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)

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Midweek Review

Thileepan’s fast unto death: An authentic narrative that many missed

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Newly installed bronze statue of Thileepan

Tamil political parties and politicians are seeking political advantage over the death of Thileepan. Last year, organisers of Thileepan commemoration prevented Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources Minister Ramalingham Chandrasekaran from entering the Thileepan memorial in Nallur. In spite of being a Minister, Chandrasekaran couldn’t enter the premises. The NPP National List lawmaker made the abortive bid on 17 Sept., 2025, the third day of the 12-day commemoration.

Would he risk being snubbed for a second consecutive year? At the time the Thilipeen commemoration started, on 15 Sept., Chandrasekeran had been away in China and he returned to the country over the weekend.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Commemorative events held at the newly installed bronze statue of the late Rasiah Parthipan, alias ‘Lt. Colonel’ Thileepan at Nallur, Jaffna, caused controversy. A section of the Opposition accused the NPP government of encouraging separatist movement by turning a blind eye to the growing hero worship of an LTTEer.

The unveiling of the statue took place on 15 Sept., the day the Tiger launched his fast unto death, in 1987, to become a hero in the eyes of his equally misled community. At the time of his death, at the Nallur Hindu Temple, on 26 Sept.,1987, Thileepan was 23-years-old.

The controversial commemoration will continue till 26 September, 2026. The SLPP led the attack against the backdrop of accusations that the former ruling party promoted the LTTE ideology, by accommodating maverick Jaffna District Independent lawmaker Dr. Ramanathan Archchuna, a truly qualified medical doctor on its political platform. Dr. Archchuna also never shies away from calling a spade a spade, irrespective of any consequences.

Almost four decades after his death, controversy still surrounds the circumstances leading to the former Jaffna Hindu College student, and Jaffna University undergraduate, launching the fast unto death.

Jaffna Monitor, in a story headlined ‘Jaffna Begins 39th Commemoration of Thileepan’s Fast,’ posted this month, dealt with Thileepan’s fast. Let me reproduce the relevant section: “His fast followed the Indo-Lanka Accord of July 1987, under which Indian troops were deployed to the north as a peacekeeping force. On Sept. 13, 1987, the LTTE handed the Indian High Commission a letter setting out five demands: the release of Tamils held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and emergency regulations; an end to Sinhalese settlement in Tamil areas carried out in the name of rehabilitation; a halt to all such rehabilitation work until an interim administrative council is established; an end to the construction of police stations in the Northern and Eastern Provinces; and the disarming of government-armed home guards, together with the withdrawal of the army and police from schools. The demands were addressed to New Delhi on the reasoning that India alone could compel Colombo to act. No reply came.” https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/featured/jaffna-begins-39th-commemoration-of-thileepans-fast/

But, ex-LTTE combatant Niromi de Soyza (not her real name) in her internationally acclaimed ‘Tamil Tigress’ disclosed what transpired at a meeting (p 142) chaired by Thileepan himself at a place called Freedom Birds’ head office where he declared the LTTE’s determination to force the Indian Army to leave Sri Lanka. Declaring that those who served the group’s political wing didn’t get an opportunity to show their commitment to the organisation, he had vowed to go ahead with fast unto deaths, regardless of the consequences. Soyza, who had been assigned to the group responsible for crowd control at the fast unto death site, quoted Thileepan as having said at the previously mentioned meeting: “This is my chance. I’m optimistic it will achieve something, whether I live or die. We must force the Indians out of our land.”

The author of “Tamil Tigress’ who had been among those who received her first assault rifle and cyanide capsule from Thileepan questioned the (Chapter 9: There’s still time to change your mind) as to why Velupillai Prabhakaran chose physically fragile Thileepan to undertake the fast unto death.

According to Soyza’s narrative, the fast unto death had been directed at the Indian Army. Referring to the Nallur hunger strike 39 years ago, Soyza said that lyrics of all songs played therein expressed the same sentiments. In her own words, Thilpeepan’s dying wish was to see the foreign army, the IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) defeated.

