Midweek Review

War as a way-of-Life

Published

3 years ago

2022/11/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Helene Weigel Vera Tenschert

Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children:

by Laleen Jayamanne

“Like the war to nourish you?
Have to feed it something too.”
Mother Courage

Chaplin on Seeing Brecht’s Galileo

Charlie Chaplin had dinner with Brecht’s long-term musical collaborator Hans Eisler, after the premier of The Life of Galileo in 1947 in LA. The play was very well attended by leading artistes and intellectuals, some of whom worked for Hollywood at the time. It included German Jewish and gentile refugees from fascist Europe. Over dinner, Chaplin told Eisler that he would have liked a bit more ‘drama’ and that Brecht could have ‘mounted’ it differently. Eisler (who was familiar with Brecht’s radical work in Weimar Germany in the 20s), explained to him that Brecht never wanted to ‘mount’ things. American theatre critics from Variety and New York Times also complained that the production was ‘too flat and colourless.’ They thought the play was not theatrical enough, not ‘dramatic.’ In this piece, I will discuss the formal features of Brecht’s epic theatre (use of narration, scene construction, dialogue and acting), which Brecht thought was a form more suited to a scientific age of reason than the more emotional form of traditional dramatic theatre.

Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children; A Chronicle of the Thirty Year War, is a parable relevant to our moment of world history as well. It’s based on a character called ‘Courage, an Adventuress,’ in the 17th Century picaresque novel, Simplicissimus by Hans von Grimmelhausen. In Lanka it was first produced in English, in the 60s by Ernest MacIntyre, and, soon after in Sinhala as, Diriya Athi Mawa. Written in exile in 1939, the year Hitler invaded Poland, triggering the second World War, it was about another devastating war in Europe, the Thirty-Year Religious Wars (1618-1648), between the Catholics and the Protestants. Now we have yet another European war, between Ukraine and Russia, with no end in sight, which has already begun to affect global trade in essentials and much else. The flow of refugees and the scale of non-stop destruction of Ukraine by Russia is now broadcast daily on our TV screens creating a new ‘cold-war.’ The polarising American slogan for this war is ‘Democracy versus Autocracy.’ There is even talk of limited nuclear strikes but hardly any diplomatic solutions. Lanka also has had her own experience of a 30-year civil war whose wounds have not all healed because they remain unacknowledged.

Brecht’s 1949 production of the play in East Belin (with the nucleus which became the Berliner Ensemble in East Germany), within the Soviet Union, is celebrated in theatre history not only for the written play itself but also for the singular Epic staging and Epic acting of Helene Weigel as Mother Courage. She was an Austrian-Jewish actress and Brecht’s wife and also, according to him, a rare ‘epic actor.’ More of that later. The 1957 Berliner Ensemble production of it (after Brecht died in ‘56), again with Helene Weigel as Mother Courage, is on YouTube, now with English subtitles, an extraordinary chance for Lankan theatre folk to study her celebrated performance. It’s nearly four hours long and worth watching for people serious about studying, Epic Theatre, acting and staging.

The main set in the play is Mother Courage’s large wagon on wheels, ‘a cross between a military vehicle and a General Store’ servicing the different armies fighting in the Thirty-Year War, which decimated the population of Germany, destroying villages, towns and livestock. She follows the armies as they are her main source of income, she feeds on the war, so she needs it. It makes good business sense to her. Brecht hammers this point repeatedly. In the opening scene, the cart rolls on to the stage, drawn by her two sons, Eilif and Swiss-Cheese, because their horse has died. A revolving stage floor adds to the sense of dynamic curving movement of the large heavy wagon as it creeks and groans on to the stage with Mother Courage lounging on it, singing with her mute daughter seated beside her playing a Jewish harp. The rhythm of the song, the marching gait of the sons pulling the wagon, is robust, light-hearted even, despite the war. War for them is certainly a way of life, quite normalised.

Theatre for a New Scientific Age

In this piece, I want to build on the ideas developed in my three previous pieces on Brecht for The Island in two ways. First, by exploring Brecht’s idea of an ‘epic’ rather than a ‘dramatic’ structure, in his episodic scene construction and narration. Second, Brecht’s famously difficult idea of ‘epic acting’ will be explored by focusing on Helena Weigel’s celebrated performance as Mother Courage; she did not seek a response of empathy (identification and sympathy), from the audience. Instead, she performed in a manner that made her appear astonishing, strange though she was always believable as an efficient, robust petit-bourgeoise trader. Brecht’s carefully thought-out reasons for developing this mode of theatre will also be discussed.

