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

Nobel Peace Prize for Pillay draws global attention to Eelam war

Published

5 hours ago

2026/10/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

Navi Pillay visits Kilinochchi in late August, 2013.

Having failed on multiple occasions to reach consensus with the LTTE, Sri Lanka, finally, during President Mahinda Rajapaksa tenure, launched all-out war. The LTTE lasted two years and 10 months. In spite of warnings regarding a long drawn out hit and run campaign, the group couldn’t reorganise. The rest is history

By Shamindra Ferdinando

The recent award of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, 85, drew global attention to Sri Lanka’s successful war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Sri Lanka brought the war to an end a year after Pillay succeeded Louise Arbour (2004 to 2008) as UN Human Rights Chief.

Congratulating Pillay, the only UN Human Rights chief to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Jehan Perera, on behalf of the National Peace Council (NPC), issued a press release which was aptly headlined, citing the main obvious agenda of the NGO lobby – ‘Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem Pillay is reminder to Sri Lanka of unfinished commitments’ (https://island.lk/nobel-peace-prize-to-navanethem-pillay-is-reminder-to-sri-lanka-of-unfinished-commitments-npc/)

Pillay currently serves as a temporary judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ), presiding over the case where Myanmar is under investigation for perpetrating genocide.

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF), too, cheered, stating that for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, Ms. Pillay’s contribution, during her tenure as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, holds particular significance. The UK headquartered GTF stated: “At a time when the grave allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in Sri Lanka, risked being forgotten or marginalised, she helped ensure that accountability remained firmly on the international agenda. Her call for an international investigation marked an important moment in the continuing struggle for truth and justice for the victims and survivors of the Sri Lankan conflict. Although meaningful justice remains elusive to this day, the international attention sustained through these efforts continues to offer hope to victims, survivors and their families. (https://www.newswire.lk/2026/10/13/gtf-congratulates-navi-pillay-on-nobel-peace-prize-recalls-her-calls-for-sri-lanka-war-crimes-probe/)

The Tamil Guardian, too, applauded Pillay’s intervention in Sri Lanka (https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/nobel-laureate-navi-pillay-and-long-fight-hold-sri-lanka-account). Did the Norwegian Nobel Committee meticulously examine Pillay’s role in Sri Lanka? Comprehensive examination of her role is of critical importance as Norway-led mostly one sided peace process here created mayhem.

Let us discuss the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights during the period Pillay held the top post, from 2008 to 2014. Her term commenced on 01 September, 2008, as the LTTE was resisting a multi-pronged ground offensive, targeting Kilinochchi, which the group considered as its administrative headquarters, after the loss of Jaffna peninsula, during the 1995/1996 period.

Pillay’s Office hadn’t been worried as the LTTE continued to boast it held the upper hand in the northern theatre of operations. The Tamil Diaspora, too, remained confident of the fighting prowess of the LTTE, though Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government sustained the offensive, while all self-appointed pundits said Sri Lankan security forces were incapable of defeating the LTTE, including some of our so-called expert columnists here, who were actually cheerleaders for the Western agenda. Pillay was obviously deceived. Geneva wasn’t really bothered about the situation on the ground in spite of the fighting formations making slow but steady progress.

Those who believed in the LTTE’s battlefield invincibility were jolted when the Army regained Kilinochchi on 02 January, 2009. The often repeated myth was shattered. The armed forces achieved the notable target two months short of two years after the launch of their Vanni campaign. The loss of Kilinochchi made the outcome of the Eelam war a foregone conclusion.

The government disregarded the LTTE’s repeated warnings that Colombo would be bombed if the Army attempted to regain Kilinochchi. The fall of Kilinochchi, just four months after Pillay’s new appointment, should have galvanized Geneva. Unfortunately, Geneva failed to act swiftly and decisively. Had Geneva, with the backing of Sri Lanka peace co-chairs, namely the US, Norway, Japan and EU, brought real pressure on the LTTE the final onslaught on the Vanni east front could have been averted. Thousands of lives could have been saved. But, Geneva pursued its own agenda, regardless of the LTTE resorting to gathering large-scale civilian human shields.

