Midweek Review

The Gift of Music:Sons and Fathers

Published

3 years ago

2023/05/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Kanthi with baby Mala.

a film by Sumathy – Part II

by Laleen Jayamanne

There is a recurrent discussion among the film industry personnel in the film about the desirability of ‘originality’ in Sinhala music and also in films, which translates as the need to abandon copying Indian genre films or anything Indian for that matter. One opposing view interrogates the possibility of originality itself, asking ‘what is originality? Are we original?’ Yet another view is expressed by Upul Shantha Sannasgala, in favour of anything that creates box office success, citing the triangular plot of his new film which describe exactly the outrageously plotted, sexist film, Samiya Birindage Deviyaya (The Husband is the Wife’s God,) with the leading star and singer, Rukmani Devi and its arch villain, Domi Jayawardena. The desirability of nationalising the film industry and the creation of ‘our’ studios (meaning with Sinhala ownership, breaking the Tamil monopoly) is also expressed as the racial tensions outside reaches a critical point, when several army officers are killed by the LTTE near Jaffna and kindling the State terror of July 83. When Rex is put on the spot by friends and asked for his views on politics, he says he doesn’t know anything about politics and all he knows is music, adding that music has no race or country, while Sannasgala comes to his defence with; ‘Master is music, music is master!’

Writing or Drawing a Character

In the world’s oldest film school in the former Soviet Union (USSR), there was a practice of getting the students to first draw their characters and ideas on paper before writing with words. The teachers who devised the practice knew that drawing a line, as in a line drawing, would activate a mental process different from writing using words. Highly experienced mentors like Mikael Romm practiced this pedagogy with his students, one of whom was Andre Tarkovsky. The stimulation of the student’s imagination and extra-linguistic sensory powers was one of their aims. It is said that he urged his students to reach into their ‘darkness’ so that they might be able to find a way to speak, find a ‘language’. He protected his students from the communist thought police. Honouring this process of teaching and learning, as I try to do also in my writing, I like to resist asking a director why s/he did such and such, a sad and intellectually feeble resort. Such blunt questions blunt one’s own imaginative capacity to make multi-sensory connections, especially when it’s about cinema. Lucky’s haunting question ‘Appa, what language?’ requires a critic to become self-reflexive about how she uses linguistic-language in writing on film, which doesn’t behave like language as such. As Pasolini rather impatiently pointed out (to the eminent semiologists, including Roland Barthes, at the Pesaro Film Festival) that unlike language with its denotative, finite number of words, there is no dictionary of images we can draw on for film and nor are words similar to images.

So, it’s best not to ask directors what they meant either, because when trying to write a book on his cinema, I once asked Kumar Shahani why an ‘epic persona’ in his film did something, he said ‘I don’t know.’ Was he being a Zen Master, I wondered, a bit taken aback. But then chatting with him I realised the truth of what he was saying, that sometimes artists make their characters do stuff in such a way that it is fruitless to try to find out the motivation for an action, as though every act is a perfectly rationally explainable response to a stimulus, like Pavlov’s poor dog, salivating at the ring of a bell. Some artists want to be able to sustain a degree of freedom in their thinking, that is, keep that which is barely consciously sayable, especially to themselves (at three o’clock in the morning, as they say in the Blues) in a shadowy subconscious state. They might feel its necessity, without being able to put it into words and not even wanting to do so, as it might kill their evanescent impulses. Artists are creatures who trust their impulses and fluctuating sensations trying to harness them in a disciplined and skilled way, lest they get derailed, overwhelmed by their surfeit. But then, I believe that it’s a critic’s responsibility to think about what one sees and hears and feels by posing questions that might open up a train of thought for oneself at first. This is not like revealing hidden meanings, but rather, understanding how something works or doesn’t, its aesthetic logic and feelings, pulses, and how they might connect with some other thing through a style of writing, hoping that readers themselves might take it yet in another unforeseen direction.

sivamohan’s main characters, Rex, Kanthi, Lucky and the quiet Mala, are created and act in such a way that not all their feelings are transparent, nor are all their motivations explained or even explainable. They have an interiority we can sense but to which we don’t have a privileged access and I suspect that the director also might feel that about the people she has created. This may sound strange as sivamohan has said that she modelled Rex, in part, on Rocksamy’s history in the film industry and that Lucky was modelled on the well-known musician Anthony Surendra, the son of Master Anthony, himself a musician. That they have in various ways suffered greatly as Tamils in the film and music industry is an important fact, which sivamohan builds on, with some of the best dialogue I have ever heard in the Sinhala cinema, for sure. And I am thinking here especially of the serious ‘Civil-War Films’ by some of our most talented, senior filmmakers. Some of them have crafted a new ‘anthropological type’ it would seem, with the silent, traumatised young Tamil women doggedly following former soldiers without uttering a word. Here, I don’t wish to comment on these films except to say that they appear to have constructed ‘The Tamil Woman’ as an enigma in her silence. Why Sinhala male directors are drawn to create such figures is something the Sinhala cinephiles and critics themselves should really take up, making a sustained study of the films, especially because now, sex, whether consensual or coercive as in rape, is permitted on the screen by the National Censorship Board.

sivamohan does assiduous ethnographic research for drawing her characters, but they are not Bio-Pics of these particular artists and nor are they phantasmatic figures, but appear to be composites of several real persons in the film and music industries. Hers is not the problem of ‘Realism in the cinema,’ which codes expression in the three-act drama I referred to earlier, and which Stefan Brecht (cited at the beginning) rejects. Within the known historical discrimination suffered by the Tamils of Lanka, sivamohan (who has lived through civil war years both in Jaffna and the South and lost a sister and close friends to it), has created her characters themselves with a degree of opacity, with regard to their subjectivity (reminiscent of Robert Bresson’s Models) but none of them is enigmatic. For me, this is part of the charm and subtlety of these characters who form a multi-ethnic Lankan family. The different ways in which Kanthi and Lucky sing the same song, his ‘mother’s song’, adds a rich affective density to their characters and the ballad-like song itself. Rex at first seemed the simplest, the most transparent, with his open smile, and yet gradually he too becomes much more complex, dark (as he faces direct racist violence), lashing out at those closest to him in despair as his soul is destroyed.

