Features

WORKING UNDER PRIME MINISTER SIRIMAVO

Published

4 years ago

2022/05/15

by Eric. J. de Silva

I came into close contact with Prime Minister Sirimavo during my second spell in the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs unlike during the previous period. Mr. Jayasinghe (whom I shall refer to as WT for convenience) was an excellent boss to work with. One of his outstanding qualities was to let his officials take on responsibility, give them enough space to show their abilities, and avoid taking all the credit for the good work they do.

This no doubt enabled the Prime Minister to make an independent judgment of her officials without them being constantly overshadowed by the overall boss. What became clear to me during these interactions was that the P.M. did not want her officials to say ‘yes’ to everything she said, and that she wanted them to say what they honestly felt about a matter to enable her to take what she considered was the right decision.

Contrary to popular belief, she was always amenable to good advice and was prepared to listen to the pros and cons of a matter, once she knew that the advice was well meant. The Bavataranaya episode which I describe below was one instance where I was able to help the government to avoid making what would have been a historic blunder – namely, banning the last work of fiction that the doyen of our writers, Martin Wickremesinghe, wrote while in his eighties.

Although not a straight-forward Defence matter, any banning had to be done under Emergency Regulations then in operation, and as a result came under the purview of my Division. Let me now quote verbatim what I wrote to The Island Sat Mag of May 29. 2010 on the occasion of the 120th birth anniversary of Martin Wickremesinghe.

“Bavatharanaya was Martin Wickremesinghe’s last major work He wrote it when he was 83 years of age. In the introduction to its first edition written in 1973, he said that he wrote it in fulfillment of an idea he got into his head at a very young age that he should one day write the life story of the Buddha, rescuing it from the aura of mysticism that had been woven round it during the post-Asokan period in Indian history, under the influence of resurgent Hindu and Brahminical tradition that the Buddha himself had discarded.

“By the time its second edition came out in four months’ time, large sections of the Buddhist public led by some highly respected members of the Sangha like the famous scholar monk Ven. Yakkaduwe Pragnarama Thero of the Vidyalankara Pirivena and Ven. Pallevela Saddhatissa Thero of the Vidyodaya Pirivena mounted a campaign against Bavataranaya claiming it was disrespectful, if not derogatory, of the Buddha.

“Many lay Buddhist leaders like Sir Senarath Gunawardhana and Sir Cyril de Zoysa as well as leading Buddhist organizations like the BTS (Buddhist Theosophical Society) and the Colombo YMBA joined in the campaign.

“Not all Buddhists were of the same view. Leading literary figures like Prof Ediriweera Sarachchandra and Gunadasa Amarasekara argued equally vehemently that there was nothing in the book that was disrespectful of the Buddha. Even more importantly, a number of well-known members of the Sangha like Ven. Akuratiye Amarawansa Thero, head of the Vidyaloka Pirivena in Galle (my own home town), Ven. Moratuve Sasanaratana Thero, Head of the Buddhist Philosophy Department in the Vidyalankara Campus of the University of Sri Lanka publicly came out in support of the book.

“However, the uproar against both Bavatharanaya and its octogenarian author was so deafening that it easily drowned the voices of those who spoke in support. The Executive Committee of the YMBA which met under the chairmanship of Sir Cyril de Zoysa in March 1974 took a decision to demand that the government bans Bavatharanaya, failing which to hold meetings against the government island-wide.

“Around the same time, a three person committee was appointed by the Ministry of Cultural affairs to go into the matter, consequent on representations made to Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike by the Mahanayake Thero of Asgiriya.

“With many others joining in, the campaign against Bavatharanaya gathered further momentum and reached a crescendo as the year (1974) progressed. It did not take much time for it to gain support from political parties or groups opposed to the government as a means of embarrassing it or ‘putting it into a corner’ as the game of politics constantly demands.

“Government parliamentarians who were being pressurized by the anti-Bavatharanaya campaign were in turn pressurizing the Cabinet and the Prime Minister to ban the book. The Aganuvara Eksath Bauddha Bala Mandalaya went to the extent of asking that the author be taken into custody under the Emergency Regulations and put behind bars for the sacrilege he had committed.

“Bhavatharanaya had been the subject of debate even in the Colombo Municipal Council where a UNP member claimed that Martin Wickremesinghe started writing disparagingly about the Buddha after consuming vodka during his visit to Russia. Not been content with that, he added a new chapter to the octogenarian author’s life story by saying that he had been a Buddhist monk until he obtained his ‘upasampada’ and thereafter returned to lay life.

