Features

When Engineering meets Marxism: Remembering Bahu and Chris Rodrigo

Published

2 years ago

2024/08/11

by Rajan Philips

“Nature builds no machines,” wrote Marx in a famous passage in the Grundrisse. They are “products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature.” Fundamentally, Marxism is the (socialist) theory and practice of industrial societies. Marx’s insights on the logic of automation is now drawing the attention of technology watchers who are both excited and concerned by the current phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the complex environment of human labour, labour-created, labour-saving and labour-replacing machinery and automation, and the mostly uneven industrial society at large, engineering education and research are a critical medium providing training to human resources and technical mastery over material resources.

Wickramabahu Karunaratne (1943-2024) who passed away on July 25, and Chris Rodrigo (1942-2024) who passed away on March 08, 2024, were two contemporaries, who belonged to the medium of engineering education and research in Sri Lanka, first as students and later as teachers at Peradeniya. They were also political comrades attracted to Marxism, first as young members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and later as pioneers of the New Sama Samaja Party.

I first came to know them as a student in the 1970s at the Peradeniya Engineering Faculty. Both Bahu and Chris returned with PhDs from England while we were students. Bahu, who was known for his creative solutions in his Math tutorials (in addition to creative palm reading) as a student joined the Engineering Mathematics Department. Chris became a lecturer in Electrical Engineering joining Kumar David who was senior to them. Another prominent leftist in the Faculty at that time was Sivanandam Sivasegaram, in Mechanical Engineering; he was identified with Maoism and not Trotskyism like Bahu, Chris and Kumar.

All of them were part of a contingent of left leaning Engineering students in the 1960s who went on to make their mark as professionals in Sri Lanka and abroad. The familiar names that come to mind include Bernard Wijedoru, Sivaguru Ganesan, Wijitha Dharmawardena, and Chris Ratnayake. Coincidentally or not, the political awakening of the student days proved to be most lasting among those who joined the academia as opposed to those who joined the industry.

They were also part of a galaxy of university lecturers in other disciplines who were attracted to Marxism and Left politics in post-independence Sri Lanka. The names are well-known – Doric de Souza, Bala Tampoe, IDS Weerawardena, HA de S Gunasekara, Kumari Jayawardena, Osmund Jayaratne, Senaka Bibile, Carlo Fonseka, Tissa Vitarana, Vijaya Kumar, Shantha de Alwis, Leslie Gunawardena, Silan Kadirgamar, Wiswa Warnapala, Ranjith Amarasinghe, Laksiri Fernando, Sumanasiri Liyanage, Jayadeva Uyangoda – among others. Not to mention some illustrious fellow travelers like Ian Goonetilleke and AJ Wilson.

My political association with Kumar David, Bahu, Chris Rodrigo and Shantha de Alwis, who was at the Science Faculty in Colombo, began after I left the university and was working as an Engineer and dabbling in freelance, pro bono, political journalism. I was a participant observer straddling the growing political divide between the intellectuals of the old LSSP and the young Turks of the new. Kumar David would characteristically describe my politics as being limited to committing fortnightly intellectual adultery with Hector Abhayavardhana, the theoretician of the old LSSP.

We were all more formally united in the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) that was entirely the brainchild of a Marxist of a different kind – a Jesuit man of the cloth, Paul Caspersz. MIRJE arose as a response to the communal violence of 1977 and the toll it took on the Tamil people of the tea plantations. The violence came soon after JR Jayewardene and the UNP won a massive victory in the parliamentary elections that saw the Left Parties decimated and shut out of parliament altogether.

Fragments of the left were regrouping to pause and protest against the sweeping changes that the new Jayewardene government was unleashing on the country. The biggest of them, besides the open economy which had become unavoidable, was the wholly unnecessary constitutional metamorphosis from a parliamentary system of government to a presidential system.

Bahu & Chris

Enter Bahu carrying black flags and protesting in Kandy against the ceremonial swearing in of Prime Minister JR Jayewardene as Sri Lanka’s first Executive President by way of a constitutional amendment. The effrontery was too much for someone in the government and Bahu was fired from the university. The government may have been encouraged by the fact that he had been earlier expelled from the LSSP and the government may have also wanted to send a message to other potential protesters in public institutions. Bahu was forced into fulltime politics, perhaps gladly so.

