation cannot be discussed without taking into consideration the US-led project that also involved the UNP, JVP and TNA to engineer retired General Sarath Fonseka’s victory at the 2010 presidential election and their backing for turncoat Maithripala Sirisena at the 2015 presidential election.

The section, titled ‘Echoes of Crisis from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh: South Asia’s Struggle in a Polycrisis’, is riveting and underscores the complexity of the situation and fragility of governments. Executive power and undisputable majorities in Parliament seems irrelevant as external powers intervene thereby making the electoral system redundant.

Having meticulously compared the overthrowing of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Bangladesh’s Premier Sheikh Hasina, the author condemned them for their alleged failures and brutality. Abeyagoonasekera stated: “When the military sides with the protesters, as it did in Sri Lanka and now in Bangladesh, it reveals the rulers’ vulnerabilities.” The author unmercifully chided the former President for seeking refuge in the West while alleging direct CIA role in his ouster. But that may have spared his life. Had he sought a lifeline from the Chinese so late the situation could have taken a turn for worse.

The comment that had been attributed to Gotabaya Rajapaksa seemed to belittle Ranil Wickremesinghe who accepted the challenge of becoming the Premier in May 2022 and then chosen by the ruling SLPP to complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s five-year term. Ranil was definitely seen as an opportunistic vulture who backed ‘Aragalaya’ without any qualms till he saw an opening for himself out of the chaos.

On Wickremesinghe’s path

Abeyagoonasekera discussed the joint US-Indian strategy pertaining to Sri Lanka. Whatever the National People’s Power (NPP) and its President say, the current dispensation is continuing Wickremesinghe’s policy as pointed out by the author. In fact, this government appears to be ready even to go beyond Wickremesinghe’s understanding with New Delhi. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on defence and the selling of the controlling interests of the Colombo Dockyard Limited (CDL) to India, mid last year, must have surprised even those who always pushed for enhanced relations at all levels.

The economic collapse that resulted in political upheaval has given New Delhi the perfect opportunity to consolidate its position here. Uncomplimentary comments on current Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha in ‘Winds of Change’ have to be discussed, paying attention to Sri Lanka’s growing dependence and alleged clandestine activities of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Abeyagoonasekera seemed to have no qualms in referring to RAW’s hand in 2019 Easter Sunday carnage.

Overall ‘Winds of Change’ encourages, inspires and confirms suspicions about US and Indian intelligence services and underscores the responsibility of those in power to be extra cautious. But, in the case of smaller and weaker economies, such as Sri Lanka still struggling to overcome the economic crisis, there seems to be no solution. Not only India and the US, the Chinese, too, pursue their agenda here unimpeded. Utilisation of political parties, represented in Parliament, selected individuals, and media, in the Chinese efforts, are obvious. Once parliamentarian Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe raised the Chinese interventions in Sri Lanka. He questioned the Parliament receiving about 240 personal laptops for all parliamentarians and top officials. The then UNPer told the writer his decision not to accept the laptop paid for by China. Perhaps, he is the only Sri Lankan politician to have written a strongly worded letter to Chinese leader Xi warning against high profile Chinese strategy.

Winds of Change
is available at
Vijitha Yapa and Sarasavi

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

Beginning of another ‘White Supremacist’ World Order?

Published

14 hours ago

2026/02/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Donald Trump’s complete lack of intelligence, empathy and common sense have become more apparent during the current term of his presidency. Ordinarily, a country’s wish to self-destruct as the United States seemingly does at present, and as the violence against US citizens and immigrants alike at the hands of federal authorities have shown in Minnesota, can be callously considered the business of that country. If the Trumpian imbecility was unfolding in Sri Lanka, anywhere else in South Asia or some other country of the purported Third World, the so-called World Order, led by the United States, would be preaching to us the values of democracy and human rights. But what happens when the actions of a powerful country, such as the United States, engulfs in the ensuing flames the rest of us? Trump and his madness then necessarily become our business, too, because combined with the military and economic power of the United States and its government’s proven lack of empathy for its own people, and the rest of the world, is quite literally a matter of global survival. Besides, one of the ‘positive’ outcomes of the Trumpian madness, as a friend observed recently, is that “he has single-handedly exposed and destroyed the fiction of ‘Western Civilisation’, including the pretenses of Europe.”

It is in this context that the speech delivered by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, on 20 January, 2026, deserves attention. It was an elegant speech, a slap in the face of Trump and his policies, the articulation of the need for global directional change, all in one. But, pertinently, it was also a speech that did not clearly accept responsibility for the current world (dis)order which Carney says needs to change. The reality of that need, however, was overly reemphasised by Trump himself during his meandering, arrogant and incohesive speech delivered a day later, spanning over one hour.