“For many, Bavatharanaya was part a diabolical Marxist plot to destroy Buddhism in this country. While all this was being said, the wise old sage remained unmoved maintaining a stoic silence, giving expression to the great Buddhist virtue of upekha”

During this period, I happened to hold the post of Senior Assistant Secretary (Defence) in the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs, which came under Prime Minister Sirimavo. In this position, I was directly responsible to the Secretary of the Ministry, Mr. W.T. Jayasinghe. All matters relating to the Public Security Ordinance, then in operation, and regulations promulgated there under (commonly described as Emergency Regulations) came within my purview. Since there was no ordinary law in the statute book under which a book could be banned, it had to be done by an order issued under the Emergency Regulations.

One day, during the height of the uproar, the Secretary called me up and said that the government was under tremendous pressure to ban the book and asked me to have the necessary papers ready for the Prime Minister’s signature in case it were to take that decision. I was simply taken aback when I heard this, and asked him whether it was a wise thing to do. His reply was that it was not and he had already pointed this out, but we had to be ready in case the government decided to do so for lack of a better option.

Since neither he nor I had read the book that we were going to ban, I enquired whether he could give me a little time to be able to read it and advise him and, through him, the Prime Minister as to whether there was anything in the book that deserved such harsh treatment. I could not see how the life story of the Buddha written by our most widely acclaimed writer and novelist could endanger public security for it to be banned under the Public Security Ordinance, and felt that the government would look utterly foolish if it took that decision. Since the matter appeared to be urgent and there was no time to be lost, I gave him the assurance that by next morning he would have on his table a note on the subject after my having read the book.

So on my way back home, I went to MD Gunasena’s in Pettah and bought a copy of the book. Having got home, I turned over the pages of the book to find that it was not going to be easy reading after a hard day’s work in office. Those who have read it will agree that Bavatharanaya is no Gamperaliya, Kaliyugaya, Yuganthaya, or any other novel written by its illustrious author.

But I had given an undertaking to the Secretary and had a tight target to keep. After an early dinner I sat down to my task in earnest having explained to my wife the nature of the ordeal I had inflicted on myself. It is no reflection on the book if I were to say it induced sleep to my weary eyes more than once despite plentiful sips of coffee, and I wondered whether this by itself was not a point in favour of not banning the book at all.

When the going got too tough, I decided to get up early in the morning and go through whatever remained unread. By the time I finished reading the book in the early hours of the morning, it was as clear as the daylight that soon began to envelop me that there was nothing in it that called for a ban. Bavatharanaya, in short, was not just another work of fiction which we usually call a novel, but a very thoughtful attempt to demystify the life of the Buddha (in fact, more than half the book deals with the life of Prince Siddhartha), which only the sophisticated reader would be able to sustain an interest in reading.

It immediately raised the question in my mind as to how many of those who demanded that it be banned would have really read it. I was convinced that banning the book would be counter-productive even from the point of view of those who wanted it banned, as people would want to get hold of a copy somehow to see what exactly led to the ban and thus increase its readership.

I put down my thoughts on paper with utmost care knowing well the dangerous ground I had chosen to tread, got to my office at Senate Square in Fort earlier than usual to be able to keep to my deadline, got it typed by the typist who had turned up in office early at my request, and placed it on the Secretary’s table so that he would see it first thing in the morning when he gets to office.

Task accomplished, I took a deep breath leaving it to higher authorities to heed my recommendation to abandon the idea of banning the book or to commit what would have been a historic error.

Later in the day, the Secretary conveyed to me the happy news that the Prime Minister had very carefully read my note and not only agreed with my recommendation but had expressed her appreciation of what I had done.

Thus, Bavatharanaya remained ‘unbanned’ and while the demand for its ban died down, it soon made its presence even in school libraries.

The above incident illustrates how much confidence the Prime Minister and the Secretary had in me as Senior Assistant Secretary.

(Excerpted from

A Peep Into The Past, a memoir of the writer)

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

13 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wasting wars: Some war-displaced people in Lebanon. BBC

It may be some time before the full impact of food inflation is felt in the West. Until such time the world would continue to keep itself in suspense over whether the Trump administration is in earnest when it seeks to convey the impression that it is backing a negotiated solution in West Asia.

As is usually the case, consumer stress would be one of the final determinants of political change. To the degree to which the average US consumer somehow ‘muddles through’ and puts the food on the table, to the same extent would the Republican sections of the US public in particular be tolerant of the Trump administration’s inconsistent handling of the West Asian war and the main issues stemming from it. That is, there would be no grave popular disaffection and a demand for political change in the short term.

However, the indications are that the Trump administration’s support base is suffering some erosion in the wake of the current economic crisis. While reports indicate that Democratic sections are firming-up their opposition to the political centre, Republican support for Trump is also showing signs of waning, we are given to understand.

The above developments are probably why Trump is on record as having given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘dressing down’ recently on his seeming intransigence on the question of giving negotiations a chance in West Asia. The show of displeasure could be really aimed by Trump at containing the impatience of the American public.

However, the current ground situation in the Middle East, particularly the uncontained bloodshed, is likely to impress on the thinking sections of the world that more than temporary political change is needed in West Asia and the US.