It would be pertinent to mention that Pillay herself conceded, in March, 2009, that the LTTE used civilians as human shields, shot those who left and forcibly recruited people, including children, to fight. But, in her capacity as the UN Human Rights chief, she stopped short of demanding the immediate release of civilians held as human shield. Perhaps, Pillay’s Indian Tamil origin discouraged her from making such a call. Those who applauded the Nobel Peace Prize for Pillay should examine their own response to the LTTE’s widespread use of civilian shields and children in combat operations during the January-May 19, 2009 period.

UN inaction

The UN obviously responded to the then developing situation in Sri Lanka on the presumption that the armed forces lacked the wherewithal to bring the war to a successful conclusion. Pillay and then UN Secretary General South Korean Ban-ki moon misjudged the situation in Sri Lanka.

Both appeared to have believed the LTTE myth, floated by the West, that in spite of heavy battlefield beatings, it had the military depth to halt the armed forces offensive. Reappraisal of UN operations here could easily establish Ban-ki moon and Pillay’s predecessor Louise Arbour never really sought to pressure the LTTE not to prolong the bloodshed by literally backing its crazy demands. In fact, the UN failed to realise that the liberation of the entire Eastern Province by the second week of July 2007 may pave the way for a determined government bid to regain the entire Vanni region.

The UN, obviously, failed to take into consideration the launch of the Vanni offensive in March 2007, months ahead of the conclusion of major operations in the Eastern theatre.

Seeing how the UN has been behaving in places like Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon and elsewhere, luckily for us Mahinda Rajapaksa stuck to his guns, but the West is now exacting revenge from that family through its proxies.

The UN secretly negotiated for the release of two UN workers held by the LTTE in the Vanni. The Colombo-based UN bigwigs kept the incident under wraps believing that the LTTE would eventually free them.

In spite of the UN Headquarters receiving information regarding the incident, an influential section of the Colombo-based diplomatic community strived to resolve the dispute without bringing it to the notice of the government. The UN office in Colombo should have brought the incident immediately to the notice of the government.

The LTTE accused Tamil UN staffers of helping Tamils flee the LTTE-held region. Civilians began fleeing the region amidst signs that fighting could be intensified.

The UN brought the detention of UN workers to the notice of the government after all its efforts failed to convince the LTTE. The LTTE is believed to have detained UN workers for about a month. We haven’t heard of the UN ever seeking punitive action against the LTTE. The responsibilities of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights cannot be discussed without examining the overall UN response to the Sri Lanka war.

The UN turned a blind eye to the forcible recruitment of children by the LTTE. Ban Ki-moon or Pillay never bothered to revisit the agreement that had been finalised during President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure. The agreement worked out among the government, the UN, the ICRC and the LTTE was meant to stop the despicable practice of deploying child soldiers.

An unprecedented agreement

Had the UN taken meaningful measures to ensure the implementation of the agreement, the war wouldn’t have lasted so long. There had never been a similar agreement during the conflict here. Interestingly, none of those demanding accountability, on the part of the government of Sri Lanka, never bothered to push for the implementation of the unprecedented agreement, finalised by the then UNSG Kofi Atta Annan’s Special Representative, Olara Otunnu, in early May, 1998 (UN, LTTE to discuss modalities with strap line Pledge to stop using children in combat – The Island, May 11, 1998). Otunnu visited the Vanni, with the blessings of the then Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, to discuss the arrangement with a British citizen, of Sri Lankan origin, Anton Balasingham, who was also the official Tiger Theoretician, and Thamilselvam.

At the conclusion of Otunnu’s weeklong visit, the UN mission, in Colombo, proudly declared that political advisor Balasingham, and Political Wing leader, Thamilselvam, had, on behalf of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, assured an immediate stop to using children in combat operations.

A jubilant Otunnu declared, in Vavuniya, that the LTTE had agreed for the setting up of a mechanism to monitor commitments made to the UN (Tigers agree to end use of chidren below 18 in combat – The Island, May 9, 1998). Having succeeded Boutros Ghali as UN Chief, in 1997, Annan intervened in Sri Lanka though his predecessor did absolutely nothing to end the bloodshed in Sri Lanka. However, at the time of the disastrous Indian intervention here, Pérez de Cuéllar had been at the helm at the UN. Unfortunately, Annan failed to implement the agreement. Foreign Minister Kadirgamar quite rightly urged the LTTE to adhere to the agreement.