Sri Lanka never really examined at least key events that shaped the war in the North-East. Successive governments lacked political will to meticulously scrutinise events thereby setting the record straight. Over the years various interested parties have been successful in promoting false narratives, pertaining to key events. Thileepan’s fast unto death is a case in point.

A memorial for IPKF

IPKF memorial

Thileepan’s fast unto death, or slow suicide, created the background for the LTTE-IPKF war. The war erupted just two weeks after Thileepan’s death. Those propagating false narratives have conveniently forgotten that the crux of the matter is the fact that the LTTE didn’t hand over its weapons as envisaged in the Peace Accord signed on 29 July 1987. All Tamil terrorist groups were to be disarmed within 72 hours after the signing of the accord. India failed in one of its primary responsibilities.

The much publicised weapons handover that took place in Jaffna was a farce. Perhaps, the top IPKF command knew of the LTTE strategy but chose to turn a blind eye. The consequences were devastating. The memorial put up by Sri Lanka, in 2008, for the IPKF, at Battaramulla, is a stark reminder of the war caused by the LTTE. Had it accepted the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, as previously agreed, there wouldn’t have been the fast unto death undertaken by Thileepan and a bronze statue or a memorial for the IPKF.

The LTTE had been hell-bent on eradicating other Indian-sponsored former Tamil terrorist groups, as well as taking on the Indian Army. Prabhakaran had been so over confident of his group’s military prowess, he created an extremely hostile environment conducive for war. Having deceived the governments of India and Sri Lanka regarding the surrendering of armaments in line with the peace accord, Prabhakaran, apparently engineered Thileepan’s slow suicide. ‘Tamil Tigress’ author who personally knew Prabhakaran and Thileepan emphasised that point quite clearly. The bottom line is that Thileepan’s demise had been a tool in Prabhakaran’s hands who brazenly manipulated the Jaffna community. Prabhakaran used Thileepan’s needless agonising death to maximise the overall LTTE strategy. The LTTE wanted an excuse to resume hostilities. Obviously, he was quite successful in creating an environment conducive for war. Don’t forget that Thileepan launched his fast unto death six weeks after the deployment of the Indian Army in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka.

The surrender of arms, arranged at Suthumalai sportsground on 4 August, 1987, with the presence of the media, was meant to underscore the end of the conflict. But the ‘Tamil Tigress’ author, who had been present at the arms surrender, revealed in her memoirs how Prabhakaran expressed suspicion of the peace accord. According to her, on the night of 4 August, 1987, she was among those addressed by Prabhakaran, his first interaction with LTTE cadres following his Suthumalai sham weapons surrender to fool the fools. Soyza quoted Prabhakaran as having told them: “All our good ammunition was stashed prior to the surrender. We’ll continue to hand over the rest.” She also quoted Prabhakaran as having declared: “War will resume in a month or two.”

Close on the heels of a group of LTTE cadres taking their lives after being apprehended by the Navy in the first week of Oct., 1987, the author of ‘Tamil Tigress’ quoted Prabhakaran as having alleged India engineered the peace process as a plot to gradually eliminate them. The LTTE leader had obviously forgotten if not for India they wouldn’t have achieved powerful military status. India not only armed the Tamil terrorists, but also granted them freedom to conduct operations across the Palk Strait. The Indian Navy looked the other way when terrorists, wounded in combat with the Sri Lankan military, were moved across the short passage to receive treatment in Tamil Nadu hospitals.

The suicide of LTTE cadres, including the then Jaffna commander ‘Lt. Col.’ Kumarappa, and Trincomalee commander ‘Lt. Col’ Pulendran, boosted Prabhakaran’s strategy. Those propagating false narratives tend to forget that Prabhakaran smuggled in cyanide capsules into Palaly air base where the 17 personnel were held. In a way, the slow death of Thileepan, and mass suicide of LTTE cadres, all were engineered by Prabhakaran himself. Those demanding accountability on the part of Sri Lanka never bothered to examine Prabhakaran’s murderous plots.