‘Ammi, did he kill her to stop the music?’

Rex and Kanthi

Shamala Kumar (in her hauntingly personal account in the island), on seeing Sons and Fathers with Malin her thirteen-year-old son, tells us that he kept asking her questions loudly while watching the film, to which she had to say ‘I don’t know.’ She says that about the many incomprehensible events of racialised violence shown, including the burning of the film director Venkat in his car. Later at home Malin had asked his mother, ‘did he kill her to stop the music?’ The mother comments on her child’s thoughtful question saying, it was as though he was pleased to be able to piece together a tentative reason for why Lucky fired that shot in a movie theatre. Lucky had come to a cinema where the film of the opening song and dance sequence is repeated in colour, this time round showing us an utterly absorbed audience in a few shots. Lucky, standing at the back of the theatre appears to take a gun out and point it at the screen. Though no gun is visible, we infer that it is one because we see the familiar gesture (seen in countless Westerns and Gangster films), hear the shot and see the dancer on the screen falling down. Some viewers rise up in consternation, one which we share. The reverse shot cuts to a close-up of the bleeding singer who appears to be ‘real,’ rather than a projected image, but films can wound us, make us cry as in life. The next cut shows a singular image, a painterly shot of a splash of red on a white surface. The entire series of shots are hard to make clear sense of, hence the child’s considered question to his mother. It is a puzzle for me as well, because it doesn’t quite compute as a sensory-motor action, say, as a shot fired in a gangster film would be. Usually such a generic shot is clearly motivated, the gun essential to the action as are the hero and villain. I feel a bit like Malin, baffled and startled by that scene. And each time I try to work out how it works, it slips away but returns to me unwittingly just as I drift off into sleep. I feel I can’t quite compute it. But slowly I was able to see why it’s a scene that troubles the mind in a manner quite different from the horrific sequence of the burning of Venkat in his car.

Through this comparison, it dawned on me that sivamohan shifts planes of action and composition (in all three of her films), at certain critical violent moments. She plays with fire; there is the burning tea bush in Ingirunthu which does not turn to ash, and in A Single Tumbler, the single metal tumbler catches fire in the microwave, a truly disturbing, scary image. The fire power of Lucky’s gun shot is slightly different, but all three instances shift gear, so to speak. They do something which impels our minds (if receptive like that of a child), to return to the scene repeatedly. What is it about these sivamohan scenes that make our minds to return to them irresistibly? They are not played out on a clear realist spatio-temporal plane, though these films have a precise sense of historical space/time.

On a meta-cinematic plane, Sivamohan is paying tribute to the process of Montage which created the magical appearances and disappearances, what Eisenstein called, the defining cinematic act of the medium of film. These singular scenes puzzle the mind because their violence is not like the realistically presented violence of say, burning a man alive or the mass destruction of buildings and property with fire. The violence of shooting at the image of the dancer (but not the flesh and blood actor/dancer), enacts a form of ‘counter-violence,’ as response to the normalised violence of racism, exploitation, torture and murder, which we have become all too familiar with as Lankans (we hear a victim of the pogrom say, ‘last time we lost all’). How many more times will history repeat itself with such horrific violence, one wonders.

A beautiful scene honours actual persons from the film industry, the editor Aliman (a Muslim), with his old editing machine to cut (the now obsolete) celluloid film, expertly handling the film, searches for the 28 missing shots with the director Siva (a Tamil). These two men from the film industry, with their dry humour, were well known personnel who did pass away quite poor.

Allegory as Counter-Violence

There is a large body of philosophical and programmatic writing on revolutionary- violence in anti-imperialist national struggles, as a form of ‘counter-violence.’ I am trying to use the idea differently though, not by citing chapter and verse from, say Lenin’s What is to be Done, or Che Guevara, beloved of the JVP of the April ‘71 rebellion. Rather, I want to understand the precise imaginative ways in which the shooting of the dancer has been staged allegorically, rather than realistically, which I would argue to be an ethico-aesthetic decision by sumathy in her film, which is also about the State sponsored pogrom against the Tamils in July 83.

sumathy’s allegorical scenes are not cliches that she whips up to resolve her films when the situation becomes unendurable, when the violence reaches a level of horror and ‘The Scream’ appears to be the only expression available. It’s the internal dynamics of the fascist violence of the State and of reactive terrorism of the LTTE which is displaced in the movie theatre, with an allegory of cinematic violence, countering the sure-fire ingredients of ‘Action, Sex and Violence’ (mentioned as desirable by a producer in the film), as ingredients of exciting marketable films now. The process of countering these violent logics of actions and reactions is linked to how the theatre scene is constructed as an allegory, what I am calling an enactment of ‘counter-violence’ through a film-allegory.

The Lens as A Brush

Godard, when asked once why there is so much blood smeared liberally on his characters, in one of his polemical post 68 experimental films famously snapped back, ‘It’s not Blood, its Red!’ Similarly, the striking splash of red on a white surface (which appears soon after the dancer is shot down bleeding profusely on the floor), punctuates the scene emphatically and calls attention to its minimalist painterly gesture. Why is this striking singular painterly shot inserted there between shots of the bleeding dancer on the ground? A white surface, whether a wall or the screen itself is not visible there in the theatre. We have heard Lucky being repeatedly called a ‘tiger cub,’ even by his best friend and the other Sinhala musicians refuse to work with him as the suspicion against all Tamil young men as potential terrorists intensifies in the South.