Chris Rodrigo left the academia for the industry briefly joining the National Institute of Management. He then moved to the US and started an entirely new academic career in the field of economics, adding a PhD in Economics at Cornell to his PhD in Electrical Engineering in London. Chris was a recognized expert in international development and undertook many assignments in developing countries for the World Bank, IMF and UNIDO. His base was in George Mason University, Virginia, near Washington DC, where he shared the departmental corridor with the likes of Seymour Martin Lipset and Francis Fukuyama.

Bahu and Chris came from Sinhala Buddhist and Sinhala Catholic families and had their education at Ananda College and St. Thomas’ College, respectively. I do not know what inspired them to progressive politics, but I do remember Bahu talking about the influence of teachers at Ananada College who were supporters of left wing political parties. And he would throw in the spice that the politically inclined students who got to the A’ Level and entered the university joined the LSSP while others went with Philip Gunawardena.

I used to meet Bahu frequently when he was at Peradeniya, and I was working on the Mahaweli hydropower projects in Ukuwela and Bowatenna. We met occasionally in Colombo and have attended MIRJE meetings in Jaffna. Over the years I lost contact with him except for shared email communications. For several months in 2006/2007, Bahu, Kumar and I wrote concurrently for the Sunday Observer when Rajpal Abeynayake was the editor, courtesy of introductions by Rohan Edrisinha. But I did not meet Bahu in person during that time or after.

It was a different story with Chris and his wife Milan Lin. Milan is a Chinese-Indian Sri Lankan, with a Chinese father and an Indian Tamil mother. Chris first met Milan when she was a Lecturer in the Sinhala Department at Peradeniya. She later joined the National Savings Bank and the two married during the July 1978 Bank Strike. Milan was on the picket line when Chris came with two witnesses, one of whom was Vasudeva Nanayakkara, and accompanied her to a registrar’s office nearby.

My wife Amali and I often met them in Colombo and exchanged visits after we moved to Canada and Chris and Milan to the US. It was Chris who introduced me to Upali Cooray at the MIRJE inaugural meeting. A brilliant labour lawyer (who appeared only at Labour Tribunals without the black coat) and trade union activist both in Sri Lanka and in London, Upali would become a stalwart of the MIRJE organization.

For all the years I have known Chris, I was always struck by his rich and sonorous voice, but never thought of asking him if he was a singer; I should have, given my Catholic family background and familiarity with the Gregorian chant. So, it was a pleasant surprise to read in Kumar David’s obituary that Chris Rodrigo was a trained tenor who loved to sing. He would have been in good company in the LSSP. Doric de Souza was known for musically whistling a whole Beethoven Symphony; Osmund Jayaratne was a theatre persona; and a very young NM Perera, later an accomplished ballroom dancer, was the lead actor in the first (silent) movie filmed in Sri Lanka.

Bahu was differently talented – in painting and in sculpture. Two of his creations, I believe, are still around at the Faculty at Peradeniya. In an email after Bahu’s death, Dr. Sivasegaram mentioned that Bahu also took to designing shirts and trained a tailor in Penideniya to produce them! A good student of Hegel, Bahu published a paper on Buddhist dialectics. Bahu and Sivasegaram, the latter well known for his poems in Tamil and work on the Tamil script, jointly wrote a paper in the 1970s on a cursive script for Sinhala.

All of this, in summary and to paraphrase Hector Abhyavardhana, attest to the necessary role of leftists and left organizations in providing the meeting place between the forces of social change and the highest attributes of human culture. Even as the writings of Marx provide continuing relevance “to understanding the troubled state of contemporary capitalism,” regardless of the checkered outcomes of the political projects launched in the name of Marxism to overthrow capitalism.

Bahu’s Politics

For all his academic brilliance, talents and versatility, Bahu was quintessentially a political man. He joined the LSSP in 1962 as a student at the age of 19, was elected to the Central Committee of the Party in 1972 when he was a university lecturer, and three years later was expelled from the Party. In three more years, in 1978, he was dismissed from the university. Bahu was 35 years old when he lost his job.