Given that the European war lasted 30 years, Brecht presents its long duration by focusing on specific years without following a chronological progression. He calls the play a ‘chronicle of the thirty year war,’ so it jumps from 1626 to ‘29 for example, and ends the play in the middle of the war more than 10 years before it actually ceased. In this way, he is able to create a large number of episodic scenes whose duration varies wildly. Some even where the curtain opens and closes within minutes! So, he frees himself from chronological, causal, historical narration, and is able to build a freer sense of the relationship between one scene and another. This way, he can abstract events and produce his own views of that war without being tied to chronological history. This juxtaposition of scenes is what Brecht calls montage, using a film editing terminology. This freedom derived from its episodic structure is vital for the spectator who is invited to make the connections by learning to think in the theatre and not only just to feel with the characters. Mother Courage herself does not invite identification. she is neither heroic nor pathetic. She is dogged, living at all cost, unwittingly even at the expense of her three children. She is called ‘courage’ not because she is heroic, but because once she followed the army into dangerous territory because she had to sell a large stock of bread before it turned mouldy. Her business is with the army, regardless of which side it is, as long as she can sell her goods. Profit is the motif.

Brecht’s theatrical theory is superbly edited in Brecht on Theatre by John Willet and is highly readable, enjoyable and useful for understanding 20th Century radical European political epic theatre. Brecht provided the following model, laying out the ‘changes of emphasis as between dramatic and epic theatre.’ They are not opposites but it’s a matter of what needs to be emphasised to create a rational spectator who can evaluate what’s being presented without being emotionally swayed. This does not mean there is no feeling in the play. But rather, that reason and understanding are emphasised, paramount. (See table)

Brecht thought very highly of Charles Laughton’s performance of Galileo Galilei. He has written admiringly of Laughton’s work ethic and the way he understood the aesthetic of the play and performed the role in an ‘epic’, rather than in a purely ‘dramatic,’ that is to say, emotional, empathetic manner. This new element is probably what Chaplin and the American theatre critics didn’t appreciate. Joseph Losey, who directed the play with close input from Brecht, had plans to make a film of it, but because of the communist scare Laughton had backed out. Losey did make the film much later, but with the dramatic actor Topol, who played the lead role in the musical Fidler on the Roof. For students of theatre, it would be very instructive to study his highly emotional film version of presenting Galileo (which is on YouTube), and then read Brecht’s ideas on a cooler, more ‘distanced’ mode of performance which he says Laughton provided, which he named ‘epic acting’.

Helena Weigel as Epic Actress

Similarly, here’s Brecht describing Weigel as a rare, exemplary epic actress in her role as Jocasta’s maid in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.

“… she announced the death of her mistress by calling out her ‘dead, dead, Jocasta has died,’ without any sorrow but so firmly and definitely that the bare facts of her mistress’s death carried more weight at that precise moment than could have been generated by any grief of her own. She did not abandon her voice to horror, but perhaps her face, for she used white make-up to show the impact which a death makes on all who are present at it.”

He says that Weigel as Jocasta’s maid didn’t mix up her own emotions and try to make the spectator ‘punch drunk with feeling.’ But rather, her cold delivery left room for the spectator to understand the magnitude of the action of suicide, as a moral decision. The suicide of the queen Mother (who had unwittingly committed incest with her own son, Oedipus, after she had unknowingly married him), was not made into an occasion for new sensations.

Brecht again on what epic acting should be:

“Witty. Ceremonious. Ritual. Spectator and actor ought not to approach one another but to move apart. Each ought to move away from himself. Otherwise, the element of terror necessary to all recognition is lacking.”

Mother Courage’s Silent Scream

In theatre studies, Helena Weigel’s ‘silent scream’ is legendary, a part of her epic performance. As she lives off of the war, she considers peace bad for her business. And in the play when someone exclaims, ‘peace has broken out!’ Mother Courage is upset because she had just stocked up on new supplies and says it will now go to waste. This is epic dialogue, it makes one pause.

When Mother Courage realises that her son’s death (off-stage), is imminent she stands up saying:” I think I bargained for too long,’ and slowly sits down on a stool. Her body is tense. And as she hears the volley of bullets executing her son, her body shudders, arching back as though she was shot, her mouth opening wide into a snarl, letting out a silent scream. The gesture is so fleeting that we can miss it. But this silent cry carries huge weight. We still hear its reverberations. But it doesn’t make us empathise with Mother Courage, rather, we see her in all her animal drive to survive at all cost. But at that very moment when like an animal she instinctively bares her teeth to scream, she stifles the cry as only a human animal could. The silent-scream is a complex epic gesture. It encodes her contradictory life of sustaining her family by living off of war.