This trend reaches a peak when his ‘girl-friend’ Champa, on hearing Lucky sing his ‘mother’s song (Tharaka Hanga) at the club, asks him what it is and if he would teach it to her. Like the sweetly naive person he is, he agrees gladly. But instead of waiting, Champa goes to Lucky’s house and learns the song directly from his mother herself. As he returns home they meet unexpectedly at his door and sees her guile when she tells him that she is off to India to be trained as a singer. As she walks away Lucky shouts out her; ‘My father is not a Terrorist. I am a Terrorist. I will carry the Tamil newspaper gladly.’ His mother has previously warned Rex not to be seen carrying a Tamil newspaper. The sense of the crescendo of Lucky’s surprising outburst is muted as it’s a Tamil newspaper which he thinks to carry, not a weapon of choice for a terrorist of any ethnicity! It’s the repeated branding of Lucky as a terrorist by his peers which makes his persona as a ‘terrorist’ in the movie theatre credible. There, Lucky is presented as an actor in the ‘film within the film,’ who acts out an allegorical scene of shooting at an image. Because, if he is an actor playing a Terrorist, then his sole imperative is that he must kill. But if it’s an allegorical action, then the question as to motivation can have no realist answer. The splash of blood-red on the pristine white screen is a sensuous abstract image of ‘pure’ violence, enabled by Lucky’s equally abstracted gesture of shooting an image with an imaginary gun, in the film within the film Sons and Fathers that we have been watching for over an hour by then. So, I read the entire scene of Lucky shooting the dancer and the audience watching it, as a film-within-a-film (a meta-film) crystalising, in an abstract image of violence, the discussions on the need for racial and cultural purity, also encoded in the song Jaya Pita Deas. The sonic montage, the contradiction between the hybrid image and sound, and between images themselves, is the kind of sequence which Eisenstein called ‘Intellectual-Montage.’ They cut across the compartmentalised brain. These conceptually sophisticated audio-visual montage techniques, stimulating feelings and thoughts all at once, would have been why Sons and Fathers received the prize for music, at the Jaipur International Film Festival in 2019.

The different views expressed about Sinhala cinema and the desirability of ‘cultural purity’ appears as an open question here. Historically, these questions were resolved in favour of the Nationalisation of the film industry according to the recommendation of the Royal Commission into the Lankan Film Industry in the 1960s. The examination of the successes and problems of that policy, in the creation of a ‘truly national (Sinhala) cinema’ by instituting the State Film Corporation of Lanka, is best left to historians. But the question of whether the significant new national cinema, created in its wake, also ignored Lanka’s ethnic minorities from the desired national identity, is also one for our film critics to worry over. The allegorical gesture of Lucky, shooting down the film image, in the guise of a Sinhala persona allegorised as a Tamil Terrorist, still remains tantalising to my mind despite what I’ve written here. But we Sinhala critics will learn much, I believe, through serious scholarship and critical writing on Lankan cinema and exploring how sumathy’s cinematic project might be theorised within its dynamics. Such work will require interrogating the long-standing (taken for granted) Sinhala idea of sanguine ‘generational change’ among talented men, because ‘history’ is not a natural event.

The Mother’s Song and its Loss

Towards the very end of the film we see Rex, Kanthi and their daughter absorbed in something on their TV. For the first time we see them in large close-ups (rare in this film), while the camera tracks between them, bringing each of them very close to us. A cut to the TV reveals Champa singing Lucky’s ‘mother’s song’ with orchestration, in a polished, well trained, sweet voice, dressed tastefully in a matching sari and blouse, producing the requisite well-rehearsed gestures and artfully-wistful smiles for the camera. What we have heard and seen so far is of this song’s unusual circulation from a mother to a son whose childhood was nourished by his mother singing it often. We see its social circulation when Kanthi is invited to sing a song by her guests who appreciate her voice and the song. She sings with ease and grace, dressed now in an Indian sari, wearing a pottu and her knee length hair in a single braid. But we also hear the song at intense moments of fear and sadness, as when Kanthi sings it to herself after having looked at a photo album. But on the television it appears as a song ‘stolen’ from the family by Champa, without a thought for royalties, having violated something above and beyond the provenance of a song. As the threesome watch Champa’s polished performance of their own song, Kanthi begins to mouth it silently, while Rex looks on utterly bereft but still beating time to the song he composed for his beloved wife, while the camera rests on Mala who looks straight at us for the first time, as the shot ends. Was she angry I wondered, trying to read her contained intense expression. The careless, cool ease with which Champa becomes a professional singer and sings the song publicly contrasts starkly with a singular rendition of it by Lucky. While in his bedroom (with a blurred poster of John Lennon on his wall), Lucky spits out a snatch of Rock music, but in the club, he sings his mother’s song almost to himself, in a caressing whisper, before the band has to strike a ‘Happy Birthday’ with the sound of breaking glass in the distance; a complex sequence in montage.

Lucky is presented as a tender, generous and most vulnerable young man, and through his allegorisation as The Terrorist, at the movie theatre, we might be able to see how even such a person may become a ‘terrorist,’ cornered, crushed, with avenues for professional movement all blocked for him and his family. In doing this the director makes an exemplary figure of a Lankan artist whose cultural heritage is mixed, hybrid, not monoculturally pure. It’s nothing to do with his ‘pure blood’ (Sinha-ley,) but rather a matter of access to learning, fair opportunity and a shared understanding of a rich multi-cultural world (including India), open to the outside world. That it is a Sinhala actor who is personified as a Tamil Terrorist (who in his actual life sings in Tamil), is significant, because some of that brutalising process is ‘demonstrated’ through the political device of allegory. There is no ‘conversion’ of Lucky into a Terrorist because we see both Lucky and the persona of the Terrorist in his gesture of shooting at an image, with an invisible gun. In the movie theatre, he is not a symbol or a metaphor, but functions as an allegorical body. Allegory makes us see double, and stays with the unresolved duality, and lets it trouble us, as it did Malin and me. That splattered red on white appears as both blood and some red paint, and the white background both a movie screen and a pure white surface, both at once. Such a mode of allegorical viewing goes against our habitual and ingrained ways of consuming films.