There is a parallel between Bahu and Bala Tampoe, who was a young lecturer in Agriculture and an LSSP member and was fired from his job for taking part in the 1947 general strike. Tampoe was 25, took to law and trade union work, and became a noted criminal lawyer, powerful trade union stalwart, and a frontline LSSP leader. Tampoe was the LSSP candidate for the Borella seat in 1960.

At the 1964 LSSP Conference Tampoe rather unexpectedly led the walkout of those who were opposed to the LSSP joining a coalition government with the SLFP. According to Bahu, NM was in tears pleading with the dissidents not to leave the Party. In contrast, Bahu and others who were associated with the Vama tendency within the LSSP did not want to leave to LSSP but were expelled from the Party.

Almost fifty to sixty years later, relitigating who was right and who was wrong would be an inconclusive exercise at best. The stark reality is that none of the political positions or paths taken by the different actors on the Left turned out to be durably viable or successful. In fact, many of them turned out to be disastrously unsuccessful. The sharp differences that had caused sectarian strives started looking insignificant as the open economy and the presidential system wore on.

Specific to Bahu, the context and the circumstances in which he was constrained to organize and cultivate his politics were wholly different from the early decades of the left movement, or the post-independence years that Bala Tampoe had to navigate through. At the organizational level, the space and opportunities for building a new political movement or party were seriously limited in the 1980s and after, unlike in the earlier times. The 1930s and 1940s had their own challenges, but someone like Bahu would have thrived in facing them in the context of that time. But the methods of the 1930s and 1940s were not appropriate for the millennium years.

The political challenges were also different. The state had grown more repressive than during the colonial rule, both as a result of and as a provoker of the emergence of the JVP and the LTTE forces. The Tamil question had escalated to the point of fighting over a separate state. Historically, 1956 and 1977 were watershed years but for different reasons. 1956 unleashed the nationalistic and cultural forces but more with their negative rather than positive implications. 1977, on the other hand, kickstarted a long degeneration of norms and values, and the normalization of avarice, corruption and charlatanism in a climate of political violence.

All that Bahu could do was to strike a difference in an otherwise corrosive political environment. He demonstrated that it is possible to be in politics without being corrupt, without taking bribes, and without settling political scores by shooting people. Even though he was a victim of political shooting. He was inflexible in his support of the Tamils’ right of self-determination while committing himself to making Sri Lanka equally inclusive of all its citizens which would obviate the need for separation.

To that end, Bahu rejoined the old Left in supporting the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Sri Lankan state. He was a strong champion of the People’s Alliance spearheaded by Chandrika Kumaratunga and the Yahapalanya exercise masterminded by Ranil Wickremesinghe. They both failed but not because Bahu’s teaching was not good. The one political alliance that he steadfastly rejected was having any truck with the Rajapaksas. While others saw shades of nationalism and socialism in the Rajapaksas, Bahu was sharp enough to detect their fakeness and incompetence.

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Features

The Easter investigation must not become ethno-religious politics

Published

14 hours ago

2026/04/7

Sahan Weerasooriya

Zahran and other bombers

Representatives of almost all the main opposition parties were in attendance at the recent book launch by Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader Udaya Gammanpila. The book written by the PHU leader was his analysis of the Easter bombing of April 2019 that led to the mass killing of 279 persons, caused injuries to more than 500 others and caused panic and shock in the entire country. The Easter bombing was inexplicable for a number of reasons. First, it was perpetrated by suicide bombers who were Sri Lankan Muslims, a community not known for this practice. They targeted Christian churches in particular, which led to the largest number of casualties. The bombing of Sri Lankan Christian churches by Sri Lankan Muslims was also inexplicable in a country that had no history of any serious violence between the two religions.

There were two further inexplicable features of the bombing. The six suicide bombings took place almost simultaneously in different parts of the country. The logistical complexity of this operation exceeded any previously seen in Sri Lanka. Even during the three decade long civil war that pitted the Sri Lankan military against the LTTE, which had earned international notoriety for suicide attacks, Sri Lanka had rarely witnessed such a synchronised operation. The country’s former Attorney General, Dappula de Livera, who investigated the bombing at the time it took place, later stated, upon retirement, that there was a “grand conspiracy” behind the bombings. That phrase has remained central to public debate because it suggested that the visible perpetrators may not have been the only planners behind the attack.