Sri Lanka’s dilemma

Sri Lanka memorial

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, during his recent visit here, paid a floral tribute to the IPKF memorial, at Pelawatte, Battaramulla. It would be pertinent to mention that the construction of the memorial was completed in 2008. The late General Lionel Balagalle, in his capacity as the Commander of the Army and Chief of Defence Staff, proposed a memorial for IPKF, following a visit to New Delhi in Dec., 2003. What made Balagalle propose a memorial for the IPKF, knowing very well India destabilised Sri Lanka and the introduction of the foreign Army by way of arm twisting the then government, headed by JRJ, was not appreciated, under any circumstances. He, like many of us, however realised we had to make peace with our giant overbearing neighbour, irrespective of whether we liked it or not, in order to co-exist.

The destabilisation of a friendly country had been in line with their overall strategy to deploy its Army to ensure the installation of an administration loyal to New Delhi. India went to the extent of forming a force called Tamil National Army (TNA) during the period leading to the withdrawal of the IPKF in March 1990. Having joined The Island editorial as a novice, in June 1987, the writer had the opportunity to cover the last Indian troop carrying vessel leaving Trincomalee port on the afternoon of 24 March, 1990 (The IPKF is off, The Sunday Island, 25 March, 1990). India violated Sri Lanka airspace on 4 June to air drop 25 tonnes of food and medicine over Jaffna peninsula without anyone’s permission here, which came to be sarcastically termed the ‘parippu drop’, just three days after I joined The Island.

While honouring the IPK with a memorial in which 1069 names of its officers and men killed in the Lankan misadventure inscribed, since the end of the war, in May 2009, Sri Lanka played politics with the defeated LTTE. The Thileepan’s statue is a case in point. The installation of a new bronze statue of Thileepan, who died in a fast unto death against India demanding the withdrawal of the IPKF, soon after the Indian Defence Minister paid floral tribute to the IPKF memorial, highlighted Sri Lanka’s continuing dilemma.

The ruling NPP under any circumstances cannot risk antagonising the Tamil electorate, or the Tamils living overseas, by clamping down on events, such as the Thileepan commemoration. Having won all electoral districts in the predominantly Tamil speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces at the presidential and parliamentary polls, in 2024, and done well at the Local Government polls of May 2025, in the same regions, the NPP may have bent backwards to avoid confronting organisers of such events.

The intervention made by police at Nallur, on 18 Sept., 2026 .should be considered as a measure to counter accusations that the government promoted separatist sentiments. Police disrupted the public address system claiming that the organisers didn’t obtain permission to use speakers. But, the commemorations continued not only in Nallur but in Batticaloa as well.

The undeniable truth is all political parties, represented in Parliament, played ball with the LTTE, during the conflict and after, hence the song and dance will continue. The reality is Prabhakaran staged Thileepan’s slow death and engineered mass suicide at the Palaly air base in Sept. and Oct. 1987 to plunge the country back into war. Therefore, the country should be wary of those propagating and promoting false narratives in support of their despicable political agendas. The issue is whether Thileepan willingly sacrificed his life to help Prabhakaran implement his strategy or was used as a tool. If Soyza’s narrative is accurate Thileepan had been chosen from among a large group of volunteers who accepted the challenge. There is no doubt fast unto death must have been Prabhakaran’s brainchild as much as the Palaly mass suicide was. What made Prabhakaran believe that he could overwhelm the Indian Army, at that time numbering over 1.1 mn and was considered the fourth largest with the Soviet Union, China and the US maintaining far bigger land forces?

During the Indian Army deployment that began in July/August, 1987, the strength was around 10,000 officers and men. Their mission was to ensure implementation of the ceasefire and disarming of terrorist groups. But, when Prabhakaran executed a group of Sri Lankan soldiers in their custody following the mass suicide at Palaly airbase on Oct. 5, 1987, and fighting erupted a week later, India had no option but to bring in additional forces. At the peak of their deployment here the total strength including the Navy and Air Force units, reached 100,000.