Because of her wheeling and dealing and haggling after a good bargain, each of her children dies. Brecht shows clearly the link between her decision to carry out a business deal and the loss of each of her children. When she is shown Swiss Cheese’s corpse, she is not able to even acknowledge that it is her son, as doing so would compromise her and Katrina. So, his body is thrown into a mass grave and Mother Courage turns her face away from us as the curtain falls in silence.

It is not that we don’t feel any emotion but rather we also feel the moment in all its inarticulate horror; we observe the phenomenon of this woman, her instinctual drive to survive at all cost. Once all her children are dead, she straps herself on to the wagon and slowly hunching down like a very old woman, drags it along alone, doggedly following the army as she has always done. She doesn’t learn anything, but it’s we who do. It’s not that we don’t feel, we do feel an immense sense of desolation for this myopic and hugely energetic woman who still lives off of the war, the end of which is a generation away. Meanwhile, Germany is laid waste. In 1939, Brecht looked back at history to understand the emerging catastrophe in Europe. He directed the play in East Berlin in ’49, where the rubble of WW2 was not all cleared. This play feels so current now for Europe deeply enmeshed in an unwinnable, seemingly endless war which has global repercussions.

Brecht was against tragedy which he called Aristotelian drama with its famous tragic heroes and their profound ethical epiphanies when facing cruel Destiny. Instead, he formulated his theory of modern epic theatre for a scientific age of reason, so that an audience would learn to observe characters as epic constructs and historical events in microcosm, and learn from them. He wanted the audience to understand the world through the way in which epic characters interacted in episodic scenes. He used either a chorus or projected intertitles to create an epic narration to narrate complex historical forces which simply couldn’t be dramatized by individual characters alone. Within such a rich epic structure the spectator learns in a relaxed way, how to balance emotions with understanding. The emotion that Brecht was especially suspicious of in theatre was empathy, which is an Aristotelian value. Brecht believed that by emotionally identifying with characters in an empathetic manner we lose our capacity to evaluate their behaviour. What he wanted was a process he called ‘distanciation,’ so that we don’t simply cry and say, ‘Aiyo, ane- Amme!’ and go home wiping a tear or two. He wanted a theatre fit for the modern scientific age, providing spectators with a greater understanding of political forces at play in normalising war within capitalism. Religion is the ritualised camouflage for gaining territorial political power, in the play.

So, soon after Mother Courage lets out her silent scream the stage is blacked-out for about eight seconds. When it opens for the next episode in full bright light, Mother Courage is still seated on the stool but there is no carry-over from the previous episode. As a cunning business woman, she is facing another moment of survival with quick-wittedness mixed with acute pain. Weigel’s Mother Courage is not played as a sentimental maternal figure or the ‘eternal sorrowful mother.’ She is not part of ‘the little people’ helplessly caught in the cross-fire, say like the poor peasants who appear in the play. But rather, she actively feeds off of the war as a petite bourgeois trader. This class-analysis is important for Brecht, who read Marx as a young student and continued his research into the history of capitalism and socialist politics as a playwright.

Joe Abyewickrama; A Lankan Epic Actor?

Prasanna Withanage in his Purhanda Kaluwara (Darkness at Fullmoon), brilliantly created the character of Wannihamy, as the blind father of a dead soldier. Joe Abyewickrama played this role in an epic mode. He didn’t cry out when his son’s sealed-coffin was brought home to his hut unlike his daughter. He was stoic like Mother Courage when her son’s body was brought in for her to identify. Wannihami, in his unique situation simply listened carefully to all the sounds and through his quality of attention, we too were given a glimpse of the terrible cost of the civil war on an impoverished Sinhala family and much more. Joe didn’t play for empathy, his restraint, enhanced by his blindness (a form of Brechtian distanciation), showed us and taught us in an unusual way about the terror of the civil war and of state terror, which Sinhala folk are belatedly experiencing now, not for the first time of course, in the South also. The sealed coffin, solemnly draped in the Lion flag, did not hold the corpse of the ‘Rana-viru’ or ‘tragic-hero’ son, but a banana trunk. The hero’s coffin, too big for the little hut, provides food for thought.

Similarly, Brecht’s play continues to nourish our thinking as we experience unending wars and State terror. Brecht and Weigel and Joe offer Lankan playwrights and filmmakers very rich resources to learn from, to make theatre and film that speaks to Lanka’s complex history and contemporary ongoing struggles, so that we might learn and understand in an enjoyable way. Brecht (always full of surprises) says theatre must be entertaining and should be performed in a relaxed manner. Go figure! Look at the many photographs and the ’57 production itself by the Berliner Ensemble now online.

