Midweek Review

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

Published

3 years ago

2023/06/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

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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Midweek Review

SJB jolted by AKD-Eran move

Published

1 day ago

2026/05/6

Sahan Weerasooriya

Sri Lanka’s disastrous tour of Australia in 2022 (09 Oct. to 13 Nov.) caused widespread anger among the cricket community and the cricket loving public. The Auditor General’s special report that dealt with that tour revealed significant financial irregularities regarding the SLC executive committee’s visit there for the 2022 T20 World Cup. In spite of heavy media focus on the AG’s report in the run-up to the World Cup debacle in India, the government lacked the political will to deal with the developing situation. The then Auditor General W.P. C. Wickramaratne stood by his report. The top official, who retired in April 2025, reiterated the serious revelations but the Parliament conveniently discarded it.

Former parliamentarian Eran Wickramaratne’s unexpected move jolted the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB). In spite of being aware of covert moves to bring in Wickramaratne as chief of the corruption-riddled Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), in place of Shammi Silva, the SJB never really believed it could succeed as it was considered a literal goldmine. But when President Anura Kumara Dissanayake pushed the deal through on 29 April, a furious SJB General Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara, however, tried to save face by merely declaring it as a political appointment. The veteran politician said so when the media sought his reaction to Wickramaratne’s move at the P.D. Sirisena grounds, Maligawatte, the venue of SJB May Day rally.

Earlier, in response to Wickramaratne’s declaration that he quit the SJB’s Working Committee and Management Committee to pave the way for him to accept the top SLC post, Madduma Bandara asked Wickramaratne to give up the party membership, too.

President Dissanayake’s move caught the main Opposition party, as well as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), by surprise. The vast majority of parliamentarians, representing the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led ruling National People’s Power (NPP), couldn’t have been aware of the operation executed by President Dissanayake.

There hadn’t been a previous instance of the NPP accommodating an ex-parliamentarian from a rival party in any capacity. The top NPP leadership always indicated that those who represented other political parties in Parliament wouldn’t be welcome. Ex-lawmaker Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka threw his weight behind the JVP/NPP on numerous occasions, during Aragalaya and the post-presidential polls. Although some expected the war-winning Army Commander to receive an invitation from the NPP, it never materialised. Then, what really made the NPP extend an invitation to Wickramaratne, who first entered Parliament on the UNP National List at the 2010 general election. Wickramaratne contested Colombo at the 2015 general election on the UNP ticket and was appointed Deputy Minister of Investment Promotions and Highways. Widely regarded as one of UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe’s favourites, Wickramaratne switched his allegiance to Sajith Premadasa in early 2020 and contested the Colombo district on the newly registered SJB and served as a lawmaker till 2024. Wickramaratne failed to regain his seat in the 2024 general election.

Wickramaratne had been one of the leading proponents of Yahapalanaya (2015-2020) that perpetrated Treasury bond scams in February, 2015, and March, 2016, and a key member of the 106 parliamentary group. As a SJBer, he represented a much smaller parliamentary group that consisted of 54 lawmakers.

What made the former banker, Wickramaratne, accept the daunting challenge of restructuring the utterly corrupt SLC, the country’s richest sports body, embroiled in wasteful practices? As a key member of the SJB, during the 2020-2024 period, Wickramaratne knew how SLC manipulated Parliament and proceeded with its agenda during Shammi Silva’s leadership.

The SJB spearheaded a vigorous campaign, targeting SLC, though it never managed to overwhelm the sports body that enjoyed unprecedented backing of the executive. In spite of the Parliament unanimously adopting a joint resolution calling for the removal of the SLC management, including its Chairman Shammi Silva, that board remained. President Dissanayake executed an operation that replaced Shammi Silva with Eran Wickramaratne. That brought Wickramaratne’s affiliation with the SJB to an unceremonious end. Ex-MP Wickramaratne made his move at the expense of the SJB parliamentary group, now down to 40 in the current Parliament.

The NPP secured an extraordinary 159 seats at the last parliamentary election. That tally included 18 National List slots.

The second largest party in Parliament consists of 40 including five NL slots. The remaining seats in the 225-member Parliament were shared by Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK/8), New Democratic Front (NDF/5), Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP/3), Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC/3), Sarvajana Balaya (SB/1), United National Party (UNP/1), Democratic Tamil National Alliance (DTNA/1), All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC/1), All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC/1), Jaffna – Independent Group 17 (IND17-1) and the Sri Lanka Labour Party (SLLP/1).