The other inexplicable factor was that intelligence services based in India repeatedly warned their Sri Lankan counterparts that the bombings would take place and even gave specific targets. Later investigations confirmed that warnings were transmitted days before the attacks and repeated again shortly before the explosions, yet they were not acted upon. It was these several inexplicable factors that gave rise to the surmise of a mastermind behind the students and religious fanatics led by the extremist preacher Zahran Hashim from the east of the country, who also blew himself up in the attacks. Even at the time of the bombing there was doubt that such a complex and synchronised operation could have been planned and executed by the motley band who comprised the suicide bombers.

Determined Attempt

The book by PHU leader Gammanpila is a determined attempt to make explicable the inexplicable by marshalling logic and evidence that this complex and synchronised operation was planned and executed by Zahran himself. This is a possible line of argumentation in a democratic society. Competing interpretations of public tragedies are part of political discourse. However, the timing of the intervention makes it politically more significant. The launch of the PHU leader’s book comes at a critical time when the protracted investigation into the Easter bombing appears to be moving forward under the present government.

The performance of the three previous governments at investigating the bombing was desultory at best. The Supreme Court held former President Maithripala Sirisena and several senior officials responsible for failing to act on prior intelligence and ordered compensation to victims. This judicial finding gave legal recognition to what victims had long maintained, that there was a grave dereliction of duty at the highest levels of the state. In recent weeks the investigation has taken a dramatic turn with the arrest and court production of former State Intelligence Service chief Suresh Sallay on allegations linked directly to the attacks. Whether these allegations are ultimately proven or disproven, they indicate that the present phase of the investigation is moving beyond negligence into possible complicity.

This is why the present moment requires political sobriety. There is a danger that the line of political division regarding the investigation into the Easter bombing can take on an ethnic complexion. The insistence that the suicide bombers alone were the planners and executors of the dastardly crime makes the focus invariably one of Muslim extremism, as the suicide bombers were all Muslims. This may unintentionally narrow public attention away from the unanswered questions regarding intelligence failures, possible political manipulation, and the allegations of a broader conspiracy that remain under active investigation. The minority political parties representing ethnic and religious minorities appear to have realised this danger. Their absence from the book launch was politically significant. It suggests an unwillingness to be drawn into a narrative that could once again stigmatise an entire community for the crimes of a handful of extremists and their possible handlers.

Another Tragedy

It would be another tragedy comparable in political consequence to the havoc wreaked by the Easter bombing if moderate mainstream political parties, such as the SJB to which the Leader of the Opposition belongs, were to subscribe to positions merely to score political points against the present government. They need to guard against the promotion of anti-minority sentiment and the fuelling of majority prejudice against ethnic and religious minorities. Indeed, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa in his Easter message said that justice for the victims of the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter Sunday attacks remains a fundamental responsibility of the state and noted that seven years on, both past and present governments have failed to deliver accountability. He added that building a society grounded in trust and peace, uniting all ethnicities, religions and communities, is vital to ensure such tragedies do not occur again.

Sri Lanka’s post war history offers too many examples of how unresolved security crises become vehicles for majoritarian mobilisation. The Easter tragedy itself was followed by waves of anti-Muslim suspicion and violence in some parts of the country. Responsible political leadership should seek to prevent any return to that atmosphere. There are many other legitimate issues on which the moderate and mainstream opposition parties can take the government to task. These include the lack of decisive action against government members accused of corruption, the passing of the entire burden of rising fuel prices on consumers instead of the government sharing the burden, and the failure to hold provincial council elections within the promised timeframe. These are issues that touch the daily lives of citizens and the health of democratic governance. They offer the opposition ample ground on which to build credibility as a government in waiting.