A skeptical Kadirgamar told the writer that it was the UN’s responsibility to ensure the implementation of the agreement. Kadirgamar asserted that it was nothing but propaganda as the LTTE couldn’t sustain its war effort without fresh cadres joining the depleted fighting formations (Transform commitments into action, Government urges LTTE – The Island, May 9, 1998). Otunnu had been the first foreign official to hold talks with the LTTE, with Sri Lanka’s blessings, since the Gandhi assassination, in May, 1991. Perhaps, the LTTE used the UN to boost its image in the wake of the US designating the group, in the previous year, as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.

Salient points of the UN-LTTE agreement:

* The LTTE promised to immediately stop deployment of children under 18 years of age. The group also promised to end the recruitment of children, below the age of 17 years.

* The LTTE assured not to interfere with those war displaced families wanting to return to areas under government control. In addition, the LTTE promised to allow Muslims, driven out by them, in late 1990, to return to their villages. (The LTTE at gunpoint ordered the entire Muslim population to vacate the Northern Province in late Oct/Nov 1990).

* The UN also received an assurance from the LTTE that it wouldn’t interfere with the distribution of relief supplies among the war affected population, particularly those living in areas under its control.

* The LTTE pledged to adhere to the Convention of the Rights of the Child. The group promised to take measures to educate its fighting cadres, as well as other units as regards the Convention.

* The LTTE assured that it would review its military strategies as regards operations directed at civilians and other non-military targets.

The UN never acknowledged its failure to ensure the implementation of any of the commitments made by the LTTE. In fact, the LTTE continued to violate promises made to the UN until the military eradicated the conventional fighting capability of the group, in May, 2009. The LTTE lasted for 11 more years after having taken the UN for a ride. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to launch a thorough study on the conflict to ascertain the UN’s failure here?

CBK’s 1994/95 effort

The NPC used the award of Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem Pillay to remind the world of Sri Lanka’s unfinished commitments. The NPC that had been in operation since February ’95 is aware of the escalation of fighting after the LTTE broke the ceasefire (cessation of hostilities) negotiated during Kumaratunga’s presidency. Having won the parliamentary polls, Kumaratunga held talks (Oct. 04 to April 1995) but the LTTE resumed attacks in the third week of April.

The global community didn’t come to Sri Lanka’s rescue. Multiple devastating attacks stunned the country. The LTTE sank two Shanghai ii class fast gunboats at the gunboat pier at the Navy dockyard, Trincomalee harbor, on 19 April, and brought down two Avros over Palaly air base a week later. Those who backed that peace effort simply moved away, leaving unprepared Sri Lanka to face an unprecedented new threat of heat seeking missiles. The LTTE intention was clear. It intended to cut off the Jaffna peninsula. In the absence of Sri Lanka losing the overland Main Supply Route (MSR) to the peninsula, denial of sea and air supply routes could have a devastating impact on the military deployed there.

Norway, which had been a major sponsor of the NPC, from the onset of its ‘operations’, was among the countries involved in Kumaratunga’s disastrous effort. The government and the LTTE agreed on the formation of four peace monitoring committees, headed by foreigners, following talks in Jaffna on 24 January, 1995. The ICRC arranged the meeting that led to the consensus on four committees consisting of five persons – two representatives each from the government and the LTTE and foreign heads. The ICRC politely declined to head one of the committees, while Norway (Audun Holm and Johan Gabrielson), Canada (retired Major General. C. Milner) and the Netherlands (retired Lt. Colonel Paul Henri Horsting) accepted the responsibility. When the LTTE resumed Eelam War 111, with the sinking of China-supplied fast gunboats and transport aircraft procured from the UK, foreign heads of so-called peace monitoring committees quietly left the country.

The LTTE never actually allowed the peace committees to function though their foreign heads were granted a rare opportunity to meet LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on 05 February, 1995, in Jaffna.

From the very beginning, the Kumaratunga peace bid was destined to fail. The LTTE caused obstacles. The international community tolerated. The British allowed the terrorist group’s International Secretariat to function from London, even after it assassinated former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi while he was campaigning in Tamil Nadu during the Indian general election of 1991.

Later, the LTTE demanded that there should be six peace monitoring committees. The government promptly agreed but failed to realise that the group was preparing to deliver a strategic blow. The LTTE maximized the opportunity to win concessions. It wanted the government to do away with restrictions on fuel, cement and iron while another major contentious issue was the troops deployed at Komar point-Pooneryn sector. Anyway, the resumption of war, in April, 1995, caught Kumaratunga’s government by surprise, after having blindly trusted the LTTE, and the so-called international community, led by the West.

