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Midweek Review

The Kandy-floss Tea-Dance, or Walk like an Elephant

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Matale Theru festival (file photo)

by Laleen Jayamanne

The Lankan ‘Tea-dance’ is a consciously-willed confection of a so-called ‘folk dance,’ attributed to the Malaiyaha women who work on the tea estates. Therefore, it is a frozen form with no basis in a living culture. Here I take ‘Kandy’ as a synonym for the hill-country, ‘Kande udarata,’ and also to describe the aesthetic quality of the artificial Tea-dance as candy, much like Bombai Motai (pink candy-floss woven of sugar and air).

Dr Sudesh Mantillake, the dance scholar and trained Kandyan dancer himself, has stated (in an original research paper) that the Tea-dance was invented in the 70s as part of a move by the state to invent folk dance traditions for the country, in the post-colonial Sinhala nationalist cultural revival, linked to various patterns and gestures associated with rural work. I am grateful to him for having formulated this field of research from a postcolonial theoretical perspective.

So, for the Sinhala girls, the kalagedi dance’ and the ‘harvesting of paddy dance’ were invented. I have photos of myself and friends doing both in primary school, wearing a cloth and choli jacket with small pots on our head. The Tamil girls in our school did Bharathanatyam, and some, irrespective of ethnicity did Manipuri, Ballet, Kandyan and even Spanish dancing at our school run by Irish Catholic nuns. According to Mantillake, distinguished Sinhala dancers and dance educators such as Pani Bharatha (with a resonant Indian name), Sri Jayana and colleagues invented the folk dances including the Tea-dance. It appears that the Tea-dance was made mostly for foreign consumption, without any engagement with the Malaiyaha communities, to popularise Ceylon Tea and also entertain the Lankan diaspora nostalgically celebrating Lankan festivals and National events. There are such shows in LA, Paris and New Zealand (I learn on YouTube), some done even by little girls of about five or six. The dancers are all girls, while usually there is a young boy as a Kangani with a cane in hand, supervising and flirting with them and creating bits of silly comedy. I discovered that the original Tea-dance was in fact British social dancing done by the colonial folk in Asia to liven up afternoon gatherings for tea-sipping and such. So, the name of the colonial masters’ dance was branded on the Malaiyaha community by the Lankan state, to sell tea.

The Tea-dance consists largely of gestures plucked from the act of breaking tender tea leaves, crudely combined with those copied from Indian films. The baskets, some small plastic ones, were tied to their back to make dancing easy, and the colourful costumes were also confected out of the transnational Bollywood film repertoire and dance moves. None of this of course had even a faint ‘ethnographic authenticity’.

The baskets the Malaiyaha women carried to work were not tied to their back (as the song in Sinhala says), but rather, were held with a long band strung across their heads which carry the weight, compressing the spine, as the neck is constantly bent to find the exact tender tea leaf. A Malaiyaha woman would only get a full days’ union award wage if they filled the large baskets with 16 kilos of tea per day!

Now, it’s this container, carrying the weight of their heavy labour, that is flung around like a light pot high in the air just for fun by the Sinhala girls rounded up to dance and prance around on a stage amidst admiring parents and a few whites. They hitch their skirts and provocatively shake and stick their hips out and carry on like some Bollywood dancers, producing pure kitsch. None of this is edifying in terms of gender stereotypes for these youngsters inculcated into ‘Lankan folk traditions.’

Mantillake cites Tamil names of a variety of folk-dance forms practised by the Malaiyaha folk and makes the point that the Tea-dance does not draw material from any of them. And in Sumathy Sivamohan’s feature film of the Malaiyaha, Ingirunthu (2013), there is a Hindu festival at the local Kovil with an extraordinary range of dancing by the devotees, both children and adults, as part of religious festivity. Some of the dancers show how their own folk-dance forms have evolved among them to include transsexual, transmedia dance gestures seen in many other parts of the world, including Indian films. I also noticed one transsexual dancer dressed as such figures did when they popped up from time to time in some early Sinhala films, such Pitisara Kella (Village Lass). Such figures were always found on urban streets, dancing for money, dressed in long twirling skirts. In those days, the name for them was napunsakaya, neither male nor female. This hybrid mixture of moves, gestures and rhythms, internalised and absorbed by the dancers at the festival, was an actual ethnographic event (of the people, by the people and for the people), filmed respectfully by Sivamohan’s camera and clearly of value to the Malaiyaha community gathered at the festival ritual to celebrate their gods.

So, the dancing of the folk at these religious festivals is not a mummified museum category among Hindu communities on the tea estates, but is, rather, open to the transnational flow of contemporary media images as well. It’s this living syncretic tradition of collective dance that sustains them spiritually and emotionally and lifts them up from their daily arduous physical drudgery. For the Hindus, dance is an integral part of the metaphysics of their religion because within its cosmology the world comes into being, and is also dissolved, by the Dance of Shiva Nataraja, the king of dance. However, the three great Middle Eastern Religions of The Book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, focus on The Word, proscribing the primordial body in dance. And sadly, according to the bible story of Genesis, the human body is fallen, sinful, banished from paradise.

When dance is invented according to the imperatives of state patronage, without some integral local connection to the lives of people whose emotional expression it is, the result is a highly artificial dance, a parody and an insult to the folk it supposedly represents. No other South Asian country would stoop so low as to sell their own, say Darjeeling tea for instance, with such a gimmick.

Fabricated dances

These fabricated dances also run the risk of sanitisation of folk traditions of their own. When this ideology determines the school and university curricula one has a perfect recipe for recreating mediocrity, through inbreeding. Mantillake, as an educator himself, is especially critical of the deleterious effects of such a dance curriculum on schoolchildren, in promulgating ethnic stereotypes of minorities. Lankans could have studied how India revived and nurtured their vast repertoire of traditions during decolonisation under Nehru’s modern cultural policies, from song to dance, from weaving to painting and sculpture. They had lost some of their dance forms but they had the theoretical texts (shasthriya) and the temple sculpture from which scholar-dancers were able to derive the mudras and poses, create anew the Indian traditions and train the young.