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Midweek Review

How massive Akuregoda defence complex was built with proceeds from sale of Galle Face land to Shangri-La

Published

2 days ago

2025/12/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

Defence Headquarters Complex (DHQC) at Akuregoda

The Navy ceremonially occupied its new Headquarters (Block No. 3) at the Defence Headquarters Complex (DHQC) at Akuregoda, Battaramulla, on 09 December, 2025. On the invitation of the Commander of the Navy, Vice Admiral Kanchana Banagoda, the Deputy Minister of Defence, Major General Aruna Jayasekara (Retd) attended the event as the Chief Guest.

Among those present were Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, the Defence Secretary, Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha (Retd), Commander of the Army, Lieutenant General Lasantha Rodrigo, Commander of the Air Force, Air Marshal Bandu Edirisinghe, Inspector General of Police, Attorney-at-Law Priyantha Weerasooriya and former Navy Commanders.

With the relocation of the Navy at DHQC, the much-valued project to shift the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Headquarters of the war-winning armed forces has been brought to a successful conclusion. The Army was the first to move in (November 2019), the MoD (May 2021), the Air Force (January 2024) and finally the Navy (in December 2025).

It would be pertinent to mention that the shifting of MoD to DHQC coincided with the 12th anniversary of bringing back the entire Northern and Eastern Provinces under the government, on 18 May, 2009. LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed on the following day.

The project that was launched in March 2011, two years after the eradication of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), suffered a severe setback, following the change of government in 2015. The utterly irresponsible and treacherous Yahapalana government halted the project. That administration transferred funds, allocated for it, to the Treasury, in the wake of massive Treasury bond scams perpetrated in February and March 2015, within weeks after the presidential election.

Maithripala Sirisena, in his capacity as the President, as well as the Minister of Defence, declared open the new Army Headquarters, at DHQC, a week before the 2019 presidential election. Built at a cost of Rs 53.3 bn, DHQC is widely believed to be the largest single construction project in the country. At the time of the relocation of the Army, the then Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva, the former Commanding Officer of the celebrated Task Force I/58 Division, served as the Commander.

Who made the DHQC a reality? Although most government departments, ministries and armed forces headquarters, were located in Colombo, under the Colombo Master Plan of 1979, all were required to be moved to Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte. However successive administrations couldn’t go ahead with the massive task primarily due to the conflict. DHQC would never have been a reality if not for wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa who determinedly pursued the high-profile project.

The absence of any reference to the origins of the project, as well as the significant role played by Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the just relocated Navy headquarters, prompted the writer to examine the developments related to the DHQC. The shifting of MoD, along with the Armed Forces Headquarters, was a monumental decision taken by Mahinda Rajapaksas’s government. But, all along it had been Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s determination to achieve that monumental task that displeased some within the administration, but the then Defence Secretary, a former frontline combat officer of the battle proved Gajaba Regiment, was not the type to back down or alter his strategy.

GR’s maiden official visit to DHQC

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who made DHQC a reality, visited the sprawling building in his capacity as the President, Defence Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on the morning of 03 August, 2021. It was Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s maiden official visit to the Army Headquarters, located within the then partially completed DHQC, eight months before the eruption of the externally backed ‘Aragalaya.’ The US-Indian joint project has been exposed and post-Aragalaya developments cannot be examined without taking into consideration the role played by political parties, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, media, as well as the weak response of the political leadership and the armed forces. Let me stress that a comprehensive probe should cover the period beginning with the Swiss project to humiliate President Gotabaya Rajapaka in November, 2019, by staging a fake abduction, and the storming of the President’s House in July 2022. How could Sri Lanka forget the despicable Swiss allegation of sexual harassment of a female local employee by government personnel, a claim proved to be a blatant lie meant to cause embarrassment to the newly elected administration..

Let me get back to the DHQC project. The war-winning Mahinda Rajapaksa government laid the foundation for the building project on 11 May, 2011, two years after Sri Lanka’s triumph over the separatist Tamil terrorist movement. The high-profile project, on a 77-acre land, at Akuregoda, Pelawatta, was meant to bring the Army, Navy, and the Air Force headquarters, and the Defence Ministry, to one location.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s visit to Akuregoda would have definitely taken place much earlier, under a very different environment, if not for the eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, just a few months after his victory at the November 2019 election. The worst post-World War II crisis that had caused devastating losses to national economies, the world over, and delivered a staggering blow to Sri Lanka, heavily dependent on tourism, garment exports and remittances by its expatriate workers.

On his arrival at the new Army headquarters, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was welcomed by General Shavendra Silva, who also served as the Chief of Defence Staff. Thanks to the President’s predecessor, Maithripala Sirisena, the then Maj. Gen Shavendra Silva was promoted to the rank of Lt. Gen and appointed the Commander of the Army on 18 August, 2019, just three months before the presidential poll. The appointment was made in spite of strong opposition from the UNP leadership and US criticism.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa hadn’t minced his words when he publicly acknowledged the catastrophe caused by the plunging of the national income and the daunting challenge in debt repayment, amounting to as much as USD 4 bn annually.