Some of us, who have spent all our working lives teaching film and have also grown-up watching lots of all kinds of films (in a long-ago vanished Ceylon in my case) believe that when it’s time to take leave, the Angel of Death will arrive and give us a chance to see just two film clips one last time. Now, I will unhesitatingly choose Dharmasena Pathiraja’s film Ponmani, made with his Tamil friends, while he was teaching Sinhala literature and Media Studies at the Jaffna University in the ‘70. It’s the haunting funeral procession of Ponmani, with her coffin in a horse-drawn glass carriage, led by a slender man in shorts, filmed in a formal long-shot against a lagoon and an expanse of sky, with her father walking alone some distance away from the mourners, as his Vellala family was estranged from her. For having violated caste taboos, she was shot dead by a killer hired by her betrothed, as she came out of a church with her new kin group. The Karnataka song we had heard sung repeatedly, by a group of seated female singers (about longing for Krishna to appear), plays across this desolate shot one last time.

The other clip is of the seemingly every-day banal high-angle-shot of the family of three walking towards us on a railway platform. In long to medium shots from Sons and Fathers, we see Rex, Kanthi and Lucky as a boy, walking between them carrying small suitcases of their possessions. The couple has just got married at a registry (with minimal formality, with just four smiling in-laws) and are coming home to live with Rex. Kanthi is dressed in a Kandyan sari and Rex has long curly hair tied at the back. Seeing that shot of the threesome, who are being observed by an adult Lucky leaning on a railway bridge (a pensive ‘recollection image’), it becomes an iconic shot for Sinhala cinema, suggestive in its promise of rich potential for our art and much else. Variations of this shot, of them climbing the long steps of the station, are repeated several times like the refrain of Lucky’s beloved mother’s song.

sumathy wrote the lyrics for two of the four songs in the film. Vantharu Vanthachu (‘He is coming’ with apocalyptic events of bombs destroying the earth, elephants in trees, wrapped in a love song), is sung in Tamil. The Mother’s Song, written in English, is translated for the film by Amarakeerthi Liyanage, a Professor of Sinhala and a specialist in Comparative Literature. Anthony Surendra, the Tamil music director of the film, wrote, composed and sang My Heart (Ma Hade) in the film at a recording studio and is the song Kanthi hums to Rex’s accompaniment at the keyboard (and also to an infant Kamala), in a most unusual romantic scene. When asked, sumathy said that she was thinking of Desdemona’s Willow Song while writing what she calls ‘The Mother’s Song’ for the film. The Shakespearean ballad was given to Desdemona by her mother who had received it from her maid. She makes a significant change in her song, the ‘betrayal’ there is no longer sexual as in the original folk ballad sung by Desdemona before Othello kills her in a fit of jealousy. But in the film, it becomes Champa’s thoughtless, cunning betrayal of Lucky and his mother.

The way Sumathy presents Rex Periyasami, Mudiyanselage Kanthilatha, Lakshman and Mala as a multi-ethnic family, makes one feel that they will survive the fire that set Lanka ablaze then, stronger in the essential values that bind them together, but no doubt at great cost to their livelihoods and futures, in creating the hybrid music, their very life-blood, which Kanthi says emphatically, ‘saved them’. Sumathy’s Sons and Fathers is her poetic tribute to those values that bind that family and the ethnically diverse Lankan popular film and music industry where those values also flourished, once.

However, Malin’s singular question to his mother, and Mala’s last look to the camera, perhaps of anger, make an old critic like me imagine that they must be big by now. And in so doing, I hear faintly Rukmani Devi singing, ‘mavila penevi rupe hade …swapneya chaya …’ (in my heart emerges a dream-image … of life) as I fall asleep, perchance to dream. (Concluded)

All News Advertisement

Related Topics:film by Sumathy Sons and Fathers The Gift of Music

Up Next

The Eve Eruption

Don't Miss

Crisis Time Historian

Click to comment

Midweek Review

22A: Developing constitutional quagmire

Published

4 days ago

2026/08/26

Sahan Weerasooriya

The government’s high profile project to enact the 22nd Amendment failed to secure any tangible support from anyone outside the NPP, in Parliament or outside. In a statement, the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) noted that the proposed amendment concerned the sovereignty of the people and, therefore, required approval through a referendum. The ITAK, a key member of the six-party Political Council of Tamil-Speaking people (PCTSP) and the second largest party in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, other than the NPP, is opposed to President Dissanayake’s move. Tamil Progressive Party (TPA) leader and former Minister Mano Ganeshan, also of the PCTSP, has rejected the 22nd Amendment. The Island learns that all political parties, represented in the PCTSP, are opposed to the proposed Amendment.

The NPP obtained the most seats at the Parliamentary General Election 2024. Other parties that managed to gain seats in Parliament are the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB/40 seats), Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK/8 seats), New Democratic Front (NDF/5 seats), Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP/3 seats), Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC/1), Sarvajana Balaya (SB/1), United National Party (UNP/1), Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA/1), All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC/1), All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC/1), Jaffna – Independent Group 17 (IND17-1) and the Sri Lanka Labour Party (SLLP/1).