This was possible also because Indian classical forms reach towards the principle of the pose of dynamic equilibrium. Just imagine Siva Nataraja poised on one leg, balancing on a tortoise while dancing with his many arms, beating the hour-glass drum. It’s a life-size bronze icon of Shiva Nataraja that the Government of India gifted to CERN, the centre for the study of quantum phenomena such as the Higgs Boson, in Switzerland. Shiva Nataraja now dances there communing with the quantum energy of the universe.

We can move from the classical to the simplest of Indian folk instruments, the bata-nalava, the bamboo flute of both Krishna and the cow-herd, to understand the richness of Indian performance modes. There is an annual folk festival of flutes of a hundred and one varieties, and folk-group dances of both men and women, who dance for days, with startling Dionysian intensity and joy. Kumar Shahani’s film of this festival is on YouTube, called The Bamboo Flute (2000). In the same film he also has Pandith Hariprasad Chaurasia play his classical flute seated on the floor of his middle-class flat in Mumbai. Perhaps, the British didn’t reach the village folk playing the flute and therefore the unbroken evolution of the form, from the folk (Deshiya), to the most sophisticated of classical forms (Margiya), was possible and is perceptible and audible to this day. This was one of Ananda Coomaraswamy’s key ideas based on his meticulous research.

Perhaps, in the first instance, the dance forms of the folk were very few in Sinhala Buddhist villages (except in rituals of exorcism), regulated by the ethos of the Temple based on the precepts of Theravadha Buddhism, with its emphasis on calming the body and mind in meditation and chanting. Is this why many Buddhists are drawn to Katharagama (a Hindu shrine devoted to the brother of Ganesh, Skanda), and the trance dancing there?). Is this also why Asoka Handagama had an extended sequence of older Dalith men and women dancing together seriously, self-forgetfully, in a secular open air space, after work, on their pay-day, in his film Alborada (2021)? I hesitate though to call it an orientalising moment in the Sinhala cinema because the dancing was given a certain respectful attention. The director’s and Neruda’s fascination with the dancing is quite mutual and rather appealing.

Whatever the case, what appears to happen in the ‘nationalised folk-dance forms’ is that girls especially have become, in my opinion, more and more narcissistic as performers, incited to be ‘sexy’, elaborating a very limited set of gestures and movements, some of which are directly inflected by provocative Indian film dance moves, pure fluff. The Popular Indian film music and dance were originally derived from the four or five classical forms, according to Paul Willemen, who co-wrote the 2-volume Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema. His argument was that the film music and songs created a new 5th form initially, a hybrid, very outward looking one, aware also of Hollywood musicals from the 1940s. They were performed by highly trained professionals. Now, after globalisation and the internet and social media, the speedy hybridisation cannot any longer be quantified, and doesn’t even need to be for purposes of legitimisation of that once critically maligned popular cinema, because of its transnational reach, domestic social and political power.

Dance Therapy

A Kuchupudi dance teacher in Sydney decided to go back to Kerala, where she was from, and opened a dance studio which I visited once. She was about to start a workshop for a small group of young girls and told me that she was doing dance movements based on different kinds of walking rhythms. She told me to sit and observe but that I could also join in if I felt like it. My friend’s formal training was in Odissi, a classical form but she was dissatisfied with formal rigour and wanted to work as a dance therapist in a looser way, exploring movements, and had thought the many forms of walking in Indian dance would be good to start with.

Some of these are: walking like an elephant, walking like a deer, walking like a floating swan, walking on lotus flowers etc. I had previously seen these in Kumar Shahani’s films on dance, The Bamboo Flute (2000), and Bhavantaran (Immanence, 1991), a tribute to Guru Kelucharan Mahapathra, exponent of Odissi. At the opening of The Bamboo Flute, Alarmel Valli danced a magnificent invocation to Ganapathi (Ganesh), in the open air, near a temple beside a lake. There, this slim dancer also walked, swaying majestically like an elephant, with flute music in the air.

My friend’s workshop on walking was for young girls who were feeling low, withdrawn and depressed. She was interested in rhythmic walking to the beat of drums as a way of activating their feel for walking as such and generate a little energy in their body. She told me that many middle-class Indian mothers now instructed their daughters not to walk with swinging arms, but to keep them still, held beside the body as they walked. That was a code, she said, for restraining the female body of the young girls from using their pelvis in walking, the ‘pelvic walk’ being one associated with sex workers on the streets.

Triviality of Tea dance

When thinking of the triviality of the Tea-dance, these thoughts about dance therapy kept coming to me and I remembered that I found myself joining the girls, walking to the rhythms of the drums and then I found myself crying uncontrollably while still walking to the irresistible drum beats. I remembered that I was neither depressed nor unhappy then and discussed what happened to me with my friend after the class, over a cup of tea. She said that certain drum beats play directly on the nervous system and can touch one deeply, that they are primal vibrations. In Hindu metaphysics, in the beginning was sound. Whereas, according to the Bible, in the beginning was the word.

Trained Indian dancers and ordinary folk across the ages, in villages, towns and cities, have developed dance forms and rhythms, for many occasions and innumerable festivals, with immense intuition and craft skill, which connect deeply with other life worlds. All human communities are known to have danced from the beginning of time. According to anthropologists, two of the most ancient forms of dance are of people moving rhythmically in unison in undulating serpentine lines which become circular. Instead of training young girls to seduce an audience from the early age of six and boys to control them with a stick, even in jest, as in the mindless Sinhala Tea-dance, the Lankan Sinhala Buddhist cultural elite could be a little more mindful in trying to sell Ceylon tea. However, there is now a polished-up version of the Tea-dance (on YouTube, without the kangani), advertised as entertainment for local corporate events, by “Students of State Cultural Centers, Presented by the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs.” (To be continued)

Michelle Jayasinghe in her book A Study of the Evolution of Lord Ganesh in Sri Lankan Culture, says that the Hindu Theru Festival was practiced all over Lanka but that the one in Matale at the Arulmigu Shri Muttumariyamman Kovil was special, in that Buddhists also actively participated in it with the Hindu devotees. She adds that it is commonly known that Muslims and Christians also contribute to and participate in it. She also indicates that this festival is of vital importance to the Malaiyaha people of the tea estates, especially given that they have lived and worked in the hill country for nearly two centuries.