The decision to shift the tri-forces headquarters and the Defence Ministry (The Defence Ministry situated within the Army Headquarters premises) caused a media furor with the then Opposition UNP alleging a massive rip-off. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa reiterated his commitment to the project. If not for the change of government in 2015, the DHQC would have been completed during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s third term if he was allowed to contest for a third term successfully. Had that happened, Gotabaya Rajapaksa wouldn’t have emerged as the then Opposition presidential candidate at the 2019 poll. The disastrous Yahapalana administration and the overall deterioration of all political parties, represented in Parliament, and the 19th A that barred Mahinda Rajapaksa from contesting the presidential election, beyond his two terms, created an environment conducive for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s emergence as the newly registered SLPP’s candidate.

Shangri-La move

During the 2019 presidential election campaign, SLPP candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa strongly defended his decision to vacate the Army Headquarters, during Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency, to pave the way for the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo. Shangri-La was among the hotels targeted by the Easter Sunday bombers – the only location targeted by two of them, including mastermind Zahran Hashim.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is on record as having said that vacation of the site had been in accordance with first executive President J.R. Jayewardene’s decision to move key government buildings away from Colombo to the new Capital of the country at Sri Jaywardenepura. Gotabaya Rajapaksa said so in response to the writer’s queries years ago.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that a despicable attempt was being made to blame him for the Army Headquarters land transaction. “I have been accused of selling the Army Headquarters land to the Chinese.”

Rajapaksa explained that Taj Samudra, too, had been built on a section of the former Army Headquarters land, previously used to accommodate officers’ quarters and the Army rugger grounds. Although President Jayewardene had wanted the Army Headquarters shifted, successive governments couldn’t do that due to the war and lack of funds, he said.

President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared open Shangri-La Colombo on 16 November, 2017. The Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Asia invited Gotabaya Rajapaksa for dinner, the following day, after the opening of its Colombo hotel. Shangri-La Chairperson, Kuok Hui Kwong, the daughter of Robert Kuok Khoon Ean, was there to welcome Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had cleared the way for the post-war mega tourism investment project. Among those who had been invited were former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, former External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris, former Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, and President’s Counsel Gamini Marapana, PC.

The Cabinet granted approval for the high-profile Shangri-La project in October 2010 and the ground-breaking ceremony was held in late February 2012.

Rajapaksa said that the Shangri-La proprietor, a Chinese, ran a big operation, based in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Another parcel of land was given to the mega ITC hotel project, also during the previous Rajapaksa administration. ITC Ratnadipa, a super-luxury hotel by India’s ITC Hotels, officially opened in Colombo on April 25, 2024

Following the change of government in January 2015, the remaining section of the Army headquarters land, too, was handed over to Shangri-La.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa emphasised that the relocation of the headquarters of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as the Defence Ministry, had been part of JRJ’s overall plan. The change of government, in January 2015, had caused a serious delay in completing the project and it was proceeding at a snail’s pace, Rajapaksa said. Even Parliament was shifted to Kotte in accordance with JRJ’s overall plan, Gotabaya Rajapaksa said, explaining his move to relocate all security forces’ headquarters and Defence Ministry into one complex at Akuregoda.

Acknowledging that the Army Headquarters had been there at Galle Face for six decades, Rajapaksa asserted that the Colombo headquarters wasn’t tactically positioned.

Rajapaksa blamed the inordinate delay in the completion of the Akuregoda complex on the Treasury taking hold of specific funds allocated for the project.

Over 5,000 military workforce

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s maiden visit to DHQC on 3 August, 2021. General
Shavendra Silva is beside him

Major General Udaya Nanayakkara had been the first Director, Project Management Unit, with overall command of approximately 5,000 tri-forces personnel assigned to carry it out. The Shangri-La transaction provided the wherewithal to implement the DHQC project though the change of government caused a major setback. Nanayakkara, who had served as the Military Spokesman, during Eelam War IV, oversaw the military deployment, whereas private contractors handled specialised work such as piling, AC, fire protection and fire detection et al. The then MLO (Military Liaison Officer) at the Defence Ministry, Maj. Gen Palitha Fernando, had laid the foundation for the project and the work was going on smoothly when the Yahapalana administration withheld funds. Political intervention delayed the project and by September 2015, Nanayakkara was replaced by Maj Gen Mahinda Ambanpola, of the Engineer Service.