Timeline

* March 30, 2026, BASL wrote to Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara seeking a meeting to discuss 22A

* May 25, 2026, BASL wrote to President Dissanayake seeking a meeting to discuss the same

* July 16, 2026, BASL wrote again to the Justice Minister underscoring the failure on his part and the President to respond to previous letters

* July 27, 2026, NPP executive committee member advocate Lal Wijenayake declared opposition to the government move

* July 29, 2026, BASL met the Justice Minister, sought a meeting with President Dissanayake

* July 31, 2026, Mahanayakes of four Chapters (Nikayas) wrote a joint letter to President Dissanayake urging him not to go ahead with the 22nd Amendment. But, the Mahanayakes refrained from releasing the letter to the media

* August 3, 2026, BASL disclosed the Mahanayakes’ letter to the President. Justice Minister Nanayakkara, accompanied by Health and Media Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa, visited the Mahanayakes to explain the government stand. But, they denied receiving the crucial letter

* August 7, 2026, UN requested President Dissanayake, in no uncertain terms, to abandon the move.

* August 11, 2026, Government admitted receiving the Mahanayakes letter

* August 18, 2026, 22nd Amendment Bill presented in Parliament. Those opposed to the constitutional amendment began filing petitions. The BASL led the way. By 24 August, 21 petitions were filed.

* August 20, 2026, Catholic Bishops’ Conference urged the government not to proceed without adequate consultations.

* August 24, 2026, BASL, in a motion filed in the Supreme Court, suggested that Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena recuse from hearing the petitions

By Shamindra Ferdinando

In support of the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) government’s highly contentious move to enact the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution despite worldwide condemnation by eminent jurists, meant to extend the retirement ages of superior court judges, NPP leader and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will address a series of countrywide meetings.

Dissanayake is also the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the main constituent of the governing party.

Justice and National Integration Minister and Attorney-at-Law Harshana Nanayakkara, on 18 August, 2026, tabled the controversial 22nd Amendment Bill in Parliament. Nanayakkara also tabled the Judicature (Amendment) Bill on the same day. That will pave the way for the increase of the retirement ages of High Court judges to 63 years, and District Court and Magistrate Court judges to 62 years. The government wants to increase the retirement ages of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges to 67 and 65, respectively.

However, the government has proposed a six-year term for the Chief Justice but he/she will have to retire at the new mandatory retirement age of 67.

Health and Media Minister, as well as Cabinet spokesman Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa, recently announced the decision to launch the high profile propaganda campaign on 5 September. The NPP and JVP leader has vowed to enact the 22nd Amendment, come what may.

Dissanayake, who took over the party leadership on 2 February, 2014, at the 17th convention of the JVP, and formed the NPP in 2019, has indicated that he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, give up the 22nd Amendment. Dissanayake didn’t mince his words when he received a top level delegation of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) at the Presidential Secretariat, on 12 August, to discuss the burning issue wracking the country. It would be pertinent to mention that the BASL raised the issue with Dissanayake, on 25 May, after Nanayakkara ignored their first request, made on 31 March.

The Supreme Court will hear over 20 petitions challenging the constitutionality of the 22nd Amendment Bill. Now that the matter is before the Supreme Court, the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) shouldn’t have sought to involve the BASL in a futile attempt to educate the NPP parliamentary group. The BASL, too, should know better. The BASL and SJB are among those who moved the Supreme Court. Against that background it would be unthinkable that the NPP parliamentary group wants to listen to BASL. Government activists, on Monday (24), organised a protest outside BASL Secretariat, NO. 153, Mihindu Mawatha, Colombo 12 demanding the resignation of BASL President Rajeev Amarasuriya.

SJB and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa clashed in Parliament with the leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake over his bid to bring in the BASL team to address the whole Parliament. NPP National List lawmaker Najith Indika declared on X that “the Opposition Leader couldn’t call all MPs for meetings. BASL either does not follow parliamentary procedure or knows how to manipulate public perception.”

The Supreme Court will receive petitions during two weeks, after the tabling of the Amendment. The Court should inform the Speaker of its determination within three weeks. Parliament will receive that determination ahead of President Dissanayake completing his second year in Office. The last presidential election was held on 21 September 2024.

Dissanayake won a five-year term and in November, the same year, led the party to a resounding victory at the parliamentary poll. The NPP/JVP position is that both Bills can be enacted with a 2/3 majority. With a mammoth 159 seats in Parliament, the government is confident that its political project can be easily achieved. But, the NPP operation has run into significant opposition with the United Nations, throwing its weight behind the BASL-led campaign.

Tabling of the two Bills on 18 August coincided with the 39th anniversary of the JVP grenade attack on the UNP parliamentary group, in the wake of the signing of the Indo-Lanka peace accord in 1987. Ajith Kumara, at that time a minor parliamentary employee, lobbed a hand grenade at the UNP group meeting, chaired by President J.R. Jayewardena. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa, too, was present. The then National Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali narrowly escaped death in the attack that took place in the Committee Room 1 of Parliament. Deniyaya MP and Matara District Minister Keerthi Abeywickrema was killed. The writer covered the funeral, held on 22 August, 1987, at the playground of the Morawaka Maha Vidyalaya. Then the young Minister in charge of Youth Affairs and Employment, Ranil Wickremesinghe, was among those who represented the government at the funeral.

Kumara had been recruited as a sweeper by no less a person than the then Secretary General of Parliament, Nihal Seneviratne. Had Kumara been a member of the proscribed JVP at the time he joined the parliamentary staff or did the JVP approach him later?

The Colombo High Court acquitted Ajith Kumara on 12 October, 1990, and released him from custody on 6 August, 1993. Subsequently, the JVP accommodated Ajith Kumara on the party’s politburo and paved the way for him to contest the Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council poll on the JVP ticket. With fat hopes the JVP named him their chief ministerial candidate.

Key Opp demands

Pointing out that the matter before the Supreme Court judges related to them, the BASL requested that a bench consisting of a full court, comprising all the judges, be constituted to determine the constitutionality of the 22nd Amendment Bill. The BASL also requested the Supreme Court to determine that the Bill is inconsistent with Article 3 of the Constitution and required approval by the people at a referendum.

In the alternative, the BASL sought determination that Clause 2 of the Bill is inconsistent with Article 3 of the Constitution and required approval by the people at a referendum and Clause 3 of the Bill is inconsistent with Article 3 of the Constitution and required approval by the people at a referendum.