“The land was originally part of a paddy field and was gifted by the owner in 1852. The current temple was built in 1874 funded by many devotees. The temple was originally a small statue under a tree prayed by the Hindu people and has been developed by the people in Matale” (The Sunday Observer, 25 February, 2018).

The thought I get from having read Jayasinghe’s cultural study is that there is a rather urgent need to undertake anthropologically based ethnographic field-research, so as to understand how folk from different ethno-religious groups have come together to celebrate five Hindu gods (Shiva, Mahadevi, Ganesh, Skanda, Chandeshvara), by building elaborately decorated chariots for each of them to be paraded through the city, as the major highlight of this festival. Here, the future researchers could also focus on whether the Malaiyaha folk have a unique relationship to this festival, as suggested by Jayasinghe, and if and how the different genders respond to it in their active participation in therapeutic dancing as well.

There is a YouTube film of the Theru festival in Matale where a young woman moves and shakes vigorously in a trance state, while an older man and a woman attend to her with care. This is clearly a therapeutic folk practice (dance) focusing on one single individual, which can’t be commodified. The Kovil itself was also ‘severely damaged’ in the 83 anti-Tamil pogrom. With such a complex history (where ethnicity, politics and religion are enmeshed in desire), the collective festive acts of healing perceptible in the Theru festival in Matale, makes it an iconic multi-ethnic event.

The unusual coexistence of feelings, sensations and emotions, of relaxation and extreme intensity (hanging on hooks, firewalking, trance states), and a continuum of moods between them helps one to observe (on YouTube again) how cultural syncretism comes into life when people mingle in an open way in a fully embodied, mindful, intimate and respectful manner, as in the Matale Theru festive milieu and atmosphere charged with incense, and song.

As Pandith Amaradeva once said, Lanka didn’t have melodic instruments to produce songs (melodies) until they were imported from India. Similarly, in the case of dance, we didn’t have a courtly or a temple tradition to generate classical dance idioms as in the case of Hindu Devadasi and the Persianised Islamic traditions of Moghul India. What we did have were the powerful therapeutic modes, the Kohomba Kankariya ritual, the 18 Sanniyas and daemon masks and the chanting, kavi and drumming. We also didn’t have a martial arts tradition as in Kerala, which contemporary Indian female choreographers have been drawing from in creating modern dance moves, empowering girls and women in India to learn to walk proudly, and defend themselves and enjoy it all as elephants do.

As I was concluding this I saw (on my friend Priyantha Fonseka’s Facebook) some of his clips of the recent Mihindu parade in Kandy celebrating the arrival of Buddhism in Lanka. He also wrote an entry describing the difference between the one he just saw with his children (going past his house) and the ones he remembered from his own childhood. He said, in the past the small perahara started from the temple school where children did kalagedi and lee-keli dances to the sound of drums. The centre piece was a float with statues of Mihindu Thero (son of Asoka), and Thisse as a boy poised to shoot a deer. Such is the parabolic scene of the introduction of avihimsa (non-violence) at the heart of the enlightening religion of Buddhism, to Lanka.

While this same float was there in the contemporary parade, Tisse was played by a real child. But marking a radical change, now there were transvestite and perhaps also transexual drummers and men in sarong and bandanas, drumming bright yellow metallic drums, setting the pace for an irresistible rhythmic walk. The last group were Kavadi dancers, both men and women, clad in red accompanied by a small orchestra of instruments including drums, cymbals, a small horn and even a saxophone (once an instrument prohibited on Radio Ceylon!). The women in bright red saris were balancing very high floral head dresses with ease as they danced. Priyantha concluded with a delightful anecdote. He said that two female spectators nearby began to move restlessly, one seated on her chair having let down her hair and other (having being invited), shooting right into the parade itself, dancing.

As a scholar of theatre, at Peradeniya University, interested in ‘audience participation,’ Priyantha observed that these two women were in their own way undoing the various defence mechanisms and taboos they (the Sinhala folk with their exclusivist ethno-religious identity) had created for themselves, to exclude ‘ethnic others’. It appears then that some of the finest manifestations, actions, of the Aragalaya have sent fresh shoots through the Lankan body politic as a cosmos-polis. Also, perhaps, the folk in Kandy, no doubt long familiar with the Matale Theru festival ethos, were well rehearsed emotionally to make such moves.



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AKD faces challenging year ahead

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President Dissanayake with Premier Modi during his Dec. 15-17 State visit to India

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Senior lecturer in economics and head of the IT Department at the University of Colombo, Professor Priyanga Dunusinghe, recently declared that the new National People’s Power (NPP) administration had neither a clear economic policy nor a tangible action plan to address the plethora of serious issues facing the nation.

Prof. Dunusinghe warned of dire consequences unless the government took meaningful measures to overcome the challenges.

Appearing on Derana, the outspoken academic claimed that the investors and the public were in the dark as to the overall government economic policy. Asserting that the NPP government now primarily addressed the day-to-day issues, Prof. Dunusinghe alleged that economic reforms required to stabilize, consolidate and strengthen the economy weren’t being implemented. Therefore, the government seemed to be already late in that regard.

Obviously Prof. Dunusinghe summed up the situation on the economic front quite accurately. The academic seemed to have contradicted former President and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe who had both publicly and privately applauded President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s economic policy recently. It could be a case of him wanting to appease NPP as he, too, has many a skeleton in his cupboard, like the bond scams or the precipitating of the ongoing debt crisis by borrowing as much as USD 12 billion from the international bond market, at high interest, without having achieved anything tangible to show with such high borrowings, all during the Yahapalana rule or misrule.

Readers should always remember Mahinda Rajapaksa and his team fought a debilitating war to a finish against the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit, the LTTE, and defeated it against the predictions of all types of pundits, while at the same time kept the economy humming and completed some impressive infrastructure projects, like building a brand new international harbour and an airport, among so many other achievements. Need we say more?

No doubt there were some utter mistakes that can be directly attributed to some of his close relatives he had around him, but Mahinda never betrayed the country. For that matter, who is infallible in this world? The bottom line reveals only one thing that is, he was the best leader to pull the country out of the rut we were in at the time.