Thileepan insulted

It is a paradox that a section of the Tamil community commemorated Thileepan after having voted for warwinning Army Commander General (retd.) Sarath Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. In spite of Fonseka suffering a humiliating defeat, he won all predominantly Tamil speaking districts. Tamils, including recipients of foreign citizenship, annually commemorate various LTTE events. ‘Black Tiger Day’ on 5 July, the day Vallipuram Vasanthan, known by the nom de guerre Captain Miller, mounted a suicide attack on troops of ‘Operation Liberation,’ based at the Nelliady Central College, is one such event. That was the time between the infamous Indian airdrop and the signing of the so-called Indo-Lanka peace accord that was done under the threat of direct Indian military intervention.

What made the community that still considered Thileepan as a hero to vote for Fonseka who mercilessly brought the war to an end? What made lawmaker Archchuna, who still venerated Prabhakaran, to join Mahinda Rajapaksa on the SLPP platform? Thileepan would have turned in his grave if he saw how the community behaved. Nothing could have offended him or Prabhakaran than the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led Tamil National Alliance (TNA) joining hands with the UNP and the JVP to field Fonseka as the common candidate at the 2010 presidential election.

The TNA consisted of former Indian funded terrorist groups TELO, PLOTE and EPRLF, in addition to the ITAK, had no qualms in promoting Fonseka’s candidature after having accused his Army of gross human rights violations. The Tamil electorate had no qualms in choosing Fonseka over Mahinda Rajapaksa, who sought political consensus with the LTTE as a last bid to end bloodshed before unleashing the armed forces on an all-out assault, within our limited means, to defeat uncompromising Tiger terrorists.

Sri Lanka pathetically failed to set the record straight. The worst offender is President Rajapaksa himself. His administration could have done much more to explain the developments leading to all-out war. Instead, the first post-war Rajapaksa government squandered that opportunity. Its pathetic failure helped those who couldn’t stomach the LTTE’s defeat to propagate war crimes accusations with the help of the conniving West, which, unfortunately, included the United Nations organs like the UNHRC, controlled by them.

While the top Sri Lankan military and political leaderships were held accountable for unsubstantiated war crimes allegations, with the US, the UK and Canada declaring targeted sanctions against former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa as well as Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, General Shavendra Silva et al. Australia found fault with strategist Maj. Gen. Chagie Gallage for taking command, post-war command, of 59 Division that played a significant role in eradicating the LTTE. Gallage was denied a visa during the Yahapalana administration. When this writer raised the relentless Western attacks on wartime Sri Lankan leadership at a media briefing called by the Foreign Ministry in Sept., 2022, the then Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, PC, said that entire divisions deployed on the northern front had been blacklisted.

While Indian dignitaries paying their respects at the IPKF memorial seemed to have received public acceptance, last year the NPP government created unprecedented controversy ahead of the May 2025 commemoration when the Defence Ministry announced President Anura Kumara Dissanayake wouldn’t attend the 16th ‘War Heroes’ commemoration ceremony. The declaration triggered a massive political backlash. President Dissanayake was compelled to reverse his decision. The JVP and NPP leader, who also holds the Defence portfolio and the post of Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, attended the event. This year there was no controversy. Whatever the JVP/NPP political stand, the President cannot, under any circumstances, shun the annual war heroes’ commemoration.

The armed forces eradicated JVP terrorism twice in 1971 and 1986/87 to 1990. They defeated the conventional military and terrorist challenge posed by the LTTE. Whatever the ungrateful opportunists and Western-funded NGO hacks write, the armed forces triumph over the LTTE is the single most important post-independence achievement. The eradication of the JVP challenge that almost overwhelmed the UNP government in the late 80s, too, is equally important and had the armed forces failed at the time, the country could have ended up in far worse chaos. The bottom line is that the eradication of the LTTE couldn’t have been achieved if the UNP didn’t triumph over the second JVP-inspired terror campaign. That is the undeniable truth. It would be unfair by the JVP if we didn’t mention that the UNP too drove the JVP to take up arms in the 80s by proscribing the party over the 1983 anti-Tamil violence, though it was not responsible for the breakdown of law and order, countrywide, when UNP goons went on the rampage against innocent Tamils, especially in Colombo. The postponement of scheduled parliamentary elections by six years to 1989, after holding a sham referendum by the JRJ government, too, contributed to the war in the North, and terrorism in the South.