A surprising move

The NPP brought in Wickramaratne ostensibly to clean up SLC at a time the current dispensation, plagued by various allegations, is under heavy fire. Many eyebrows were raised over the calculated move that eased pressure on the government. Obviously, the former investment banker had no qualms in joining the government, amidst the continuing controversy over (1) release of 323 red-flagged containers from the Colombo port, without mandatory physical checks; (2) resignation of Energy Minister Punykumara aka Kumara Jayakody, after the release of the damning National Audit Office (NAO) report on the coal-scam, in the wake of the unsuccessful SJB No-Confidence Motion (NCM), the first since the 2024 September presidential election; (3) massive Rs 13.2 bn fraud at the National Development Bank in which Eran served as the Chief Executive Officer in 2001 (4) staggering USD 2.5 mn heist at the Treasury that devastated the government.

It would be pertinent to mention that he resigned from the NDB to enter Parliament on the UNP National List at the 2010 parliamentary poll, close on the heels of the re-election of Mahinda Rajapaksa for a second presidential term.

Within 24-hours after Wickramaratne accepted the NPP offer, the Treasury scam took an absolutely unexpected turn when an Assistant Director at the External Resources Department of the Finance Ministry, Ranga Rajapaksa, who had been interdicted over the alleged theft, was found dead, under suspicious circumstances, just outside his residence in Kuliyapitiya.

In spite of a panel of Judicial Medical Consultants, appointed to conduct the post-mortem examination on the body of Ranga Rajapaksa, concluded that all injuries were self-inflicted and that the death was due to suicide, the SJB questioned the circumstances of the death.

The SJB felt betrayed by Eran’s move at a time the Opposition was making headway, though the NPP enjoy an unchallengeable 2/3 majority in Parliament. Confident that corruption allegations, particularly the USD 2.5 mn affair and the suicide of top Finance Ministry official eroded public confidence, the SJB challenged the NPP to hold the long-delayed Provincial Council polls. The challenge was issued at the May Day rally held at P.D. Sirisena grounds, Maligawatta. SJB leader Sajith Premadasa declared if President Dissanayake accepted his challenge the next May Day will be held with SJB Chief Ministers in charge of the PCs.

The man is definitely no saint either as he once got caught campaigning with a group of his supporters in Moratuwa during the moratorium on canvassing just before an election.

Eran Wickramaratne, whatever said and done in his defence, will find it extremely difficult to explain why he switched his allegiance to the NPP, particularly against the backdrop of serious allegations. The ongoing parliamentary probe into the container affair, as well as the growing energy crisis due to the West Asia conflict, and low quality coal supplied to the country’s only coal-fired power plant, Lakvijaya at Norochcholai, and threat to the banking sector, obviously failed to deter Wickramaratne from switching sides. The former Deputy Minister obviously risked his principled stand throughout his political career against corruption.

However, like all other UNP and SJB politicians, Wickramaratne cannot, under any circumstances, absolve himself of the UNP’s culpability in Treasury bond scams, perpetrated under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s watch. Perhaps, over a decade after the first Treasury bond scam, many people still do not know that the Central Bank had been under Wickremesinghe at the time when then Central Bank Governor, Singaporean Arjuna Mahendran, struck. Wickramaratne remained loyal to the party though, unlike Sujeewa Senasinghe (current member of SJB parliamentary group), he didn’t launch a booklet in defence of Mahendran.

In the wake of Sajith Premadasa’s defeat at the 2019 presidential election, the party split, with the majority of members of the UNP group in the Yahapalana parliament switching allegiance to Sajith Premadasa. The SJB never explained its stance on Treasury bond scams that ruined the administration, at the very onset of its much-touted 100-day programme. The SJB needs to at least acknowledge its responsibility for its conduct, during that time, as some of those who shielded the bond thieves represent the party in Parliament now.

Widely referred to as the “footnote gang” the group has been accused of inserting footnotes into a COPE committee report on the Central Bank Treasury bond scams, literally challenging its findings. Key members often highlighted include Harsha de Silva, Sujeewa Senasinghe, Ajith P. Perera, Harshana Rajakaruna, Hector Appuhamy, Ashok Abeysinghe, Abdul Maharoof, Wasantha Aluvihare, and Ravindra Samaraweera.