President Dissanayake also holds the Finance portfolio, in addition to Defence. In terms of the Economic Transformation Bill, approved by Parliament on July 25, 2024, without a vote, the NPP government has no option but to adhere to the Act. Prof. Anil Jayantha Fernando is the Deputy Finance Minister.

The agreement with the IMF, negotiated by Wickremesinghe and accepted by Dissanayake, in his capacity as the President, is the basis for the controversial Act. In spite of attacking the Economic Transformation Bill, the then Opposition conveniently refrained from seeking a vote on the Bill.

Prof. Dunusinghe has been always forthright in his criticism of questionable economic matters, regardless of who wielded the political power. The government should take such criticism seriously as the overall situation remained volatile though the parliamentary Opposition seems wholly inadequate and indifferent to the challenges ahead.

The pathetic and shoddy handling of severe shortage of rice in the open market badly exposed the government. What really surprised the hapless public is the NPP’s thinking the ‘Rice Mafia’ can be reined in by the issuance of gazettes. The NPP basically repeated President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s strategy by declaring price controls on essential commodities, like rice, by issuing gazettes. The NPP placed Nadu, Samba and Keeri Samba at Rs 230, Rs 240 and Rs 260 respectively a couple of weeks ago, following talks with rice millers, but it didn’t make any difference.

During the debate over the failed bid to control the private sector running the show, as it pleases, it was revealed that one of the biggest rice dealers in the country and identified as one of those who had been accused of earning unconscionable profits at the expense of the suffering people is on the National List of the SJB though he didn’t get an opportunity to enter Parliament this time. How did he end up in the SJB National List?

The NPP appeared to be making the often repeated mistake committed by previous governments in believing in the strength of their parliamentary group. In the face of public anger caused by wrong decisions, very often even such monolithic parliamentary groups crumble under pressure. The NPP wouldn’t be an exception unless it quickly realized and addressed the shortcomings.

Real challenge outside Parliament

The situation in Parliament is deceiving. It may give the NPP a somewhat false sense of security. Having handsomely won the presidential election in Sept, 2024 by polling 5.7 mn votes, though he couldn’t obtain 50% plus 1 vote, Anura Kumara Dissanayake consolidated the NPP’s position with a staggering 2/3 majority at the parliamentary election in Nov, 2024.

The NPP increased its tally to 6.8 mn votes from 5.7 mn polled at the presidential. Both the executive and the legislature are in the NPP’s hands. The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) has been reduced to just 40 seats against the NPP’s 159 and down to just 1.9 mn votes at the parliamentary election. The SJB performance is nothing but pathetic.

The dismal results at the national elections had made the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that obtained a staggering 145 seats at the 2020 general election irrelevant with their tally reduced to just three seats in the current Parliament.

But, the NPP cannot be lulled into a false sense of security, under any circumstances, as the real challenge is not the Opposition but the promises made by the party to the masses for a system change in the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary elections. That is the undeniable truth. Having come to power as an all-knowing lot, the NPP leadership will have to answer for developments, come what may.

The recent declaration that those earning a monthly salary up to Rs. 150,000 would be exempted from the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) tax to please professionals and at the same time announced the increasing of the withholding tax on fixed deposit interest to 10 percent from 5 percent, thereby hitting those living on already depleted interest incomes below the belt, underscored the crisis the country is in.

President Dissanayake, in his capacity as the Finance Minister, told Parliament on Dec. 18 that this was done in line with a fresh agreement reached with the IMF. In other words, in spite of the change of government and their severe criticism of Wickremesinghe’s policies, the NPP is also on the same track.

The bottom line is that Sri Lanka’s economic direction is firmly in the hands of the IMF and whatever the NPP leaders uttered to the contrary from election platforms to impress the public in the run up to national elections, the government will have to toe the IMF line when it presents a formal Budget in February for the next financial year.

An interim Budget/vote on account covering the first four months of 2025 was approved in Parliament on Dec. 06, 2024 without a vote, at the end of a two-day debate.

Deputy Finance Minister Fernando told Parliament that the delay in debt restructuring, over the last two years, had cost the country an additional USD 1.7 billion in accumulated interest.

Fernando is on record as having said: “We are hoping to complete the restructure of the bilateral debt and international sovereign bonds by December 31.”

The interim Budget would cover the cost of debt servicing and the government expenditure for the first four months of next year. The NPP government has assured the international community that it would continue to honour the international commitments on debt restructuring commenced by the predecessor Wickremesinghe’s government.

Ground realities

During the presidential election campaign followed by the general election, the NPP talked as if it could address issues that plagued Sri Lanka over the past decades. However, over three months after the presidential election, the public now realize that the NPP had no magic wand in its hand and some issues can never be settled.

Of course, some of those who exercised their franchise in support of the NPP at the two national elections are deeply worried and disappointed. But, the fact remains that those who exercised political power had been appropriately dealt with by the electorate and they wouldn’t be in a position to regain public confidence within a short period. That is the reality those who represent the SJB and NDF (National Democratic Front) had to contend with.

It would be pertinent to mention that two of the oldest political parties in the country, namely the UNP and the SLFP, are not even represented in the current Parliament. The UNP and SLFP leaderships are baffled, but that wouldn’t make things easy for the NPP, regardless of its numerical unconquerable position in Parliament. So did the previous Gotabaya Rajapaksa government that was ousted by violent street protests, most probably staged managed from abroad.

Let me briefly discuss the huge challenge faced by Sri Lanka in dealing with large scale poaching carried out relentlessly by the Tamil Nadu fishing fleet in addition to them destroying fish stocks here by bottom trawling. The joint statement issued following talks between President Dissanayake and Indian Premier Narendra Modi quiet clearly indicated that New Delhi wants Sri Lanka to turn a blind eye to the ongoing rape of fishery resources belonging to the people here.

President Dissanayake raised the massive destruction caused by bottom trawling practised by the Tamil Nadu fishing fleet but the joint statement and the comments made by the Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on this issue at a special briefing indicated in no uncertain terms that India wouldn’t under any circumstances take necessary measures to prevent Tamil Nadu fishing fleet crossing Indo-Lanka maritime boundary.