In spite of President Sirisena holding the Defence portfolio, he couldn’t prevent the top UNP leadership from interfering in the DHQC project. However, the Shangri-La project had the backing of A.J.M. Muzammil, the then UNP Mayor and one of the close confidants of UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. Muzammil was among those present at the ground breaking ceremony for Shangri-La held on 24th February, 2012 ,with the participation of Minister Basil Rajapaksa.

Having identified the invaluable land, where the Army Headquarters and Defence Ministry were situated, for its project, Shangri-La made its move. Those who had been aware of Shangri-La’s plans were hesitant and certainly not confident of their success. They felt fearful of Defence Secretary Rajapaksa’s reaction.

But, following swift negotiations, they finalised the agreement on 28 December, 2010. Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya was the then Commander of the Army, with his predecessor General Fonseka in government custody after having been arrested within two weeks after the conclusion of the 2010 26 January Presidential poll.

Addressing the annual Viyathmaga Convention at Golden Rose Hotel, Boralesgamuwa, on 04 March, 2017, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, perhaps for the first time publicly discussed his role in the Shangri-La project. Declaring that Sri Lanka suffered for want of, what he called, a workable formula to achieve post-war development objectives, the war veteran stressed the pivotal importance of swift and bold decision-making.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa explained how the government had acted swiftly, and decisively, to attract foreign investments though some such efforts were not successful. There couldn’t be a better example than the government finalising an agreement with Shangri-La Hotels, he declared.

Declaring that the bureaucratic red tape shouldn’t in any way be allowed to undermine investments, Rajapaksa recalled the Chairman/CEO of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Robert Kuok Khoon Ean, wanting the Army Headquarters land for his Colombo project. In fact, the hotels chain, at the time, had proposed to build hotels in Colombo, Hambantota and Batticaloa, and was one of the key investors wanting to exploit Sri Lanka’s success in defeating terrorism.

“Khoon-Ean’s request for the Army Headquarters land caused a serious problem for me. It was a serious challenge. How could I shift the headquarters of the war-winning Army? The Army had been there for six decades. It had been the nerve centre of the war effort for 30 years,” said Rajapaksa, who once commanded the First Battalion of the Gajaba Regiment (1GR)

Rajapaksa went on to explain how he exploited a decision taken by the first executive president J.R. Jayewardene to shift the Army Headquarters to Battaramulla, many years back. “Within two weeks, in consultation with the Secretary to the Finance Ministry, Dr. P.B. Jayasundera, and the Board of Investment, measures were taken to finalise the transaction. The project was launched to shift the Army, Navy and Air Force headquarters to Akuregoda, Pelawatte, in accordance with JRJ’s plan.”

The Hong Kong-based group announced the purchase of 10 acres of state land, in January 2011. Shangri-La Asia Limited announced plans to invest over USD 400 mn on the 30-storeyed star class hotel with 661 rooms.

The hotel is the second property in Sri Lanka for the leading Asian hospitality group, joining Shangri-La’s Hambantota Resort & Spa, which opened in June 2016.

Rajapaksa said that the top Shangri-La executive had referred to the finalisation of their Colombo agreement to highlight the friendly way the then administration handled the investment. Shangri-La had no qualms about recommending Sri Lanka as a place for investment, Rajapaksa said.

The writer explained the move to shift the Army Headquarters and the Defence Ministry from Colombo in a lead story headlined ‘Shangri-La to push MoD, Army Hq. out of Colombo city: Army Hospital expected to be converted into a museum’ (The Island, 04 January, 2011).

Yahapalana chaos

In the wake of the January 2015 change of government, the new leadership caused chaos with the suspension of the China-funded Port City Project, a little distance away from the Shangri-La venture. Many an eyebrow was raised when the then Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake declared, in March, 2015, that funds wouldn’t be made available to the DHQC project until the exact cost estimation of the project could be clarified.

Media quoted Karunanayake as having said “Presently, this project seems like a bottomless pit and we need to know the depth of what we are getting into. From the current state of finances, allocated for this project, it seems as if they are building a complex that’s even bigger than the Pentagon!”

The insinuating declaration was made despite them having committed the blatant first Treasury bond scam in February 2015 that shook the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration to its core.

In June 2016, Cabinet spokesperson, Dr. Rajitha Senaratne, announced the suspension of the Akuregoda project. Citing financial irregularities and mismanagement of funds, Dr. Senaratne alleged that all Cabinet papers on the project had been prepared according to the whims and fancies of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The then Minister Karunanayake spearheaded the campaign against the DHQC project alleging, in the third week of January, 2015, that Rs 13.2 billion, in an account maintained at the Taprobane branch of the Bank of Ceylon had been transferred to the Consolidated Fund of the Treasury. The matter was being investigated as the account belonged to the Ministry of Defence, he added. The Finance Minister stressed that the MoD had no right to maintain such an account in violation of regulations and, therefore, the opening of the account was being investigated. The Minister alleged that several illegal transactions, including one involving Samurdhi, had come to light. He estimated the Samurdhi transaction (now under investigation) at Rs. 4 billion.