Essentially, all petitioners have requested for a full court, comprising all Supreme Court judges and a referendum, if ordered, it’ll be the second instance. The first referendum was held in December 1982. The UNP that won an unbeatable 5/6 majority in a 168-member Parliament, at the 1977 parliamentary election, obtained a mandate of the people to extend the life of Parliament by six years. That utterly undemocratic, unreasonable and treacherous act contributed to the overall deterioration of the country. By the time the 1989 parliamentary poll was held, the police, backed by the armed forces, were fighting the JVP in the South, and the Indian Army, deployed in the Northern and Eastern regions, in terms of the Indo-Lanka Accord.

Former External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris, convenor of the Joint Opposition grouping, too, moved the Supreme Court against the 22nd Amendment, and General Secretary of the SJB Ranjith Maddumabandara did the same. Altogether there were nearly two dozen petitioners

Ex-Law Professor Peiris has vigorously campaigned against the government move, and the weekly media briefing. held at former President Wickremesinghe’s Flower Road Office, has become the focal point of the Opposition campaign. Peiris insists that the Supreme Court shouldn’t hear the petitions as justices were direct beneficiaries of the proposed Amendment. Therefore, determination should be made at a referendum. In case the Supreme Court decides to hear the petitions, the full court consisting of all judges should be constituted to determine the constitutionality of the 22nd Amendment Bill, the former parliamentarian has asserted.

As repeatedly stressed by Prof. Peiris, two previous determinations by the Supreme Court that the alteration of superior court judges’ retirement ages should be subject to a referendum cannot be disregarded, under any circumstances. One of the determinations is of crucial importance as former Chief Justice Murdhu Fernando (December 2024 to July 2025) served on the three-member bench that made the far reaching announcement in 2022.

But, the BASL made an unexpected move on Monday. Close on the heels of its petition against the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the BASL filed a motion in the Supreme Court suggesting that Chief Justice Preethi Padman Suresena recuse from hearing petitions.

Petitioners BASL President Rajeev Amarasuriya and its Secretary Nalin de Silva cited Attorney General as the respondent in a motion filed in terms of Article 121 read with Article 120 of the Constitution to determine whether the Bill, titled “Twenty Second Amendment to the Constitution,” or any part thereof, is required to be passed by a Referendum in terms of Article 83 of the Constitution.

The BASL pointed out that the first Judge of the Supreme Court, who would benefit if this Bill is enacted into law without the process of a referendum, is the Chief Justice, and further that if a referendum is mandated, then that there is a possibility that the Chief Justice may retire before its completion, and if for those reasons, the Chief Justice wished to recuse from hearing this matter, then the petitioners have requested the Chief Justice to constitute a bench comprising of all other judges in Supreme Court.

The maximum number of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges are 17, including the CJ and 20 judges ,including the President of the Court of Appeal, respectively. The NPP caused controversy by not filling vacancies among the superior court judges with the Opposition alleging there were four vacancies each. There’ll be another vacancy among the Court of Appeal judges in the first week of September.

The warning issued by the UN following a spate of other statements from various local and international bodies has brought tremendous pressure on the government. Having initially denied any knowledge of a joint letter, dated July 31, addressed to President Dissanayake by the Malwatta, Asgiriya, Amarapura and Ramanna chapters, the government, on 11 August, admitted the President received the letter.

However, the Catholic Bishops Conference publicly commented on this issue, only on 20 August, after all other concerned parties censured the government over the move. A section of the civil society that portrayed the 22nd Amendment as the panacea for a mountain of cases held up in courts had no option but to sing a different tune after the UN warned the NPP government over the pet project that seemed to have backfired. The UN’s position rattled the government and its backers.

18A and 20A

War-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa enacted 18th Amendment to the Constitution in early September 2010. That despicable political project did away with a two-term time limit for the executive president and expanded presidential powers over independent commissions. That Bill received 161 votes, two more than the NPP parliamentary group. But, 18A didn’t do any good for President Rajapaksa or his party. Maithripala Sirisena, General Secretary of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s party, betrayed him, won the 2015 presidential election, and created an utterly undesirable political environment that, over a period of 10 years, ruined the country’s major political parties.

The emergence of the NPP as the dominant power should be examined taking into consideration the deterioration of the UNP, SLFP and the SLPP. The UNP and SLFP are no longer represented in Parliament while the SLPP that won a commanding 145 seats at the 2020 parliamentary poll was reduced to just three lawmakers in Parliament. SLPP’s National Organiser Namal Rajapaksa was so concerned about the transformation of the political environment he took refuge in the National List. Had he not taken that precaution, he wouldn’t be in Parliament today. While the SLPP deteriorated from 145 seats to just three, the NPP, whose 2020 parliamentary group consisted of just three, including one National List member (Dr. Harini Amarasuriya) ended up taking 159 seats, the best results achieved under the Proportional Representation system introduced in 1989.

Having handsomely won the 2019 presidential election, Gotabaya Rajapaksa brought in the 20th Amendment aimed at further consolidating his hold on power. Basil Rajapaksa, a dual citizen of Sri Lanka and the US, wanted to enter Parliament through the National List. The Rajapaksas removed a particular clause through the 19th Amendment to enable Basil Rajapaksa to enter Parliament. Subsequently, the SLPP accommodated Basil Rajapaksa in the Cabinet as the all-powerful Finance Minister. He succeeded Mahinda Rajapaksa in July 2021. But by then, the national economy had suffered irreparable damage and the 20th Amendment, meant to consolidate executive power, seemed irrelevant. Public protest campaign that received overt and covert US and Indian backing was launched in March 2022, leading to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s unceremonious ouster in July of same year due to India and Western backed violent protests.