My interest is in what Carney did not specifically say in his speech: who would constitute the new world order, who would be its leaders and why should we believe it would be any different from the present one?

Speaking in French, Carney observed that he was talking about “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.” He was, of course, responding to the vulgar script for global domination put in place by the Trumpian United States, given Trump’s declared interest in seeing Canada as part of the United States, his avarice for Greenland, not to mention his already concluded grab for Venezuelan oil. But within this scenario, bound by ‘no limits’ and ‘no constraints’ he was also talking of Russia and China albeit in a coded language.

He reiterated, “that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states. The power of the less power starts with honesty.”

Who could disagree with Carney? His words are a refreshing whiff of fresh air in the intellectual wasteland that is the Trumpian Oval Office and the current world order it prevails over. But where has been the ‘honesty’ of the less powerful in the specific situation where he equates Canada itself within this spectrum? He tells us that “the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

That is stating the obvious. We have known this for decades by experience. Long before Canada’s relative silence with regard to Trump’s and US’ facilitation of the assault on Palestine and the massacre of its people, and the US President’s economic grab in Venezuela and the kidnapping of that country’s President and his wife, Canada’s own chorus in the world order that Carney now critiques has been embellished by silence or – even worse – by chords written by the global dominance orchestra of the United States.

He says the fading of the rules-based order has occurred because of the “strong tendency for countries to go along, to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.” Canada fits this description better than most other nations I can think of. But would Canada, along with other nations among the silent majority within the ‘intermediate powers’ take the responsibility for the mess in the world precisely that silence has directly led to creating? Who will pay for the pain many nations have endured in the prevailing world order? Will Canada lead the way in the new world order in doing this?

Carney further articulates that “for decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.”

But this is not true, is it? Countries like Canada prospered not merely because of the stability of rules of the world order, but because they opted for silence when they should not have. The rupture and the chaos in the world order Carney now critiques and is insanely led by Trump today is not merely the latter’s creation. It has been co-authored for decades by countries such as Canada, France, the United Kingdom to mention just a few who also regularly chant the twin-mantras of human rights and democracy. Trump is merely the latest and the most vocal proponent of the nastiness of that World Order.

It is not that Carney is unaware of this unpleasant reality. He accepts that “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”

While Canada seems to be coming to terms with this reality only now, countries like Sri Lanka and others in similarly disempowered positions in this world order have experienced this for decades, because, as I have outlined earlier, Canada et al have been complicit sustainers of the now demonised and demonic world order.

It is not that I disagree with the basic description Carney has painted of the status of the world. But from personal experience and from the perspective of a citizen from a powerless country, I simply do not trust those who preach ‘the gospel of the good’ not as a matter of principle, but only when the going gets tough for them.

At this rather late stage, Carney says, Canada is “amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.” Unfortunately, we, the people of countries who had to dance to the tunes of the world order led by the First World, have heard it for years, with no one listening to us when our discomforts were articulated. Now, Carney wants ‘middle powers’ or ‘intermediate powers’ within which he also locates Canada, “to live the truth?” For him, the truth means “naming reality” as it exists; “acting consistently” towards all in the world; “applying the same standards to allies and rivals” and “building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored.” This appears to be the operational mantra for the new world order he is envisioning in which he sees Canada as a legitimate leader merely due to its late wakeup call.

He goes on to give a list of things Canada has done locally and globally and concludes by saying, “we have a recognition of what’s happening and a determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.” He goes on to say Canada also has “the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.” He notes this is “Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.” Quite simply, this a leadership pitch for a new world order with Canada at its helm.

Without being overly cynical, this sounds very familiar, not too dissimilar to what USAID and Voice of America preached to the world; not too dissimilar to what the propaganda arms of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party used to preach in our own languages when we were growing up. It is difficult to buy this argument and accept Canadian and middle country leadership for the new world order when they have been consistently part of the problem of the old one and its excuses for institutionalised double standards practiced by international organisations such as the likes of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other hegemonic entities that have catered to the whims of that world order.

As far as Canada is concerned, it is evident that it has suddenly woken up only due to an existential threat at home projected from across its southern border and Trump’s threats against the Danish territory of Greenland. When Gaza was battered, and Venezuela was raped, there was no audible clarion call. Therefore, there is no real desire for democracy or human rights in its true form, but a convenient and strategic interest in creating a new ‘white supremacist’ world order in the same persona as before, but this time led by a new white warrior instead. The rest of us would be mere followers, nodding our heads as expected as was the case before.

As the 20th century American standup comedian Lenny Bruce once said, “never trust a preacher with more than two suits.” Mr. Carney, Canada along with the so-called middle powers and the lapsed colonialists have way more than two suits, and we have seen them all.