Midweek Review

Illusion of recovery: Three fault lines threatening Sri Lanka’s future

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Chandre Dharmawardana
chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca)

(Continued from 22 Sept. 2026)
Other well-recognised fault lines

In discussing Sri Lanka’s political trajectory since 1948, many writers relish a narrative where its current impasse and its ethnic conflict are traced back to the “curse of partisan politics” (e.g., This curse of partisan politics in Sri Lanka, Island 2026/09/4, by Brig. Ranjan de Silva [10]). A more sophisticated narrative is based on the negative impact of Sinhala Only nationalist policies introduced by SWRD Bandaranaike after defeating the pro-business UNP in 1956. In fact, many social scientists (e.g., H. L. Seneviratne [11]) have analysed Sri Lanka’s post-Independence trajectory in dystopian terms within this paradigm equated to the negative impact of a majoritarian “Sinhala-Buddhist-dominance” politics.

H. L. Seneviratne explicitly positions the 1956 election of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and the subsequent “Sinhala Only” Act as the foundational missteps that set Sri Lanka on a tragic path. He argues that this political turn institutionalised majoritarian chauvinism to secure electoral victories. Seneviratne analyses the post-1956 era in stark, structural terms. He argues that by allowing Buddhist monks (the Sangha) to morph from spiritual renunciates into a highly politicised, corporate pressure group, the state birthed a toxic political culture. In his evaluation, this “New Buddhism” fostered ethnic polarisation, institutionalised corruption, and ultimately laid the structural groundwork for the devastating Sri Lankan Civil War.

These authors have claimed that the increasingly jingoistic policies of many politicians of the majority community, as well as the ultra-nationalist politics of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) established in 1949 dictated an irrevocable path to armed conflict that sapped Sri Lanka for over three decades. Majoritarian “Sinhala-Buddhist domination” is frequently cited by Tamil opinion writers as a major cause hindering Sri Lanka. In contrast, Sinhalese opinion writers point to the “excessive” set of demands of the 12% Tamil minority that began with their rejection of the Donoughmore constitution and the Eelamist demands for an exclusive Tamil homeland that grew out of the political platform of the ITAK.

The 1972 republican constitution of the SLFP-LSSP government became a pivotal juncture when the Tamil youth, inflamed by the violent propaganda, e.g., the poetry of Kasi Anathan, firmly embraced militant separatism. This was finally ratified by the Vaddukkodai resolution of 1976 crafted by the Tamil United liberation Front (TULF). Kasi Anandan had called for physical elimination of “thurogi” (traitors) who sought federalism or any form of power sharing with the majority. By then, several of the moderate Tamil leaders who had been named by Kasi Anandan had been assassinated. The TULF leaders were themselves assassinated and Tamil politics was hijacked by violent youth groups. The LTTE emerged out of the blood bath within the Tamil community to confront the Sri Lankan state militarily until the LTTE’s demise in 2009.

Historians, like K. M. de Silva, have characterised the Tamils as a minority who behave like a majority, while the Sinhalese are a majority who have behaved like a minority always fearful that the Tamil minority and Tamil-Nadu Tamils would act together and prevail against them.

However, both inter-Ethnic violence as well as intra-ethnic violence are fueled by the availability of discontented youth populations. Currently, Sri Lanka’s youth population has probably fallen below threshold for driving social upheavals, as Sri Lanka is now in demographic contraction. However, given the widening rich-poor gap, the residual youth populations still have the potential to spawn urban terrorist cells that can have an impact far beyond their numerical strengths.

Malaysia provides a strong counterexample to the type of social analysis presented by H. L. Seneviratne and others who argue that demotion of English and majoritarian jingoist politics were the key factors that have weighed in on Sri Lanka’s post-independence performance.

Malaysia emerged from British Malaya and by 1970 adopted Malay as the only official language. It demoted English completely, and made no room for the use of Chinese, the language of the 30% minority. Furthermore, Malaysia openly and unabashedly adopted a policy of discriminating in favour of Malay ethnics (60% of the population) who were named “Bhumiputra” (sons of the soil) with special rights and privileges in an Islamic hegemonic society. Unlike in Sri Lanka (where the leaders at least affirmed equality for all, or the wish to create just societies), Malaysia adopted an unapologetically chauvinist political programme.