The 18th Amendment and the 20th Amendment were enacted at the expense of particularly the 17th and 19th Amendments, respectively.

The Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) has alleged that the 22nd Amendment would enable the government to implement its neoliberal programme. The breakaway JVP group has asserted that the government’s sinister project is intended to remove whatever obstacles to its neoliberal strategy.

FSP’s Education Secretary Pubudu Jayagoda said: “A new Fisheries Act will divide the ocean into plots, lease the fish-rich areas to multinational corporations, and deprive local fishermen the opportunity to catch fish in the deep sea. The biggest obstacle to this is the fishermen. A Quality Assurance and Accreditation Commission Act is being drafted to grant state recognition and legality to degree mills. Three thousand schools are going to be closed, depriving children of the fundamental right to education. To do that, every pillar of the state must be brought under government control. A long list can be given: privatising hospital laboratory services, selling off state institutions, bringing forward new repressive laws like the PSTA (Protection of the State from Terrorism Act), and a new Cooperatives Act that snatches away people’s funds—many things like that. Taking the arbitrary power required to execute these into the hands of the executive is the true objective of this constitutional amendment.”

Midweek Review

Shakespeare’s female characters

Published

4 days ago

2026/08/26

Sahan Weerasooriya

Ophelia in a scene from Hamlet

Displaying Gender-Based Issues that Resonate with Our Times

by Dr. Siri Galhenage
Psychiatrist [Retd]

In most of William Shakespeare’s plays, the protagonists are male. He created such memorable characters as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Prospero, Coriolanus, the monarchs of history plays and many others – heroes as well as villains. This was a reflection of the societal values of the time. Women were not permitted to perform on stage, and all female roles were played by young males – a practice that continued for nearly half a century after Shakespeare’s death. This was so even though Elizabeth 1, the learned female monarch of England and Ireland and a humanist, occupied the throne during most of Shakespeare’s writing life [1580–1613], and extended her patronage to his plays.

Nevertheless, compared with his contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, Shakespeare wrote a greater number of plays featuring prominent female characters that drove the narratives, providing insights into intra-psychic, interpersonal, social and moral aspects of life.

I have selected two such female characters from Shakespeare’s plays and another from one of his narrative poems to illustrate this idea, focusing primarily on gender based violence – emotional, physical and sexual – that continues to resonate in our own times. I have also chosen another female character who challenged the gender constraints that imposed by contemporary society.

DESDEMONA in Othello –

A Victim of Morbid Jealousy

A scene from As You Like It

Jealousy, as a human experience, has many nuances of meaning, ranging from the harmless to the morbid, including delusional forms, with many variations in between. The object of concern in jealousy is the suspicion of unfaithfulness or infidelity on the part of a loved one, commonly a female partner in a marital relationship. In its morbid form, accompanied by intense passion, jealousy has the potential to be destructive and even dangerous, placing the spouse at risk. It is not an uncommon presentation in clinical practice attracting the diagnosis of ‘Othello Syndrome’ although there is disagreement among clinicians about the application of the term.

Othello, a valiant soldier of African heritage in the state of Venice, had no difficulty winning the heart of Desdemona, the attractive young daughter of a prosperous senator. He took her away in defiance of her father’s wish for her to marry into the Venetian nobility. At this point, the Turks were preparing to regain Venetian-held territory in Cyprus, and Othello, recognised for his military prowess, was selected to lead the defence of the territory.

Despite the imminent Turkish attack on Cyprus, Desdemona preferred to remain with her husband rather than stay in Venice. The attack did not eventuate, however, because a violent storm dispersed and destroyed the invading Turkish fleet. The Venetian forces rejoiced, and the occasion provided an added opportunity to celebrate the marriage of Othello and Desdemona.

Casio, a close confidant of Othello, who had been recently promoted to lieutenant, was delegated to supervise the festivities. Cassio’s promotion caused great offence to Iago, who strongly believed that he was better suited to the position. He plotted to take revenge on Othello and Cassio by planting the seed of doubt in Othello’s mind through innuendo and trickery, casting suspicion on Desdemona’s fidelity and on her relationship with good-looking Cassio. Desdemona, a woman of exuberance and humour, became the unwitting focus of Iago’s manipulation.

The dissonance that arose in Othello’s mind eventually reached a climax when he accused his wife of infidelity and became convinced that she should die. Despite Desdemona’s plea for compassion, Othello strangled her to death. On finally gaining insight into the whole saga, Othello fell on his sword beside his wife.

OPHELIA in Hamlet – A Case of Manic Defence in response
to emotional abuse

Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, takes centre stage in the play of the same name, and his mental processes have been the focus of scrutiny by successive generations of critics.

Young Prince Hamlet is faced with a complex emotional challenge following the sudden death of his father, King Hamlet, he idolised. The late king’s brother, usurper to the throne, hastily marries the widowed queen, denying the young prince his lawful right to sovereignty. Hamlet’s grief is compounded by his outrage towards his mother and his lingering doubts about the circumstances of his father’s death. He lapses into a state of melancholy.

But the impact of Hamlet’s emotional instability and the displacement of his anger onto Ophelia, to whom the prince had professed his love, receive less attention by critics, despite the significant psychological issues raised by her predicament. The episode in which Hamlet directs his anger towards Ophelia – often referred to as the ‘nunnery scene’ – is considered one of the most vicious in all Shakespeare.

Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”…. “If thou dost marry, I’ll give this plague for thy dowry, be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not escape calamity. Get thee to a nunnery; go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery go, quickly too. Farewell

Her love for Prince Hamlet was forbidden from the outset by her father, the scheming counsellor, Polonius, and by her brother Laertes; she was obedient to them. With her dignity destroyed by the very person she loved and her father killed, albeit inadvertently by the hand of her lover, she nevertheless reacted with compassion. With her brother away in France, Ophelia is bereft of any meaningful relationships.