Shammi vs Roshan

In the wake of Sri Lanka’s humiliating exit from the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup following a massive 302 run-defeat inflicted by India at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. Australia won the tournament played in India from October 05 to November 19, 2023.

Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe, who also held the Youth Affairs and Irrigation portfolios, pounced on the opportunity to oust Shammi Silva’s cricket administration. The Polonnaruwa District MP, as well as those who wanted to see the back of Shammi Silva, who had been at the helm, since February, 2019, felt that they wouldn’t get a better chance. The SJB threw its full weight behind the Sports Minister’s project though he represented the SLPP that reached a consensus with Ranil Wickremesinghe, regarding post-Aragalaya administration. For the SJB, the Sports Minister’s move presented an opportunity to rock the administration struggling to cope up with growing economic woes.

Within days after India thrashed Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe sacked the cricket administration and brought in a committee, headed by Arjuna Ranatunga, the skipper of 1996 World Cup winning team. Inclusion of Jayantha Dharmadasa in the Ranatunga-led interim committee caused controversy though, as a whole, the public approved the move. But, Shammi hit back hard. Within 24 hours, SLC challenged the Minister’s action.

The Court of Appeal quashed the Sports Minister’s decision to sack the country’s crisis-ridden cricket board and restored the expelled officials, pending a full hearing. Shammi had the unconditional backing of the Indian Cricket board and, most importantly, the protection of the executive. Wickremesinghe had no qualms in shielding Shammi and his team, though Sports Minister Roshan was elected to Parliament on the SLPP ticket.

An irate Sports Minister revealed in Parliament how Wickremesinghe demanded that he rescind the decision to sack the cricket administration. Wickremesinghe wanted Shammi back at the helm of the SLC whatever the allegations directed at him. The Sports Minister disclosed in Parliament how he refused to carry out Wickremesinghe dictatorial directive and challenged him to do whatever he desired.

The resolution, unanimously adopted by the Parliament on 09 November, 2023, to get rid of the cricket administration, had no impact on Wickremesinghe. Eran Wickramaratne had been a member of that Parliament though he now quietly contributed to a strategy that enabled the NPP government to replace Shammi without causing any unnecessary issues.

When Roshan declined to reinstate what he repeatedly described as corrupt cricket administration, Wickremesinghe sacked him from the Cabinet of Ministers. Perhaps, the UNP leader had the tacit support of the top SLPP leadership to drop the ‘Pohottuwa’ man from the Cabinet. The SLPP never really took up that issue as Wickremesinghe, in consultation with his Chief of Staff Sagala Ratnayaka, plotted a controversial course.

The sacked Sports Minister hit back hard at Wickremesinghe and Sagala Ratnayaka, in and outside Parliament. Alleging that his life was in danger, Roshan said that in case of any harm caused to him, Wickremesinghe and Ratnayake should be held responsible. The lawmaker urged the Speaker not to expunge his statement from Hansard.

During the war of words, between Roshan and the SLC in November, 2023, the latter lodged a complaint with the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) accusing him of misappropriation of funds made available by them to the National Sports Fund. There had never been a similar case in which the Cricket Board/SLC moved CIABOC against the subject Minister.

Shammi proved again that with right connections challenges could be successfully neutralised. But, his feat remains extraordinary as he thwarted the unanimous resolution adopted against him in Parliament. There had never been an instance where the Parliament took such a stance in respect of an individual or a particular body. Wickremesinghe, in spite of the Parliament, at that time, represented by only one National list MP from the UNP (defeated Galle District candidate Wajira Abeywardena) without hesitation sacked a Cabinet Minister appointed by his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Wickremesinghe’s actions underscored how the executive could undermine Parliament, regardless of consequences. Shammi emerged far stronger and proceeded with his agenda.

A visit to Mandaitivu

Having backed the SJB-led November 2023 move in Parliament against SLC, perhaps the electorate believed the first elected post-Aragalaya government would swiftly move against the powerful cricket administration. However, that issue took a back seat as the NPP confronted other challenges. By then previously mentioned issues, particularly the coal scam that exposed the NPP’s duplicity, grabbed media attention, and SLC was conveniently forgotten.