In strong contrast to the political programme launched by elite leaders of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Chinese minority, basing on its previous experience of violence faced by them, followed a non-violent approach, ostensibly cooperating with the Malays, but concentrating on achieving hegemony in the mercantile and professional sectors.

Another factor that worked in favour of Malaysia was the absence of a significant Marxist political movement that could have deterred foreign investment or spawned nationalisation of successful private assets. Massive tax breaks and guarantees of labour stability enabled Malaysia to attract industrial giants such as Mitsubishi, Intel, HP, Texas Instruments etc., into its free-trade zones in the 1970s. At that time Sri Lanka was busy nationalising its tea plantations, driving out experienced managers to other countries such as South Africa and looking at foreign investors with a Marxist lens. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, majority and minority ethnic groups worked together in spite of political and linguistic discrimination, and today the average income of a Malaysian citizen is approximately five times that of a citizen of Sri Lanka.

A fragile facade

The Central Bank’s upbeat figures and the upgrade to middle-income status provide a vital psychological boost, but they reflect a temporary stabilisation rather than permanent structural health. A country cannot genuinely move into “safe waters” when its corporate elite is exporting capital, its professional class is fleeing overseas, and its remaining domestic population is rapidly aging.

Without aggressive structural reforms aimed at curbing trade mis-invoicing, incentivising talent retention, and preparing the economy for an aging workforce, the current economic growth will remain a fragile facade. If these three dystopian factors are left unaddressed, they will inevitably intersect, trigger a collapse in productivity, and rapidly destabilise Sri Lanka’s hard-won recovery. The leaders of the country, as well as the populace, irrespective of their political hue, have not appreciated the overarching importance of the three fault lines that we have described. They are enjoying the theatre of political arrests, jingoist exchanges and conspiracy theories even while their very firmament is trembling. The two ethnic groups that have fought each other will find that their communities face extinction because their TFR has dropped way below the 2.1 children per female that is needed to sustain their populations.

References & citations

[1] Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). (2026). Macroeconomic Developments and Estimates for First/Second Quarters 2026. Colombo: CBSL; and Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). (2026). Special Probes Report on Telegraphic Transfers and Fictitious Capital Outflows. Colombo: Financial Intelligence Unit.

[2] Global Financial Integrity (GFI). (2024). Trade Misinvoicing and Illicit Financial Flows in Developing Nations: A Focus on South Asia. Washington, D.C.: GFI; Global Financial Integrity (GFI). (2026). Trade-Related Illicit Financial Flows in Developing Asia (2013–2022). Washington, D.C.: GFI.

[3] National Chamber of Exporters of Sri Lanka (NCE). (2025). Annual Review on Export Sector Diversification and Off-Shoring Capacity. Colombo: NCE.

[4] Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE). (2025). Statistical Handbook on Migration Trends and Professional Brain Drain. Colombo: SLBFE.

[5] Hasini Lecamwasam, “The emptying university: why are academics leaving? (Island, 15th September 2026)

[6] Prof. Amarasiri de Silva, Sri Lanka’s university crisis: Brain drain and union action demand urgent reform (Island, 14th September 2026)

[7] World Bank. (2025). Sri Lanka Development Update: Navigating the Demographic Transition and Economic Recovery. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

[8] De Silva, R., The Demography of Transition in South Asia: Emerging Trends (Colombo University Press, Colombo, 2025).

[9] Haldane, J. B. S., Daedalus; Science and the Future (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London, 1924).

[10] Brig. Ranjan de Silva, This curse of partisan politics in Sri Lanka, Island 2026/09/4

[11] H. L. Seneviratne, The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka, University of Chicago Press (1999/2000).