The search for truth and justice over the Easter bombing needs to continue until all those responsible are identified, whether they were direct perpetrators, negligent officials, or political actors who may have exploited the tragedy. This is what the victim families want and the country needs. But this search must not be turned into a partisan and religiously divisive matter such as by claiming that there are more potential suicide bombers lurking in the country who had been followers of Zaharan. If it is, Sri Lanka risks replacing one national tragedy with another. coming together to discredit the ongoing investigations into the Easter bombing of 2019 is an unacceptable use of ethno-religious nationalism to politically challenge the government. The opposition needs to find legitimate issues on which to challenge the government if they are to gain the respect and support of the general public and not their opprobrium.

by Jehan Perera

Features

China’s new duty-free regime for Africa: Implications for Global Trade and Sri Lanka

Published

14 hours ago

2026/04/7

Sahan Weerasooriya

Image courtesy The Global Times

* The new duty-free regime for Africa, announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in February, is the most generous unilateral nonreciprocal trade concession offered by any country to developing countries since the beginning of the modern rule based international trading system.

* Yet, it is a clear violation of the cornerstone of the multilateral trade law, the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) principle.

* Hence, its implications on developing countries, without duty-free access to China, will be extremely negative. Sri Lanka is one of the few developing countries without duty-free access to China.

On 14 February, 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China will grant zero-tariff treatment to 53 African nations, effective 01 May, 2026. Under this new unilateral policy initiative, China would eliminate all import tariffs on all goods imported from all the countries in Africa, except Eswatini. China already enforces a zero-tariff policy for 33 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in Africa. Now this policy would be extended to non LDCs as well. This policy initiative clearly aims at reducing the continuously expanding trade deficit between China and Africa. In 2024, China’s trade surplus against Africa was recorded at US $ 61 billion.

This trade initiative, a precious gift amidst ongoing global trade tensions, is the most generous unilateral nonreciprocal trade concession given by any country to developing countries, since the beginning of the modern rule based international trading system.

Though this landmark announcement has far-reaching implications on global trade, as much as President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, it was almost overlooked by the global media.

Implications for Global Trade

This Chinese policy initiative, though very generous, is a clear violation of the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) principle and the “Enabling Clause” of the International Trade Law. The MFN principle is the cornerstone of the multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and is enshrined in Article I of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It mandates that any trade advantage, privilege, or immunity granted by a WTO member to any country must be extended immediately and unconditionally to all other WTO members. Though, the GATT “Enabling Clause” allows developed nations to offer non-reciprocal preferential treatment (lower tariffs) to developing countries without extending them to all WTO members, this has to be done in a non-discriminatory manner. By extending tariff concessions only to developing countries in Africa, China has also breached this requirement.

This deliberate violation of the MFN principle by China occurs less than 12 months after the announcement of “Liberation Day” tariffs by President Trump, which breached Article I (MFN) and Article II (bound rates) of the GATT. However, it is important to underline that the objectives of the actions by the two Presidents are poles apart; the US objective was to limit imports from all its trading partners, and China’s objective is to increase imports from African countries.

Though the importance of the MFN principle of the WTO law had eroded over the years due to the proliferation of preferential trade agreements and unilateral preferential arrangements, the WTO members almost always obtained WTO waivers, whenever they breached the MFN principle. Now the leaders of the main trading powers have decided to violate the core principles of the multilateral trading system so brazenly, the impact of their decisions on the international trading system will be irrevocable.

Implications for Sri Lanka

China’s unilateral decision to provide zero-tariff treatment to African countries will have a strong adverse impact on Sri Lanka. Currently, all Asian countries, other than India and Sri Lanka, have duty-free access, for most of their exports, into the Chinese market through bilateral or regional trade agreements, or the LDC preferences. Though Sri Lanka, India and China are members of the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA), preferential margins extended by China under APTA to India and Sri Lanka are limited.

The value of China’s imports from Sri Lanka had declined from US$ 650 million in 2021 to US$ 433 million by 2025. However, China’s exports to Sri Lanka increased significantly during the period, from US$ 5,252 million to US$ 5,753 by 2025. This has resulted in a trade deficit of US$ 5,320 million. Sri Lanka’s exports to China may decline further from next month when African nations with duty-free access start to expand their market share.