Then suddenly, on Shammi Silva’s invitation, President Dissanayake visited Mandaitivu island, situated about three kms off Jaffna town and is connected to the peninsula, via a causeway.

On September 1, 2025, Dissanayake laid the foundation stone there for what the SLC called Jaffna international cricket ground, on 48 acres, featuring 10 centre wickets with boundary distance extending up to 80 meters, exceeding international standards. The SLC declared the proposed seventh international stadium would have a spectator capacity of 40,000, positioning it as a premier cricket destination in the region.

The SLC couldn’t complete the work before the end of December, 2025, due to Cyclone Ditwah, and other reasons, including the absence of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report. The Chairman of the Central Environmental Authority, Professor Tilak Hewawasam, is on record as having said in late February this year that instructions were issued to halt the construction work under way at the Jaffna International Cricket Stadium until SLC secured environmental impact assessments to permit them to grant formal approval.

The launch of the Mandaitivu project was in line with the overall plan to create a 138-acre sports city in the Jaffna district. Those who opposed the project have alleged that it would be an ecological disaster and Mandaitivu should never have been considered for an international cricket stadium. It would be interesting to see how the new SLC chief addressed this issue alone, leaving aside all else.

Some of the criticism directed at the Jaffna sports city project is political. Northern Province-based politicians and other interested parties, not with the NPP, feel the proposed project may further erode their support base. Their concerns have to be addressed, taking into consideration President Dissanayake’s success in winning both the Northern and Eastern electoral districts at the presidential and parliamentary polls in 2024. The NPP created political history when it defeated the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) in predominantly Tamil speaking regions thereby proving that the party could be overwhelmed.

Although the ITAK regained some respectability at the Local Government polls in 2025, the NPP still enjoys overwhelming superiority in the North and East but the actual situation can be ascertained only if President Dissanayake accepted the SJB’s challenge to conduct Provincial Council polls soon.

Wickramaratne now faces an extraordinary challenges, a situation he never experienced during the time as a UNP MP from 2010 to 2020 and then SJB lawmaker from 2020 to 2024. It wouldn’t be easy as many interested parties, including those antagonised by his move whatever the consequences of Mandaitivu environmental issues, would be out to target him. In case Wickramaratne failed in his capacity as the SLC chief to take remedial measures, he would have to face the consequences. The NPP, too, will be at the receiving end for obvious reasons.

While a section of the SJB asserted that Wickramaratne’s actions were treacherous, given his role in the party, some believe that the invitation extended to the former parliamentarian revealed that the NPP lacked suitable persons among them to take such a high profile assignment. The question is whether Wickramaratne can pull it off or himself be overwhelmed by an utterly corrupt system that progressed over the years with the connivance of politicians.

Shammi Silva couldn’t have retained SLC leadership without contest for just over seven years sans heavy political backing. That is the undeniable truth. The latest ‘arrangement’ that compelled him to give up the hot seat about 11 months before the end of his term enabled the controversial figure to avoid investigations into past affairs. Bringing in Wickramaratne, too, seems to have the approval of Shammi Silva who proved his mettle as a shrewd negotiator.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

Monks, the Law and the Future of the Buddhist Monastic Order

Published

1 day ago

2026/05/6

Sahan Weerasooriya

A file photo of some Buddhist monks, nabbed at the BIA, with narcotics, being taken to court.

As almost the whole country knows by now, a group of 22 Buddhist monks were arrested on 25 April 2026, by the Police Narcotics Bureau at the international airport in Katunayake carrying approximately 112 kilograms of Kush, a high-grade, potent strain of cannabis and Hashish with a street value of over LKR 1,100 million. It is supposed to be the largest drug haul of this kind at the airport and has made global news too.

Locally, and particularly on social media, it has opened a very vocal debate with two main streaks. One has already judged the monks as guilty, purely based on information and stories in free circulation on the internet. The other claims that these are not even monks, but are imposters planted to bring disrepute to Buddhism while some articulations within this streak even go to the extent of claiming government culpability, without offering an iota of evidence. Almost none of these discusses in any serious manner what this means in terms of the law of the land and its applicability to Buddhist monks, and why this level of criminality has occurred from within the clergy in the first place. Such reflection, however, is the only sensible thing that should come out of this unfortunate incident which had considerably dangerous consequences for society if the narcotics went undetected.