Midweek Review

Ehipassiko :The virtues of ‘Seeing for Oneself’

Published

23 hours ago

2026/09/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Sasanka Perera
(The writer is on X as @sasmester)

The ongoing controversy surrounding the internal disciplinary proceedings against Reverend Kekirawe Sudassana conducted by senior monks of the ecclesiastical order he belongs to–Sri Lanka Ramanna Nikaya–offers an opportunity to reflect upon dissent and discourse within Sri Lankan Buddhism. The inquiry is the result of a series of complaints made against Reverend Sudassana focused on his public discourses which have been widely shared in social media and other online portals.

As usual, this case too has polarised Buddhists in the public domain. Those in support of Reverend Sudassana see absolutely nothing wrong in what he has done and said. Similarly, those against him in the public domain, see nothing but wrong in all his public utterances and want him taken to task. Between these two extremes, the core meaning of the Buddha’s notion of ehipassiko, which literally means ‘come and see for yourself’, is completely lost.

I have followed some of the public statements and discourses of Reverend Sudassana for a while as part of my interest in popular religion. Much of what he has to say goes against long held beliefs and traditions in Sri Lankan Buddhism. I find his ideas shift between rationalism and noisy rhetoric, both not unusual in different manifestations of Sri Lankan Buddhism. For instance, the much-respected Anagarika Dharmapala was essentially a rationalist who wanted to focus on the dhamma and not on Buddhism’s rituals or even on gods. But this does not mean that Reverend Sudassana can be judged in the same way as Anagarika Dharmapala given the vast variation in historical epochs the two operated in and their different approaches to public discourse.

Reverend Sudassana has often critiqued what he sees as mythology and ritualism in Buddhism. For him, many long-held rituals and beliefs embedded in popular Sri Lankan Buddhist practices are irrational and therefore not acceptable. While to any rational thinking being, there is no contention here, one must concede that it is mythology and rituals that hold any core set of philosophical ideas such as the dhamma together as a religion. It is through these practices that religion as a matter of faith emerges from abstract ideas. This is common to any religion. It is through these practices that Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism or Islam become religion as opposed to other philosophical ideas such as Plato’s and Socrates’ discourses or more recent trends in post-modern thinking, which do not constitute religion.

So, when Reverend Sudassana critiques and dismisses something so central to religion as belief and ritual as irrational, he needs to offer an alternative that would hold religion’s core ideas together. That, in my view, cannot be done by philosophy, the dhamma in the abstract sense or rationality as it is commonly understood today.

But when Reverend Sudassana argues against the over-commercialised merit-making practices, such as elaborate and very expensive pujas and certain customs that divert lay people from the Buddha’s pragmatic, core philosophical teachings, then, we have to pay serious attention to what he has to say. It is this kind of merit-making that I wrote about in 1995 with the use of the concept ‘grandiose religiosity’ that I coined to refer to expensive rituals and offering of alms.

Reverend Sudassana also stepped into the social minefield when he questioned the ordination of children at a very young age, inviting society to reflect on whether a child is mature enough to make a lifelong commitment to monasticism. He is not the first one to ask this question. Earlier critics include Gananath Obeyesekere and many others. This is an extremely important area that deserves the serious attention of citizens. Related to the same issue, Reverend Sudassana has also openly spoken out against child abuse within monastic environments, a topic that has traditionally been treated with strict institutional silence even through this has gained more traction as a public topic recently, at least in social media

Reverend Sudassana, through online commentaries has frequently targeted contemporary preaching styles of many Buddhist monks, explicitly calling out senior and popular monks who in his opinion perform ‘entertainment-driven’ or emotionally manipulative sermons (such as weeping while preaching) rather than focusing on true dhamma. Given the advent of what we may call ‘tele-monk’s or ‘online monks’, Reverend Sudassana’s criticism cannot be faulted if the comparison is only with the traditional preaching style of Buddhist monks. However, if this is the point of departure, then, Reverend Sudassana’s often combative style of discourse can also be critiqued in the same way. The issue in public discourse should be based on what preachers actually say and to what extent they take listeners closer to the dhamma or not. But often, such a reflective examination of dhamma content does not take place.