But, Kumaratunga taught the LTTE an unforgettable lesson when the armed forces brought back the entire Jaffna peninsula, under government control, during operations conducted in 1995/96. In spite of a devastating attack on Elephant Pass, in 2000, after having evicted the Army from its bases south of Elephant Pass up to Kilinochchi, the LTTE could never re-capture Jaffna.

In Nov, 2008, the Jaffna-based fighting formations moved southwards of Muhamalai, two months after Pillay received the appointment as UN Human Rights chief. By then, the Task Force I (later elevated to 58 Division) had recaptured the Kandy-Jaffna A 9 road, stretch from Kilinochchi northwards to Elephant Pass ,where the Army suffered a humiliating defeat in 2000.

Under Pillay’s leadership, too, like her predecessors, the Office of Human Rights Commissioner essentially pursued an agenda hostile to Sri Lanka. It couldn’t stomach the LTTE’s impending defeat. Pillay conveniently failed to acknowledge that Sri Lanka went on the offensive after having exhausted all avenues to end the conflict through dialogue. During Pillay’s tenure as the UN Human Rights chief, the organisation pathetically failed to address accountability issues. Like her predecessors and successors, Pillay, too, never acknowledged that whichever party in power, the government couldn’t have succumbed to the LTTE’s tactics.

The UN in Colombo had been so involved with the LTTE and literally became part of its operation. The mission here refrained from alerting New York immediately of the abduction of UN workers, accused of helping Tamil civilians to enter government held area in 2007. This happened weeks after the newly raised 57 Division launched operations in March, 2007, west of Vavuniya, with the objective of taking Madhu. That division had been tasked to regain Kilinochchi. The Task Force I launched operations in Sept 2007.

The UN had ample time and opportunities to make a meaningful intervention. Instead of compelling the LTTE to give up terrorism, it mollycoddled the group. The UN never really questioned the LTTE regarding its relentless efforts to eliminate Tamil groups who previously carried weapons. Pillay pursued her predecessor Louise Arbour’s approach that allowed the LTTE to continue fighting. Western governments, civil society as well as the UN until the very end believed the LTTE could turnaround the battlefield status. It was not to be.

A brief missive sent by war time Norwegian Ambassador in Colombo, Tore Hattrem, to the then National List MP and presidential advisor Basil Rajapaksa revealed a halfhearted Norwegian bid to secure the release of civilians held by the LTTE. Pillay couldn’t have been unaware of this but she obviously turned a blind eye to the developing situation. Her March statement didn’t make any impact, by then, the government was hell-bent on destroying the LTTE, for once and for all.

The following is the text of the letter headlined Offer/proposal to the LTTE dated Feb. 16, 2009: “I refer to our telephone conversation today. The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population now trapped in the LTTE controlled area has been transmitted to the LTTE through several channels. So far there has been regrettably no response from the LTTE and it does not seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree to this in the near future.”

Norway never pushed the influential Tamil Diaspora, in Norway, to pressure the LTTE leadership to give up its meaningless resistance. Thanks to Wikileaks, the world knows the ICRC believed the Army could have finished off the LTTE much faster if it didn’t take the civilian factor into consideration on the Vanni east front.

Midweek Review

A call for professional dignity, political responsibility, and intelligent conflict resolution

Published

5 hours ago

2026/10/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

Kavantissa

The Tusker Tragedy:

by Prof. MPS Magamage

Wildlife veterinarians in Sri Lanka work under extremely challenging conditions, often with limited facilities, inadequate emergency support systems, and no sufficient life insurance or occupational protection commensurate with the risks they face. Yet, when an unfortunate incident occurs, these professionals are expected to accept accountability, sometimes without adequate institutional support or recognition of the practical constraints under which they work.

The situation is further complicated by internal institutional inequalities and interprofessional conflicts within departments. These issues must be acknowledged and addressed if we are to build a more effective, accountable, and supportive wildlife conservation system. Political negligence and irresponsible or disrespectful statements by political leaders can further aggravate an already sensitive human–elephant conflict. This escalating tread of killing giants in Sri Lanka is the best example for political incompetence, poor statements and political incorrectness.