The law in our country seems to apply differently or at least very slowly when it comes to Buddhist monks. This suggests that they occupy some kind of undefined but privileged status above citizenship and its constituent responsibilities. People may have noticed that Buddhist monks do not stand when the national anthem is being sung even though it is standard etiquette across the world including in our country to do so. But this exception in practice does not seem to apply to other religious leaders.

When as a schoolboy in the 1980s, I asked one of my teachers, a Buddhist monk, whom I still hold in high esteem, why this was the case, his answer was, this was the tradition since the time of the Buddha. My classmates and I pointed out to him that at the time of the Buddha, there were neither nations nor national anthems, and this question would not have even arisen. But there are stories from Buddhist history and literature that might be interpreted as monks being treated differently and elevated in status even above rulers due to their spiritual attainment. But today, we are not dealing with remnants of a distant history and belief, but the present in vastly transformed social and legal conditions.

Obviously, this is a tradition born out of wrongful and selective interpretation of respect and veneration, and not a formal legal exemption. Partly, that veneration comes from narratives in Buddhist literature, such as the incident involving Emperor Asoka and the seven-year-old novice monk, Venerable Nigrodha, who it is said to have sat on the emperor’s throne, when invited to be seated. Whatever the actual sources of this veneration are, what it does in contemporary times, is to set apart Buddhist monks symbolically from other citizens with the indication that the law of the land applies differently to them and that too, favourably. In practice, unfortunately, this becomes a cover within which errant individuals can hide from the long arm of the law as well as common sense and ethics that apply to all others.

The cultural and political logic behind this practice assumes that Buddhist monks are beyond and above the law, which is meant for the laity, and that such noble individuals will not do anything wrong. But even in the time of the Buddha itself, this was not a fact as Buddhist history explains well. It is precisely this cultural logic that led some commentators to use two interesting words to describe the 22 monks arrested at the airport and another who was arrested later who was to be the recipient of the drugs. One word is chiwaradhaarin,

literally meaning those wearing robes without implying their possible belonging to any local ecclesiastical order. In contemporary usage, it is also a somewhat insulting term. The other word is, bhikshu prathirupakayin, literally meaning people masquerading as monks. The whole point here was to delink these errant monks from monkhood and therefore from Buddhism itself because the alleged crime was too serious.

The Mahanayaka Theras of the Siyam, Amarapura, and Ramanna chapters issued a statement on 26 April 2026, just one day after the arrests, referring to the arrested as bhikshu prathirupakayin (people masquerading as monks) who were misusing the robe and noted these acts were against Buddhism and called for the suspects to be duly punished and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. On 28 April, the President met the Mahanayaka Theras and other senior monks to discuss the fallout and possible future action including closer supervision of monks within the order. Ideally however, neither this statement nor the meeting with the President was necessary if monks were treated as a matter of routine like normal citizens when they violate the law of the land. It is precisely based on this principle that the police arrested them in the first place. But there is no doubt they receive special treatment everywhere in the country, including in the airport.

It is this sense of privilege under the law that needs to end. When I say this, I am not talking of individual respect to monks people might have, based on their knowledge of the dhamma, including myself. That is a matter of individual preference. I also do not mean disciplinary supervision, investigation of institutional malpractices and disciplinary or vinaya breaches and punishments which can be carried out by the religious organisations themselves if they have a workable system. But if monks, like any other citizen, violate the law of the land whether it is drug trafficking, rape, child abuse, financial irregularities, instigating violence and so on, then, they cannot be offered special treatment or leniency. They must be held accountable and prosecuted, but fairly, like all of us deserve. No exceptions can be made.

The sheer noise of the local debate also has not posed yet another pertinent question that is important in this context. That is, how has it become possible for monks to engage in such obviously illegal acts with massively negative consequences for the society which they are supposed to serve selflessly? What has gone wrong, where and why?

Ven. Gurugoda Siriwimala made the following observations in a Facebook post in Sinhala on 27 April, which outlines the prevailing situation very rationally and clearly:

“The Bhikkhu Sasana (The Buddhist Monastic Order) in Sri Lanka is part of the country’s own decline. When a nation falls into decay, it is impossible for one specific segment within it to remain unaffected. The most tragic aspect of this is that in a country like Sri Lanka, where the cultural fabric is heavily built upon religion, the clergy—who ought to be the ultimate role models—have descended into such a state of degeneration.