Having undermined Shangri-La and the DHQC projects, the UNP facilitated the expansion of the hotel project by releasing additional three and half acres on a 99-year lease. During the Yahapalana administration, Dayasiri Jayasekera disclosed at a post-Cabinet press briefing how the government leased three and a half acres of land at a rate of Rs. 13.1 mn per perch whereas the previous administration agreed to Rs 6.5 mn per perch. According to Jayasekera the previous government had leased 10 acres at a rate of Rs 9.5 mn (with taxes) per perch.

The bottom line is that DHQC was built with Shangri-La funds and the initiative was Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s whose role as rock solid wartime Secretary of Defence to keep security forces supplied with whatever their requirements could never be compared with any other official during the conflict.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

The Hour of the Invisible

Published

2 days ago

2025/12/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

Picking-up the pieces in the bashed Isle,

Is going to take quite a long while,

And all hands need to be united as one,

To give it even a semblance of its former self,

But the more calloused and hardy the hands,

The more suitable are they for the task,

And the hour is upon us you could say,

When those vast legions of invisible folk,

Those wasting away in humble silent toil,

Could stand up and be saluted by all,

As being the most needed persons of the land

By Lynn Ockersz

Features

Handunnetti and Colonial Shackles of English in Sri Lanka

Published

1 week ago

2025/12/10

Thilina Walpola

Handunetti at the World Economic Forum

“My tongue in English chains.
I return, after a generation, to you.
I am at the end
of my Dravidic tether
hunger for you unassuaged
I falter, stumble.”
– Indian poet R. Parthasarathy

When Minister Sunil Handunnetti addressed the World Economic Forum’s ‘Is Asia’s Century at Risk?’ discussion as part of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2025 in June 2025, I listened carefully both to him and the questions that were posed to him by the moderator. The subsequent trolling and extremely negative reactions to his use of English were so distasteful that I opted not to comment on it at the time. The noise that followed also meant that a meaningful conversation based on that event on the utility of learning a powerful global language and how our politics on the global stage might be carried out more successfully in that language was lost on our people and pundits, barring a few commentaries.

Now Handunnetti has reopened the conversation, this time in Sri Lanka’s parliament in November 2025, on the utility of mastering English particularly for young entrepreneurs. In his intervention, he also makes a plea not to mock his struggle at learning English given that he comes from a background which lacked the privilege to master the language in his youth. His clear intervention makes much sense.

The same ilk that ridiculed him when he spoke at WEF is laughing at him yet again on his pronunciation, incomplete sentences, claiming that he is bringing shame to the country and so on and so forth. As usual, such loud, politically motivated and retrograde critics miss the larger picture. Many of these people are also among those who cannot hold a conversation in any of the globally accepted versions of English. Moreover, their conceit about the so-called ‘correct’ use of English seems to suggest the existence of an ideal English type when it comes to pronunciation and basic articulation. I thought of writing this commentary now in a situation when the minister himself is asking for help ‘in finding a solution’ in his parliamentary speech even though his government is not known to be amenable to critical reflection from anyone who is not a party member.

The remarks at the WEF and in Sri Lanka’s parliament are very different at a fundamental level, although both are worthy of consideration – within the realm of rationality, not in the depths of vulgar emotion and political mudslinging.

The problem with Handunnetti’s remarks at WEF was not his accent or pronunciation. After all, whatever he said could be clearly understood if listened to carefully. In that sense, his use of English fulfilled one of the most fundamental roles of language – that of communication. Its lack of finesse, as a result of the speaker being someone who does not use the language professionally or personally on a regular basis, is only natural and cannot be held against him. This said, there are many issues that his remarks flagged that were mostly drowned out by the noise of his critics.

Given that Handunnetti’s communication was clear, it also showed much that was not meant to be exposed. He simply did not respond to the questions that were posed to him. More bluntly, a Sinhala speaker can describe the intervention as yanne koheda, malle pol , which literally means, when asked ‘Where are you going?’, the answer is ‘There are coconuts in the bag’.

He spoke from a prepared text which his staff must have put together for him. However, it was far off the mark from the questions that were being directly posed to him. The issue here is that his staff appears to have not had any coordination with the forum organisers to ascertain and decide on the nature of questions that would be posed to the Minister for which answers could have been provided based on both global conditions, local situations and government policy. After all, this is a senior minister of an independent country and he has the right to know and control, when possible, what he is dealing with in an international forum.