India seemed to be hell-bent on allowing destructive fishing practices in Sri Lankan waters though it doesn’t allow the same in their territory.

India often emphasises the responsibility on the part of all concerned to deal with poachers in a humanitarian manner. The joint statement went a step further. Referring to the talks, Premier Modi had with President Dissanayake on Dec 16, 2024, the joint statement declared the two leaders ‘underscored the need to take measures to avoid any aggressive behaviour or violence. Would it be fair to pressure Sri Lanka, now beholden to New Delhi for swift economic assistance provided during 2022 and 2023 crisis period, to allow poaching?

How could there be a mutually acceptable solution to the poaching issue when the Indo-Lanka maritime boundary is being violated almost on a daily basis? Although the joint statement referred to the matter at hand as fisheries issues it is nothing but poaching sanctioned by the centre in India.

The joint statement, however, gave the game away when it asserted that the issue should be dealt with taking into consideration, what it called, the special relationship between India and Sri Lanka.

Hats off to President Dissanayake for taking up two related issues at a joint media briefing addressed by him and Premier Modi. A statement issued by the Presidential Media Division (PMD) quoted the NPP and JVP leader as having said that he requested Premier Modi to take measures to stop bottom trawling that caused irreparable ecological damage and also curb illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing). President Dissanayake also reminded them that bottom trawling is banned in both countries. The President took up the position, therefore tangible action should be taken to stop bottom trawling.

But Indian Foreign Secretary’s response to Sachin Vadoliya of UNI query on President Dissanayake’s request pertaining to bottom trawling and IUU fishing revealed that New Delhi had no intention of addressing the issues at hand. The Foreign Secretary conveniently interpreted President Dissanayake’s comments as meaning the Sri Lankan leader calling for the problem to be solved by both countries together.

The supreme irony is that India exploited the situation to its advantage. The ongoing bid to formalize poaching by the Tamil Nadu fishing fleet under the pretext of some bilateral agreement cannot be condoned under any circumstances.

While declaring New Delhi’s immediate readiness to finalize what Premier Modi called a Security Cooperation Agreement, Sri Lanka is being asked to allow rape of its fish resource. The Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the largest Tamil political party that represented the Northern and Eastern regions remained unsure of its stand on the fisheries issue.

The ITAK must take a clear stand on this problem. But, the NPP, having secured the highest number of seats in the Northern and Eastern regions at the expense of the ITAK at the recently concluded general election, needs to represent the interests of the Tamil fishing community here.

Resumption of debt repayment

The primary challenge faced by President Dissanayake is nothing but preparing the economy over the next four years to restart paying the massive foreign debt owed by the country in 2028. The government’s capacity to meet this particular challenge should be examined taking into consideration Prof. Dunusinghe’s criticism of the NPP’s economic plans.

Sri Lanka, in April 2022, made a unilateral statement on stopping debt repayment. Regardless of promises made during the presidential and parliamentary poll campaigns, the NPP is slow in taking tangible measures to revive the sick economy. The absence of long queues at fuel and gas stations doesn’t mean Sri Lanka is out of the woods yet.

Unfortunately, the Opposition is waiting for problems created by previous administrations to overwhelm the NPP. Having declared that the NPP administration couldn’t last for not more than a couple of months, the Opposition realized that their only salvation is the NPP causing its own downfall.

Perhaps, the NPP should reveal its stand on accusations that the failure on the part of the Parliament to amend the Foreign Exchange Act No 12 of 2017 that allowed unscrupulous people to park billions of US dollars overseas.

Various politicians have given different figures in this regard. Then MP Gevindu Cumaratunga estimated the total amount parked abroad owing the lacuna in the Act at USD 36 billion. His colleagues Wimal Weerawansa and Vasudeva Nanayakkara, too, agreed with the figure declared by Cumaratunga.

Former Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakse, PC, estimated the amount of funds parked overseas to be over USD 50 billion. Interestingly, he was among those who voted for repealing the old Act that ensured that exporters brought back export proceeds within a stipulated time period.

The Yahapalana administration repealed the time-tested Exchange Control Act of 1954 at the behest of the then Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe who refrained from voting for it.

The NPP never addressed this issue during campaigning. The NPP also owes the country an explanation as to why the price of a litre of 92 Octane couldn’t be further reduced as during the campaign the then Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera was repeatedly accused of taking kickbacks at the expense of consumers.

So far, a litre of Octane 92 has been reduced to Rs 309 from 311 by the NPP. The government has also earned the wrath of the public for putting off the stipulated electricity price revision at a time much of the electricity is generated by hydro power stations at low cost.

The government seems caught in a vortex of problems-ranging from never ending problems faced by the farmers to Indian and US pressure to extend the moratorium on foreign research vessels visiting Sri Lankan ports. The moratorium declared by Wickremesinghe for a period of one year 2024 ended yesterday (Dec 31, 2024). Would it be extended, to allow Chinese vessels to resume visits or would some committee be appointed to take time to appease India, while Sri Lanka sought to reach some sort of understanding with China.

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Photography: A Primitive Theatre

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Theatre Imagery as Tableau. Student actors (L-R) Thilini Fernando, Dinusha Katugampola, Nishadhi Palansooirya, Upuli Priyangika, and Sepalika Amunugama, in the play, W. Hewath Attanayakage Avasan Davas, was premiered on 6 March 2016 at Panibharatha Theatre, University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo. Photo credit, Dhananjaya Rathnayake.

BY Saumya Liyanage
(Text of a keynote address delivered at the annual Diploma Certificate Award Ceremony, organised by the National Photographic Art Society, Sri Lanka, on the 26 October 2024)

When a photograph of the main protagonist, Joseph, in the play Antique Kadayaka Maranayak (‘Death in an Antique Shop’), written and directed by Asoka Handagama, was shared on Facebook, a much awaited discussion erupted among theatregoers on how this image captured the true essence of the play. The playwright and director Handagama had also commented on Facebook, stating that the photographer, Sagara Lakmal de Mel, has captured the ‘full coverage of the play’ (Handagama, Facebook, 4th June 2023). This statement and the comments received for the Facebook post aroused a question of how photography links with theatre. How could a still image depict the essence of a play? Why is a still image of a play so important for us to understand the nature of acting, mise en scène, and other aspects of theatre?