Let me illustrate the challenges Sri Lanka will face in the Chinese market with one example. Tea (HS0902) is Sri Lanka’s third largest export to China, after garments and gems. Sri Lanka is the largest exporter of tea to China, followed by India, Kenya and Viet Nam. During the last five years the value of China’s imports of tea from Sri Lanka had declined significantly, from US$76 million in 2021 to US$ 57 million by 2025. Meanwhile, imports from our main competitors had increased substantially. Most importantly, imports from Kenya increased from US$ 7.9 million in 2021 to US$ 15 million in 2025. For tea, the existing tariff in China for Sri Lanka is 7.5% and for Kenya is 15%. From next month the tariff for Kenya will be reduced to 0%. What will be its impact on Sri Lanka exports? That was perhaps explained by a former Ambassador to Africa, when he urged Sri Lankan exporters to “leverage duty free access from Kenya” to expand their exports to China!

(The writer is a retired public servant and a former Chairman of WTO Committee on Trade and Development. He can be reached at senadhiragomi@gmail.com)

by Gomi Senadhira

Features

Daughter in the spotlight …

Published

14 hours ago

2026/04/7

Sahan Weerasooriya

Jeevarani Kurukulasuriya was a famous actress and her name still rings a bell with many. And now in the spotlight is her daughter Senani Wijesena – not as an actress but as a singer – and she has been singing, since the age of five!

The plus factor is that Senani, now based in Australia, is also a songwriter, plays keyboards and piano, dancer, and has filmed and edited some of her own music videos.

Says Senani: “I write the lyrics, melody and music and work with professional musicians who do the needful on my creations.”

Her latest album, ‘Music of the Mirror’, is made up of 16 songs, and her first Sinhala song, called ‘Nidahase’, is scheduled for release this month (April) in Colombo, along with a music video.

‘Nidahase’,

says Senani, is a song about Freedom … of life, movement, love and spirit. Freedom to be your authentic self, express yourself freely and Freedom from any restrictions.

In fact, ‘Nidahase’ is the Sinhala translated version of her English song ‘Free’ which made Senani a celebrity as the song was nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media Award in the RnB /Soul category and reached the Top 20 on the UK Music weekly dance charts, as well as No. 1 on the Yes Home grown Top 15, on Yes FM, for six weeks straight.

Senani went on to say that ‘Nidahase’ has been remixed to include a Sri Lankan touch, using Kandyan drums and the Thammattama drum, with extra music production by local music producer Dilshan L. Silva, and Australia-based Emmy Award winning Producer and Engineer Sean Carey … with Senani also in the scene.

The song was written (lyrics and melody) and produced by Senani and it features Australian musicians, while the music video was produced by Sri Lanka’s Sandesh Bandara and filmed in Sri Lanka.

First Sinhala song scheduled for release this month … in Colombo

Senani’s music is mostly Soul, Funk and RNB – also Fusion, using ethnic sounds such as the tabla, sitar, and sarod – as well as Jazz influenced.

“I also have Alternative Music songs with a rock edge, such as ‘New Day’, and upcoming releases ‘Fly High’ and ‘Whisper’“, says Senani, adding that she has also recorded in other languages, such as Hindi and Spanish.

“As much of my fan base are Sri Lankans, who have asked me to release a song in the Sinhala language, I decided to create and release ‘Nidahase’ and I plan to release other original Sinhala songs in the future.

Senani has a band in Australia and has appeared at festivals in Australia, on radio and TV in Australia, and Sri Lanka.

She trained as a vocalist, through Sydney-based Singing Schools, as well as private tuition, and she has 5th Grade piano music qualifications.

And this makes interesting reading:

“I graduated from the University of Newcastle in Australia with a Bachelor of Medicine and I work part time as a doctor (GP) and an Integrative Medicine practitioner, with a focus on nutrition, and spend the rest of the time dedicated to my music career.”

Senani hails from an illustrious family. In addition to her mum, Jeevarani Kurukulasuriya, who made over 40 films, including starring in the first colour movie ‘Ranmuthu Duwa’, her dad is Dr Lanka Wijesena (retired GP) and she has two sisters – all musical; one is a doctor, while the other is a dietitian/ psychotherapist.