When farmers feel neglected, frustrated, and unsupported, tensions may escalate, putting both human lives and wildlife at risk. Elephants may be chased, harassed, or even shot as a consequence of these escalating tensions Accountability must be accompanied by institutional responsibility, professional respect, and adequate resources. It is neither fair nor constructive to demand accountability from frontline professionals while overlooking the systemic failures, inadequate facilities, and lack of support that constrain their work.

The death of Tusker Kawanthissa should therefore be a wake-up call for all stakeholders not an opportunity for political confrontation, public condemnation, or professional divisions. Politicians, wildlife authorities, veterinarians, farmers, conservationists, and wildlife enthusiasts must recognise that emotional reactions and accusatory statements will not resolve these complex problems.

What Sri Lanka needs now is an intelligent, evidence-based, and collaborative approach that strengthens wildlife veterinary services, improves emergency response mechanisms, provides appropriate occupational protection, supports affected farming communities, and promotes effective human–elephant conflict mitigation.

We must also encourage respectful dialogue and cooperation among professionals within and across institutions. Differences of opinion are inevitable, but they should be resolved through constructive discussion, scientific evidence, transparent investigations, and fair administrative procedures not confrontation or personal attacks.

Protecting wildlife veterinarians, safeguarding farmers, and conserving elephants are interconnected responsibilities. None should be sacrificed to political interests, institutional rivalries, or public pressure.

Let the tragedy of Kawanthissa become an opportunity to reform the system, strengthen professional unity, and develop sustainable solutions. The way forward is not confrontation, but leadership, accountability, compassion, and collective responsibility.

The writer is a Professor of Livestock Production, Veterinarian, and former Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka. He previously served as Chairman of the National Livestock Development Board of Sri Lanka.

A Fulbright Scholar, Indian Science Research Fellow, Australian Endeavour Fellow, and Visiting Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA, he has extensive international experience in Veterinary Medicine, animal biotechnology, reproductive biology, livestock production, higher education, research, and academic leadership.

magamage@agri.sab.ac.lk/mmagamage2@gmail.com

Midweek Review

Lessons from the collapse of Colombo’s US$ 392 mn logistics Hub

Published

5 hours ago

2026/10/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

Beyond Rhetoric:

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

On October 15, 2026, the Chinese government-owned China Merchants Port Holdings submitted a regulatory filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, formally implementing a mutual settlement agreement with the Sri Lanka Ports Authority and local partner, Access Engineering. With it, the process to wind down the US$ 392 million South Asia Commercial and Logistics Hub project began. The Sri Lankan media and policy circles in general reacted with predictable alarm. Much of the fallout was framed, and I believe correctly, as a matter of Sri Lanka’s persistent struggle to convert foreign direct investment approvals into operational reality.

As a country attempting to address fragile post-crisis economic recovery, the loss of this project provides a sobering reality check on commercial execution, institutional reliability, and the finite nature of investor patience. In April 2023, the proposed 530,000-cubic-meter logistics complex inside the Port of Colombo was hailed as a game-changer. It was conceived as a 50-year build-operate-transfer agreement. In this scheme, China Merchants Port Holdings held a 70% equity stake alongside 15% each for the Sri Lanka Ports Authority and Access Engineering. According to the original plans, the facility was expected to modernise bonded warehousing, free-zone processing, and cold storage, firmly cementing Colombo’s regional transshipment standing. It even secured Strategic Development Project status according to the provisions in the Strategic Development Projects Act No. 14 of 2008 (and Strategic Development Projects [Amendment] Act, No. 26 of 2025) granted by the Cabinet of Ministers with the concurrence of the Minister of Finance. In this particular case, the project also received a long-term corporate tax holiday.

Despite these concessions and clearances, three years after the initial agreement was signed, nothing concrete materialised on the ground. The joint venture remained trapped in a maze of unfulfilled conditions, unresolved land-allocations, regulatory delays, and lingering fiscal liabilities. The most serious of the latter was an unresolvable US$3.9 million Value Added Tax assessment. Confronted with mounting maintenance costs and the inability of the project to move beyond the signing phase, the partners executed an ‘amicable consultation and neutral handling’ termination, which was embedded in the agreement. Under the settlement terms, shareholders agreed to dismantle the corporate structure and recover roughly 80% of their paid-in equity. Rather than emanating from a politico-ideological problem, this was a cold, pragmatic business decision driven by risk management and fiscal prudence.