Theatre photography has not been a major interest of the Sri Lankan photographers who capture the actors’ work on stage. It is very seldom that theatre productions are being captured by photographic documentation with a purpose of archiving and research. Photographers who are involved with theatre productions very often think of documenting theatre performances for the sake of documenting the “event” rather than systematically capturing the essence of the live performance. This paper therefore intends to explore the affinity between photography and theatre. Though these two art forms seem categorically different from each other, this short write-up attempts to suggest a convergence between these two art forms or, rather, sheds light on how these two art forms can be intermingled.

One of the fundamental questions that triggered my mind on photography is why photography is important for us to consider as a reflection of our own world and time. Some of the key features of photography include providing us with memories, preserving the past and our human and natural histories, capturing what we perceive as reality around us, and representing the lives of both humans and animals. Some experts say that photography captures time, memory, duration, presence, love, loss, mourning, and nostalgia. I am aware that photography is an industry. It is a commercial industry where people can make lots of money out of it. However, my question does not comply with the photographic industry but is directed towards the art of photography or the “ontological desire” of photography.

As an actor, I have been fascinated by the presence, absence, and the embodiment of meanings in images. In theatre arts, presence and absences are key elements in a live performance. As Peggy Phelan argues, ‘Performance’s only life is in the present […] The document of Performance […] is only a spur to memory, an encouragement of memory to become present’ (Phelan 1993, p. 146). The nature of live theatre is thus always ephemeral. But photography captures images and preserves them in a particular time and space. However, in terms of its presence and absence of images, photography shares the same phenomenological implications with theatre.

This image of Saumya Liyanage in the play Antique Kadayaka Maranayak (Death in an Antique Shop), shared on Facebook, provoked debate. Photo credit: Sagara Lakmal de Mel.

It is vital for me to emphasise the phenomenological implications of photography because the young generation of photographers should at least be aware of the breadth and depth of the art they use. As you may know, one of the classical writings on photography is Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, written by French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes. In this collection of essays, Barthes articulates his ideas on photography and shows us how the majority of theorists see resemblances between photography and paintings. However, Barthes argues that photography is more directly linked with theatre than visual art or painting. ‘Photography is a kind of primitive theatre, a kind of Tableau Vivant, (a tableau vivant is a static scene containing one or more actors or models), a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead’ (Barthes, 1993, pp. 31-32).

After watching Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children in Paris, Barthes wrote an important paper titled ‘Seven Photo Models of Mother Courage.’ In this essay, Barthes had selected seven photographs taken during the staging of Mother Courage. During this performance, a photojournalist named ‘Pic’ had taken a series of photos using a telephoto lens that captured the vital moments of the play. Another essay written by Barthes titled “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein” (1973) further widened his discussion about the value of photography in analyzing mise en scène of the play.

German Actor, Helen Weigal’s ‘Silent scream’ in Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht. The image was captured by a photojournalist in 1957 when Berliner Ensemble staged the play for the second time in Paris.

Barthes argues that when studying Brecht’s plays, it is important to focus on the “Pregnant Moments” of the scenic situations. Photography as a medium of capturing these “Pregnant Moments” is vital to understanding the tableaux. ‘In so doing, photography would function as a technology for the recording of the tableaux created by the playwright /metteur-en-scène’ (Carmody, 1990, p. 31). When studying Brecht’s plays, this tableaux represents Brecht’s key concept of gestus (a gesture, or a set of gestures that can be read as a social demeanor of a character).

The idea of Tableau Vivant is vital for us to further understand how this still photograph is linked with theatre and its theatrical presence. Theatre is performed in a particular space and time, with actors and additional auxiliary arts such as costumes, sets, lighting, and makeup. Thus, theatre is a series of photographic images, connected to each other as ‘animated photographs’ revealing human behaviour within the chosen time and space. The photographic frame is replaced in theatre by the proscenium arch, limiting our perception within the given scenic situation. Even though theatre showcases animated human figures and objects, it is a series of imagery in which the frozen images of humans and other objects are placed and choreographed to make meaningful situations. As Barthes suggests, photography is thus a “primitive theatre,” a tableau of human figures, and also a “made-up face” beneath which we see the “dead” (ibid, 1993).

How do we understand Barthes’ analysis of tableau figures in photographs as the representation of death? Barthes uses a metaphor here to discuss how the subjects in photographs represent death by referring to traditional Asian dance dramas such as Noh, Kabuki, and Kathakali. In these traditional theatres, actors appear with heavy makeup and costumes. In most of the traditional shamanic performances, the shaman represents both the death, demonic spirits, and the living at the same time. The Sharman also appears in front of the audience, the villagers with the painted faces signifying his performative nature of living and the dead.

Thus, Barthes concludes that the human tableau figures presented in photographs are similar to Sharman, who perform death and being with living on the same plain. Now, for me, photography is something theatrical and performative through which the photographer animates her/his figures in the stillness. Photographs present performative elements through their objects and animate them in our perceptual world. Though they appear as still images, they are masked with dead as Barthes postulates and ignite certain referents and generate meanings. As I have argued, theatre and photography are interrelated arts. There are many scholars who have studied the convergences of theatre and photography, and at the same time, philosophically there are some differences pertaining to these forms of art (Carmody, 1990). It is clearly evident that photography has been an integral part of the development of modern theatre. Scholars who have studied early 19th and 20th century modern theatre in the West and East have used photographic images as references to study the nature of theatre at the time. Photography thus has preserved the historical development of theatre and its culture in diverse countries and nations.

Today, we live in a world where photographic images are part and parcel of our daily realities. We all are, to some extent, photographers whose digital apparatuses are in action all the time. We all have the privilege of documenting and creating images of what we like and dislike. Further, we have the chance to display our images on various social media platforms. Our daily lives are becoming more and more visually transformed realities, and our narcissism is to capture our own lives and display them for the consumption of others. As Karel Vanhaesebrouck argues, ‘Not only is the impact of a camera fundamentally theatrical from the moment it selects a fragment of reality, but our society and its day-to-day organisation function along theatrical lines’ (Vanhaesebrouck, 2009).