This manner of working is fairly routine in such international fora. On the one hand, it is extremely unfortunate that his staff did not do the required homework and obviously the minister himself did not follow up, demonstrating negligence, a want for common sense, preparedness and experience among all concerned. On the other hand, the government needs to have a policy on who it sends to such events. For instance, should a minister attend a certain event, or should the government be represented by an official or consultant who can speak not only fluently, but also with authority on the subject matter. That is, such speakers need to be very familiar with the global issues concerned and not mere political rhetoric aimed at local audiences.

Other than Handunnetti, I have seen, heard and also heard of how poorly our politicians, political appointees and even officials perform at international meetings (some of which are closed door) bringing ridicule and disastrous consequences to the country. None of them are, however, held responsible.

Such reflective considerations are simple yet essential and pragmatic policy matters on how the government should work in these conditions. If this had been undertaken, the WEF event might have been better handled with better global press for the government. Nevertheless, this was not only a matter of English. For one thing, Handunnetti and his staff could have requested for the availability of simultaneous translation from Sinhala to English for which pre-knowledge of questions would have been useful. This is all too common too. At the UN General Assembly in September, President Dissanayake spoke in Sinhala and made a decent presentation.

The pertinent question is this; had Handunetti had the option of talking in Sinhala, would the interaction have been any better? That is extremely doubtful, barring the fluency of language use. This is because Handunnetti, like most other politicians past and present, are good at rhetoric but not convincing where substance is concerned, particularly when it comes to global issues. It is for this reason that such leaders need competent staff and consultants, and not mere party loyalists and yes men, which is an unfortunate situation that has engulfed the whole government.

What about the speech in parliament? Again, as in the WEF event, his presentation was crystal clear and, in this instance, contextually sensible. But he did not have to make that speech in English at all when decent simultaneous translation services were available. In so far as content was concerned, he made a sound argument considering local conditions which he knows well. The minister’s argument is about the need to ensure that young entrepreneurs be taught English so that they can deal with the world and bring investments into the country, among other things. This should actually be the norm, not only for young entrepreneurs, but for all who are interested in widening their employment and investment opportunities beyond this country and in accessing knowledge for which Sinhala and Tamil alone do not suffice.

As far as I am concerned, Handunetti’s argument is important because in parliament, it can be construed as a policy prerogative. Significantly, he asked the Minister of Education to make this possible in the educational reforms that the government is contemplating.

He went further, appealing to his detractors not to mock his struggle in learning English, and instead to become part of the solution. However, in my opinion, there is no need for the Minister to carry this chip on his shoulder. Why should the minister concern himself with being mocked for poor use of English? But there is a gap that his plea should have also addressed. What prevented him from mastering English in his youth goes far deeper than the lack of a privileged upbringing.

The fact of the matter is, the facilities that were available in schools and universities to learn English were not taken seriously and were often looked down upon as kaduwa by the political spectrum he represents and nationalist elements for whom the utilitarian value of English was not self-evident. I say this with responsibility because this was a considerable part of the reality in my time as an undergraduate and also throughout the time I taught in Sri Lanka.

Much earlier in my youth, swayed by the rhetoric of Sinhala language nationalism, my own mastery of English was also delayed even though my background is vastly different from the minister. I too was mocked, when two important schools in Kandy – Trinity College and St. Anthony’s College – refused to accept me to Grade 1 as my English was wanting. This was nearly 20 years after independence. I, however, opted to move on from the blatant discrimination, and mastered the language, although I probably had better opportunities and saw the world through a vastly different lens than the minister. If the minister’s commitment was also based on these social and political realities and the role people like him had played in negating our English language training particularly in universities, his plea would have sounded far more genuine.

If both these remarks and the contexts in which they were made say something about the way we can use English in our country, it is this: On one hand, the government needs to make sure it has a pragmatic policy in place when it sends representatives to international events which takes into account both a person’s language skills and his breadth of knowledge of the subject matter. On the other hand, it needs to find a way to ensure that English is taught to everyone successfully from kindergarten to university as a tool for inclusion, knowledge and communication and not a weapon of exclusion as is often the case.

This can only bear fruit if the failures, lapses and strengths of the country’s English language teaching efforts are taken into cognizance. Lamentably, division and discrimination are still the main emotional considerations on which English is being popularly used as the trolls of the minister’s English usage have shown. It is indeed regrettable that their small-mindedness prevents them from realizing that the Brits have long lost their long undisputed ownership over the English language along with the Empire itself. It is no longer in the hands of the colonial masters. So why allow it to be wielded by a privileged few mired in misplaced notions of elitism?