Local business reporting and opinions have debated whether the project’s demise represents a regulatory failure, an unavoidable commercial exit or a governmental failure. One side of the domestic debate emphasises institutional inertia. Critics have highlighted what appears to be inter-departmental difficulties between the Ministry of Finance, the Inland Revenue Department, and port administrators which generated paralysing ambiguity over potential future tax positions and statutory clearances. From this perspective, the venture died a ‘death by paper,’ demonstrating how Sri Lanka’s state machinery continues to sabotage its own economic recovery without even realizing it by creating unpredictable operating environments. This is nothing new and is something the present government has inherited from years of previous practice and has not been able to resolve so far.

The counterargument in the public discourse points to commercial pragmatism and shifting market timing. Proponents of this view note that holding equity in a non-operational venture indefinitely makes no financial sense when global maritime logistics costs and trade routes change rapidly and consistently. In this view, exiting with an 80% capital recovery was a routine corporate decision to mitigate against further loss. Another argument, shared by the government’s political opponents, simply claims the project signed during the Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency failed due to the present government’s incompetence. This argument is too simplistic, even though the government has not fully worked out how to streamline these kinds of projects that might be beneficial to the country.

The more credible arguments, in the end, come to the same conclusion. That is, the project failed due to external forces. This tends to mask the state’s failure to deliver legal clarity and institutional coordination, which are essential in these situations. Winding the project down creates several immediate problems for Sri Lanka. First, in global logistics, timing and operational predictability are crucial. Terminating a US$ 392 million venture indicates to international capital that even high-profile, government-backed deals can stall indefinitely. Second, under the settlement terms, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority faces a net cash outlay of approximately US$ 17.4 million to facilitate the capital refund to its partners. These are public funds that should ideally have been directed toward capital upgrades or even public services. But now, they must instead be used to wind up a failed entity. Third, as rival transshipment hubs in the region expand their capacity, it is criminal that Sri Lanka has wasted years trying to work out a project-related future of port land while logistics infrastructure only remained on paper. This is a situation that a country keen on recovering from debt, chronic economic crises and reinventing itself from its ‘Banana Republic’ persona from the immediate past cannot afford.

As the Sri Lanka Ports Authority prepares to re-tender the vacant 13-acre port parcel under an alternative private-investment model, policymakers must digest the hard lessons of this collapse if the government is serious about foreign direct investment. To begin with, statutory permits, land leases, and environmental clearances must be finalised before executing binding joint ventures with foreign capital. On the other hand, there must be established clarity on issues such as what percentage of profits must be reinvested or spent in Sri Lanka, how much can be taken out of the country, what percentage of personnel can come from abroad and so on. Similarly, it is necessary to eliminate all tax ambiguities before signing an agreement. In other words, free-zone incentives and tax exemptions under special investment frameworks must be legally and clearly reconciled across all government departments to prevent late-stage tax liabilities and other avoidable complications.

This includes clarity on what taxes must be paid and what will be waived off and for what period of time. These parameters must be created based on comparable practices elsewhere in the world. Finally, investors should be provided with a single, empowered facilitation body capable of clearing administrative hurdles rather than forcing investors to navigate across different bureaucratic hurdles. Sri Lanka can always learn from more successful experiments in this regard from other parts of the world. These should be in place as matters of policy and principle and not as ad hoc decisions taken from project to project. All these are already part of the conversations in Colombo’s business circles and indicate nothing new. These principles should also include clarity on what areas of the local economy and business infrastructure would not be open to foreign investment for strategic reasons, whether build-operate-transfer agreements should continue beyond a specific period of time, taking into consideration what would be left by the time the transfer period comes, and so on.

The cancellation announced on October 15, 2026, should serve as a wake-up call for Sri Lanka’s economic decision-makers in particular and the government in general. Attracting global capital requires far more than political rhetoric, ceremonial launch events, long-term tax holidays, and high-level diplomatic performances. It demands smooth operational execution, legal certainty, and reliable public administration. If Sri Lanka is to secure its place as a leading maritime and logistics hub and as a dependable investment destination in general, it must resolve its internal administrative bottlenecks. Until then, major investors will continue to walk away when the cost of waiting outweighs the promise of doing business. Or, they might not be attracted to Sri Lanka as an investment destination in the first place.