References

Barthes, R. (1993). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage Books.

Carmody, J. (1990). Reading Scenic Writing: Barthes, Brecht, and Theatre Photography. The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 5(1), 25–38.

Barthes, R. and Bernays, H.F. (1967). Seven Photo Models of ‘Mother Courage’. TDR (1967-1968), 12(1), p.44. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/1125292.

Vanhaesebrouck, K. (2009). Theatre, performance studies and photography: a history of permanent contamination. Visual Studies, 24(2), 97–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725860903106104

(Saumya Liyanage is an actor and professor in drama and theatre, currently working at the Department of Theatre Ballet and Modern Dance, Faculty of Dance and Drama, University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo.)

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Midweek Review

Ex-SLN seniors focus on seabed mining and Sri Lanka’s claim for the delimitation of the Outer Continental Margin

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Ambassador Majintha Jayasinghe, on Dec, 12, presented his Letters of Credence to Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Jayasinghe was among several envoys who presented their credentials on that day.

During the presentation of the Letters of Credence, Ambassador Majintha Jayasinghe conveyed greetings from the President of Sri Lanka Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the people of Sri Lanka, to President Xi Jinping. President Xi reciprocated greetings to the President and the people of Sri Lanka. Addressing them, Jinping reiterated China’s readiness to share its development expertise and opportunities with other countries and promote the modernization of all countries, based on peaceful development, mutually beneficial cooperation, and common prosperity.

The above strategy has done wonders for Beijing as its windfall in Africa and elsewhere is leaving the traditional domineering states of the West literally in shock and awe, to borrow the words of former US President George W. Bush, who, of course, uttered those words in haste after the US invaded Iraq.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Close on the heels of the conclusion of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s three-day official (Dec. 15-17) visit to New Delhi, the Indian High Commission here announced the planned visits by Indian Coast Guard vessels OPV (Offshore Patrol Vessel) Vaibhav and FPV (Fast Patrol Vessel) Abhiraj to Colombo and Galle, respectively.

According to an Indian HC press release, dated Dec. 20, OPV Vaibhav would be here from Dec. 23 to 27 and FPV Abhiraj from Dec. 29 to January 02, 2025.

As dinned into us over and over again by Indians, such visits, are meant to consolidate the friendship and interoperability between the two neighbouring friendly Navies in line with India’s SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) doctrine and ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.

A day after the Indian HC statement on impending ship visits, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy hospital ship ‘Peace Ark’ arrived in Colombo on a formal visit. The vessel is scheduled to leave Colombo on Dec. 28. Regular Indian and Chinese ship visits underscore the continuing tussle between the two giants of Asia because of Sri Lanka’s failure to state its independent and non-aligned position vis-a-vis two nuclear powers and, for that matter, all powers. This had been the unequivocal policy of Sri Lanka, prior to 1977.

With regard to ship visits, the issue at hand is what to do with the one-year moratorium imposed on January 1, 2024, on foreign research vessels entering Sri Lankan waters. The National People’s Power (NPP) government, struggling to balance relations with China and India, has declared that a committee would decide on what Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath called a national policy framework regarding visits by foreign research vessels.

China tested Sri Lanka’s ban by sending Xiang Yang Hong 3 early this year. The Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government had no option but to deny it entry into the country’s exclusive economic zone much to the disappointment and anger of China.

In August 2022, the Yuan Wang 5 arrived at the Hambantota port. Shi Yan 6 docked at Colombo port in late Oct. 2023. On both occasions, New Delhi protested. The US sided with India.

During President Dissanayake’s visit, India took up the contentious issue of Chinese research vessels targeting India. Indian officials do not mince their words when they refer to Chinese research vessels as spy ships. However, we intend to pay attention to seabed mining and Sri Lanka’s claim for the delimitation of the Outer Continental Margin – two issues that required a consensual approach on the part of Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, irresponsible and reckless political parties here seemed to be blind to the challenges ahead.

President Dissanayake referred to one of the issues when he addressed the media, along with Premier Narendra Modi on Dec. 16, following delegation-level talks and restricted talks between the two leaders.

A statement issued by the Presidential Secretariat quoted Dissanayake as having said that he requested Prime Minister Modi’s intervention in convening early bilateral technical discussions pertaining to Sri Lanka’s claim to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) for the establishment of the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Defence cooperation

An examination of the latest Indo-Lanka joint statement, and statements made by Premier Modi and President Dissanayake at the media briefing, press briefing given by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, and the earlier joint statement issued following the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s state visit to New Delhi, in late July 2023, revealed the expansion of the scope of the bilateral relations.

Defence seems to have received New Delhi’s attention in line with its overall strategy pertaining to Sri Lanka. While the joint statement declared that the two countries would explore the possibility of concluding a framework Agreement on Defence Cooperation, Premier Modi declared: President Dissanayaka and I are in full agreement that our security interests are interconnected. We have decided to quickly finalise the Security Cooperation Agreement. We have also agreed to cooperate on Hydrography.

One needs to go through the section under the sub headline ‘Strategic & Defence Cooperation’ to understand the status of the developing situation.

The Island sought the views of retired Navy Chief of Staff and one-time SLN’s Chief of Hydrographer and Joint Chief Hydrographer to the Government of Sri Lanka, Y.N. Jayarathna, regarding the latest developments.

How do you view the challenges faced by our country?

Challenges faced by Sri Lanka in dealing with India are at an all-time high, I must say. We have lived with India for 2500 years and we will continue to live with India for the next 2500 years for sure. And my opinion is that, if we need to understand one country more exclusively, it is India. Our problem has been our political masters, who, for their survival in the political jungle, have played the India card for their political survival. As long as we have this attitude among our political masters there will always be friction, but, mind you, Sri Lanka is all that India has in the neighbourhood. So this is a case of managing each other’s national interests in such a way not to create friction between us. Wisdom, Knowledge and definitely a wider 360-degree bird-eye view on matters maritime are, I would say the three most important pillars in today’s context.