The Monastic Order in Sri Lanka has become mere puppets of political parties and the media. For ordinary monks like us—who travel in public buses and subsist on the alms provided by ordinary people—it has become a matter of such shame that we feel like we must hide our faces. But these are not issues to monks who hardly walk in the streets, who constantly hold press conferences and utter foolhardy things from political stages.

Political parties in Sri Lanka have divided the clergy among themselves, maintaining a group of prominent monks who would act according to party agendas. We see even at this very moment how they are being manipulated like puppets. A group of hollow, senseless fools with no spiritual sensibility whatsoever are making a mockery of themselves in front of the whole country by holding press conferences morning and night. These monks lack education; they possess no understanding—either at a national or international level—of the subjects they speak about …”

Ven. Siriwimala’s articulation is the clearest explanation of what is happening in the Buddhist monastic order that I have read in recent times. What is even more important is that it has come as a self-reflective critique from within. The drug-carrying monks are not an unusual occurrence or an anomaly when it comes to drug trafficking in the country in general or reported malpractices involving some other monks on numerous other occasions. According to publicly available reports, some monks have repeatedly insulted minority religious practices and sentiments. One example of this is the current case in which indictments have been served against one of these monks for a case from 12 years ago. His discourses of violence are matters of public record as are the records of others. Sexual violence and child abuse involving some other monks have also come to the forefront on and off including the case of a monk who was found guilty of multiple counts of sexual assault by the Isleworth Crown Court in London in 202 and placed on the UK Sex Offenders Register for life even though he is running a school close to Colombo. There are many such cases circulating in public discourse, but not all of these have been prosecuted. Much has been silenced by inaction.

As Ven. Siriwimala has rightly pointed out, many monks have become problematic mouthpieces for political parties and political interests. Even the manner of their public articulation and behaviour as well as the nature of political involvement have become shameful, to put it mildly. But almost none have faced consequences within the ecclesiastical order of institutional Buddhism.

What this overall situation has done is to bring the Buddhist ecclesiastical order into needless disrepute. And much of this has happened due to the unfortunate silence of the Mahanayaka Theras and other senior prelates when they should have campaigned for reform within their monastic orders and paved the path towards prosecution in the same way they have done in the context of the recent drug interdiction. Seen in this sense, the present issue is nothing new. It is merely one of the more visible examples of a much deeper malaise.

Whenever I hear of these issues and the relative silence from within the monastic order, I am constantly reminded of the Buddha’s own words in Aṅguttara Nikāya (Numerical Discourses) and particularly in Anāgatabhaya Sutta (Discourse on Future Dangers). The ‘future dangers’ that would lead to the corruption of the Sangha and the disappearance of the Saddhamma (True Dhamma) the Buddha articulated include the following, all of which have to do with monks: 1. Lack of training and discipline among monks and the resultant consequences; 2) consequences of monks stopping paying attention to the profound teachings of the Dhamma; 3) monks focusing on excessive materialism and luxury and distancing themselves from practices such as meditation and seeking liberation; 4) the emergence of conflict and factionalism as a result of which monks becoming argumentative and using the Dhamma as a weapon to attack one another rather than as a means to liberation; 5) all this would finally lead to the corruption of the teachings of the Buddha and monks would end up teaching what is not the Dhamma but present it as the Dhamma and will teach what is not the Vinaya but present it as the Vinaya.

Is it not this that is happening today? Aren’t the kind of examples of malpractices I have outlined above indicative of this situation which the Buddha himself foresaw in his own lifetime? If the April 2026 drug bust is to serve a purpose for the future, it should happen at two levels: 1) the government and the laity should not treat monks as privileged when they engage in wrong-doing and violate the law of the land. The government should make it very clear formally that the law enforcement and judicial systems must fully prosecute violators of the law without any exceptions; 2) Leaders within the Buddhist monastic order including the Mahanayaka Theras and other senior prelates as well as their lay supporters should establish and empower an urgent system of internally addressing issues within their own orders and organisations, which should include the identification of wrong doers on the basis of specific ecclesiastical or legal violations and their expulsion from their monastic orders. There should not be any exceptions.

If this bare minimum can be achieved without delay and that too with honesty, then, we can imagine a more sanguine future where Buddhism can play the role it is supposed to. If it cannot be done, then, the future will be what the Buddha has already predicted.