With no one left to confide in, her mind had no alternative but to escape reality. She lapsed into a state of mania – a state of ‘fragile happiness’ with underlying deep sorrow; an unconscious defensive operation of the mind known as ‘manic defence’, as described by Melanie Klein [1882-1960], the renowned Austrian Psychoanalyst.

In this state of mind, Ophelia presents herself before the king and queen, singing snatches of song concerning love, death and betrayal. Her behaviour is totally out of character to her formerly demure self. Here are a few excerpts from her verses illustrating what might be described as a ‘flight of ideas’.

How should I your true love know/ From another one? / By his cockle hat and staff/ And his sandal shoon…”

“He is dead and gone, lady/ He is dead and gone/ At his head a grass green turf/ At his heels a stone…

They say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table …

Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny/ And in his grave rained many a tear …” “You must sing ’Adown adown’ and you call him adown-a.”

Later, Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, announced that Ophelia ‘Fell in a weeping brook while making garlands from crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples’, and had made no attempt to save herself. At the graveyard two gravediggers discussed whether she deserves a Christian burial as she appeared to have taken her own life.

LUCRECE – in Shakespeare’s narrative poem The Rape

of Lucrece

Reworked from a story by the Roman historian Livy, Shakespeare’s innovative narrative poem, first published in 1594, gives access to the mind of a victim of sexual assault. Set in ancient Rome, the poem gives expression to the agony of Lucrece, the gracious wife of a nobleman, following a savage attack upon her by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the brutal king Lucius Tarquinius of Rome.

During a joyous conversation, a group of young noblemen were commenting on the virtues of their wives when Collatinus extolled the incomparable beauty and chastity of his beloved Lucrece. Aroused by the description of her elegance, young Sextus makes a covert exit, ‘borne by the trustless wings of desire’ in pursuit of his prey –the peerless dame’, ‘weakly fortressed from a world of harm.

Lucrece warmly welcomes her royal guest, who shows no inward ill or outward harm. He praises her husband’s military prowess, ‘pawning his honour to obtain his lust. During the conversation he scans her beauty and burns with sexual desire, yet ‘is madly toss’d between desire and dread. His ambivalence finally gives way to desire. ‘Desire my pilot, beauty my prize/ ‘Then who fears sinking where such treasure lies?’ This said, he advances upon her, ‘like a falcon towering in the skies, that ‘Coutcheth the fowl with his wings’ ‘So under his insulting falcon lies/ Harmless Lucretia’ shade’, trembling with fear, ‘as fowl hear falcon’s bells’. She ‘lies at the mercy of his moral sting’ and finally succumbs ‘To the rough beast that knows no gentle right/ Nor aught obey but his foul appetite’.

Lucrece is shattered, perplexed and grief-stricken by the unexpected assault on her by her honoured guest. ‘I alone must sit and pine/ Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine’. She weeps, ‘O unseen shame, invisible disgrace/ O unfelt sore, crest wounding private scar’. Her anguish is further expressed through the image of the violated hive. ’My honey lost, and I, a drone – like bee, have no perfection of my summer left/ But robb’d and ransack’d by injurious theft./ In thy weak hive a wand’ring wasp hath kept/ And suck’d the honey which thy chaste bee kept’.

In this state of mourning, Lucrece despatches two messengers: one to her father in Rome and the other to her husband on the battlefield. On their arrival, she reveals the circumstances of her agony and names the individual responsible. She then stabs herself to death.

Their entourage carry her body through Rome and vow to avenge the death of this ‘incomparable woman of chaste’. By public acclaim the reign of Tarquins is overthrown, and the rule of Rome handed over to the consuls.

A scene from Othello

ROSALIND in ‘As You Like It’ – Challenging the Gender Constraints

One of the few female characters to play a leading role is Rosalind in ‘As You Like It’. She remains much to the liking of many a theatre goer because of her wit, wisdom and inner strength. Rosalind transcends the constraints imposed on women during the Shakespearean era – constraints that continue to resonate in certain cultures even today.

Two young women of noble birth flee the oppressive court in disguise and seek refuge in the Forest of Arden. Rosalind disguised as a young man, Ganymede, while her devoted cousin Celia adopts the name Aliena. As they depart Celia declares, “Now go we in content/ To liberty, and not to banishment.” Orlando, the object of Rosalind’s affection, also escapes to the forest to evade the hostility of his brother. Unaware of Rosalind’s disguise, he expresses his love by hanging verses in her praise upon the trees. Although Rosalind discovers these poems, she chooses to maintain her disguise, using it as an opportunity to test Orlando’s devotion and explore the nature of love, courtship, and the differing gender expectations. The play reaches a conclusion by Rosalind dropping her disguise, and the two uniting in love.

*****

Gender-based violence is recognised globally as a pervasive violation of human rights and a significant social, cultural and public health concern. Violence against women, including emotional, physical and sexual, varies across societies in form and prevalence, and is often rooted in unequal power relations and social structures that perpetuate male dominance. Gender-based violence requires collective action through education, legal protection, economic empowerment, accessible support services and changes in attitudes and cultural practices. Power and influence should not be allowed to shield the perpetrators.

Art, including dramatic and literary art, serves to illuminate human experience. It allows us to explore emotions, ideas and moral dilemmas that may otherwise remain beyond ordinary expression. Art can entertain and inspire, but it can also challenge our assumptions, evoke empathy, and offer new ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us. In this sense, art is not merely a form of aesthetic pleasure; it is a means of understanding what it means to be human.

Desdemona, Ophelia, Lucrece and Rosalind are among Shakespeare’s more prominent female characters. The first three are innocent victims of male violence in different forms, evoking our empathy and compassion; the fourth challenges the gender assumptions and constraints of the time. Together, they illuminate gender-based issues that are both universal and timeless. In this sense, Shakespeare remains ‘our contemporary’, as Jan Kott, Polish-American literary critic, famously observed.