Asked to explain proposed seabed mining and President Dissanayake’s request for Premier Modi’s intervention, the retired officer said that seabed mining and Sri Lanka’s claim for the delimitation of the Outer Continental Margin were two different processes interlinked to one document; the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). The UNCLOS created the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and the Commission on the Limit of Continental Shelf (CLCS) to look after two different aspects of the seabed; one to regulate the mining of seabed resources and the other to regulate the demarcation limits of the seabed ownership, the expert said.

“Let me first address the seabed mining as India has requested for the licensing of the seabed mining of Afnesy Nikitin seamount, after paying the due fees as indicated in the ISA webpages, the process started. However, when the ISA observed that the claimed area is under Sri Lanka’s claim made in 2009, they stopped the process till the claim is processed at CLCS. Therefore, it will stand as it is.

Then let me focus on the CLCS process for Sri Lanka’s claim: Sri Lanka was the 43rd State to submit, in March 2009, and our claim entirely based on a provision in UNCLOS called the Statement of Understanding (SoU). Under this SoU, the limitations applicable in constraining Coastal States to limit their claims at 350 Nautical Miles as per Article 76 of UNCLOS, is not applicable. That is the basis of including the SoU in the UNCLOS by Sri Lanka’s drafters at that time in the early 80’s. This is introduced to address the inequity of the States who are going to get deprived of claiming the seabed beyond their EEZ. Now the Continental Margin claims are for seabed only as it is not granting any rights on the water column!

India made their claim also in 2009 under Article 76 of UNCLOS, keeping rights to submit another at a later date. They are making their second claim submission on SoU. Sri Lanka also reserved the right to submit the second submission, and it is entirely under Article 76 of UNCLOS.

Meanwhile, the consultations Sri Lanka was having with CLCS, since 2009, has run into an issue as some of the members of CLCS are thinking that limitations of 350 nautical miles as per Article 76 UNCLOS should apply for SoU, too. We are engaging the CLCS for that and it will take some more years to decide as UNCLOS procedures are purely technical.

Although our media and even most of our opinion makers think that India issued their Oct. 2022 Note Verbal in relation to their Seabed mining they requested for Jan. 2024, I see it differently. In 2022 India ensured that they could go for SoU without limiting distances of 350 nautical miles. If CLCS gives a decision on SoU coming under the 350 nautical miles’ limit, then India stands to lose. So, it is up to both India and Sri Lanka to campaign collectively to emphasize the spirit of SoU for the States in the Southern Bay of Bengal.

Jayarathna is of the opinion that India, went for ISA for seabed mining in Afnesy Nikitin seamount in 2024 because they feared China would submit first.

Commenting on the proposed Security Cooperation Agreement, the naval veteran said that such agreements were required but we need not accept the Indian draft. “Let’s draft it ourselves. We should not be making another Taiwan here for India. And whether India is an opportunity or opposition, it is for us to decide. India will be going the way she wants, and we need to be wiser enough to make use of it.”

Admiral RW irked

Former Navy Commander Ravindra Chandrasiri Wijegunaratne, however, bluntly asserted that India brazenly exploited the situation to its advantage. Wijegunaratne, who had served as Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Islamabad during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenure as the President, emphasized the responsibility on the part of the political leadership here to protect the country’s interests, regardless of pressure exerted by India and perhaps other interested parties in this regard.

The outspoken retired officer said that in the face of the country experiencing such unwarranted turmoil extra efforts had to be made to ensure that national interests were protected. Pointing out that the joint statement hadn’t referred to the issue raised by President Dissanayake with regard to Sri Lanka’s claim to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) for the establishment of the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone, the ex-SLN Chief emphasized that it should receive priority along with proposed seabed mining.

Admiral Wijegunaratne commended efforts made by Rear Admiral Jayarathna to educate the people by sharing his knowledge on this issue. Responding to the proposed Security Cooperation Agreement, Wijegunaratne stressed the need to examine such an agreement against the backdrop of overall developments also taking into consideration the country’s bankruptcy status and 2022 Aragalaya that the caused collapse of the elected government and change of power through other means.

Wijegunaratne didn’t hide his concerns over the rapid developments taking place, particularly in the maritime field. The reference to hydrography in the joint statement should be examined keeping in mind the absence of any mention of matters related to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ex-Navy Chief said, urging the powers that be to be mindful of maritime matters. “Do we pay sufficient attention to developments taking place around us as powerful countries jostle to secure critical minerals,” Wijegunarathna said.

Referring to increasing competition among major global powers, Wijegunaratne said China, Russia and India were vying with each other to reach the huge deposits of mineral resources – cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese – that lie thousands of meters below the surface of oceans. These minerals are used to produce renewable energy such as solar and wind power, electric vehicles and battery technology needed to battle against climate change.

Wijegunaratne questioned the rationale in India disputing Sri Lanka’s claim to our Outer Limits of Continental Shelf Margin. Alleging that the Indian move is very unethical, the retired officer asked how they could object to our claims South of Sri Lanka. Claiming that India was going to start mining in the disputed area, Wijegunaratne said that Sri Lanka sought consensus with India regarding ratification of our claims with the UN Law of the Sea Conference. “Then we can work out modalities for deep sea mining with an agreement on sharing income.”

Political parties represented in Parliament should seek consensus among them regarding the country’s foreign policy. The NPP government seems on the track laid down by former President Wickremesinghe during his tenure. Having agreed to abide by the Economic Transformation Act that had been endorsed by Parliament during Wickremesinghe’s presidency, the government and the Opposition are expected to follow the IMF agenda.

Soon after returning from India, President Dissanayake announced plans to visit Beijing, a significant economic partner though India definitely played a far more significant role here during the 2022 economic meltdown. The visit is expected to take place in mid-January 2025.

Dissanayake faces the unenviable and daunting challenge of balancing China and India. The situation should be examined in the context of the overall US strategy meant to counter the USD 4 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) considered China’s largest and most ambitious foreign trade, investment and political project to date. With China positioned at Hambantota and Colombo ports, as well as the adjoining Colombo Port City project, their largest single project here that had been launched in 2014 whatever the consequences bankrupt Sri Lanka is part of BRI formerly called ‘One Belt and One Road’ initiative.

In a way Aragalaya was meant to change Sri Lanka’s direction. Had that really happened, the outcome is not yet very clear.

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