In certain ways, Reverend Sudassana has attempted to introduce a more rational interpretation of the Buddha as a historical figure and subsequent Buddhist history. From a historiographical point of view, this makes sense. The problem is, there is a vast variation between history as a formal academic discourse and belief in the past in terms of both perceived history and the past lives of well-known people. In the latter, there is not much space for rational reflection. That is why it is part of faith and not historiography. However, by trying to do this and attempting to separate what he views as historical fact from ‘literary or cultural interpretation’, Reverend Sudassana has drawn fierce opposition from orthodox factions of institutional Buddhism as well as many ordinary people who view his arguments as an attack on sacred text and tradition. What does all this mean? It is in answering this question that we need to reflect on the ancient Pali term, ehipassiko –‘come and see for yourself.’ In discursive terms, it is thought to be an open invitation by the Buddha himself to explore what he has preached rather than a demand for blind faith. The idea represented by ehipassiko is one of the six core qualities of dhamma in so far as the Theravada practice is concerned. the other five qualities include, svākkhāto (well-expounded by the Buddha), sandiṭṭhiko (directly visible or apparent right now), akāliko (timeless conditions, the results of which will be apparent when one practices), opaneyyiko (leading onwards to be applied within oneself) and paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhī (to be personally known and realised by the wise).

Of these, ehipassiko is the most open invitation for reflection, which in my opinion goes very well with the Kalama Sutra or the Buddha’s charter of free inquiry. If Reverend Sudassana was motivated by ehipassiko and Kalama Sutra in his public discourses, he may have come closer to Buddhist ideals when it comes to Buddhism’s sympathies with freedom of inquiry. But at the same time, he has also moved considerably away from common sense dictating what is possible and what is not possible within the context in which he operates. First, complete rationalisation of Buddhist practice within an idiom of post-Enlightenment sense of rationalism is both not possible and dangerous. This applies to all religions. If this is done, then, faith will have to become mere philosophical reflection, thereby undermining what religion over time everywhere has done for humanity.

Second, what is actually possible to critique within the structures he is operating from (including his nikaya affiliations) needs to be clearly understood. What I can say as a scholar based on my research and reflection, are things a monk cannot say beyond a point as long as he is a monk. This common sense needs to be clearly understood if one is interested in reforming institutionalised Buddhism. It is in this area that many of the formal complaints against Reverend Sudassana have been made in the ongoing inquiry. There are numerous seriously problematic areas in his commentaries. These include claiming that the idea of karma is a myth and that rebirth is false. These are such core beliefs in Buddhism. One cannot critique them without disrupting the overall structure of the faith. But one can remain an unbeliever by virtue of personal choice but not make such opinions matters of public discourse. He has also claimed that specific powers such as the ability to read others’ minds, attributed to the Buddha are fictional. Again, beyond matters of rationality and within a discourse of faith, these things cannot be questioned in Buddhism in the same way they also cannot be in any other structure of belief. Reverend Sudassana has also been accused of providing problematic interpretations to long held positions espoused in the sutras and for claiming that that the Mahayana abhidhamma is superior to the Theravada version and so on. While the latter may be open to interpretation, Reverend Sudassana so far has not established that his grasp of the dhamma is adequate to offer such critical reinterpretations.

Third, endless combativeness is counterproductive if the aim is reform. It is much better to pick one’s battles on a rational basis rather than having a noisy opinion on everything under the sun. For instance, if Reverend Sudassana has issues with some of the less rational aspects of Buddhism like the Jataka stories, rebirth, specific rituals and so on, the better option is to underemphasise them in his sermons and public statements and replace them with life experiences of contemporary or historical times so that people understand the specifics of the dhamma being explained.

As for his more violent detractors on social media, my suggestion is to let the logic of ehipassiko come into play the way it was intended. Verbal violence, threats or ill-will have no space in Buddhism or in any decent society. If Reverend Sudassana’s discourses have negatively impacted disciplinary positions of his nikaya, I hope, they will be resolved through the kind of inquiry that is ongoing and even more importantly through broader reflection. But the senior monks in Sri Lanka Ramanna Nikaya must also reflect on why a discursive disagreement has generated this much internal reflection and interest leading to a formal inquiry at a time when very serious and continuous disciplinary and ethical violations by many monks, which are also now part of the public discourse, have not received the same attention.