A well thought out political solution that addresses all the contentious issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict is what enlightened opinion would demand, and very rightly. Right now, the ‘peace efforts’ initiated by the Trump administration give the impression of being piecemeal solutions at best.

There have been, of course, numerous initiatives in the past aimed at bringing permanent peace to the Middle East. These failed mainly because they did not address in full the root causes of the conflict.

At bottom the Middle East conflict is mainly about race and religious hate bred by socio-economic and material inequalities. For instance, if the Palestinian people were not displaced and deprived of land occupied by them at the time of the founding of the Israeli state, ethnic enmities would not have grown to the current unmanageable proportions.

When addressing the above questions, though, it must be remembered that the Israelis too were a displaced people who were entitled to land and a state of their own in the Middle East. Basically, out of these seemingly irreconcilable and conflicting demands have grown the Middle East imbroglio.

Middle East peace is considerably about reconciling these demands and arriving at a solution that would ensure the creation of two states that would opt for peaceful co-existence thereafter.

As long as the US does not see the need for a non-partisan solution that addresses the needs of both ethnicities and religions and goes all-out, as it were, to have it implemented, the Middle East would continue to bleed.

However, staunching the blood flow through the creation of two states would be only half the job done, though a very important part of it. More pernicious, pervasive and difficult to remedy are the inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatreds that have been unleashed over the decades.

However, if substantial, long-lasting peace is to be fostered in the region the latter ‘demons’ would need to be exorcised from the hearts and minds of the communities concerned. No doubt an uphill task but one that must be undertaken by those who wish the region well.

The UN would need to put its ‘best foot forward’ in such undertakings but it is time that it dawned on the international community and other caring quarters that Middle East peace, and all other such uphill challenges, require proactive peacemaking on the part of all civilized sections for their effective management. That is, public involvement in peacemaking too is a must.

Since hatreds are harboured in the human consciousness the enmities embedded in the latter need to be managed and defused judiciously alongside other undertakings in a peace process. In the case of West Asia, such enmities could be even spread globe-wide besides being multi-dimensional. For instance, it ought to be thought-provoking that Iran is insistent on a peace initiative that would also include Lebanon.

Besides security considerations it is also ethnic and religious affiliations that account for Iran making this demand. For instance, the Shias are a numerically important religious community in Lebanon and they provide a significant number of Hizbollah fighters, who are in a vital sense carrying out a ‘proxy war’ for Iran. It also needs to be factored in that Iran is a Shia-majority country.

Thus trans-border religious affiliations could add to the complexities and enormity of ethno-religious conflicts. However, the task of managing centuries-long enmities needs to be launched and prodded on with by peacemakers since a downing of arms alone would not guarantee substantive peace.

It is not realized sufficiently that the process of ending hatreds begins with mutual apologies by antagonists to a conflict for the harm inflicted on each other. This would be anathema in some ears but there is no getting away from the requirement. It is the vital first step to permanent peace anywhere.

In fact there could be no reconciliation worth speaking of without such mutual apologies. It is a point worth re-iterating in these times when even the government of Sri Lanka is voicing the need for national reconciliation. Well, without the words, ‘I am sorry’, there could be no permanent end to enmities – they would do well to remember.

The above requirements may not go down very well with governments, but they resonate in the hearts and minds of most people, since they are inheritors of religious traditions of some kind.

This is a principal reason why peacemaking works well when publics too are involved in them. The effectiveness of such campaigns increases several fold when they have a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jawaharlal Nehru at their helm. A strong proactive involvement by the public in peace could lead to the emergence of such leaders at some point in these campaigns.

Features

Dialog Brings Sri Lanka’s Largest Digital Vesak Experience to Matara

Published

13 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

From left to right: Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, and Lasantha Theverapperuma experience the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered VR tours.

Official Digital Partner of the 2026 ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone

Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka’s #1 connectivity provider, collaborated with the Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs to bring one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most technologically advanced Vesak experiences to the ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone. The three-day celebration, in Matara attracted more than hundred thousand visitors, who engaged with a series of innovative digital activities powered by Dialog 5G Ultra, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, digital pandols and a Data Dansala. The opening ceremony was attended by Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development and Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Minister of Women and Child Affairs, along with distinguished guests and Dialog’s senior management.

One of the key attractions at the venue was the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered Virtual Reality (VR) experience, which attracted more than 35,000 participants. The activation enabled devotees to virtually visit and pay homage to sacred Buddhist sites, including the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in India and the Atamasthana in Anuradhapura, directly from the Vesak zone in Matara.

Visitors receive complimentary mobile data through Dialog’s QR-powered Data Dansala.

Dialog also conducted an AI Digital Vesak Greeting Card Competition from 21 May to 01 June 2026, attracting numerous entries from across the country. The shortlisted designs were showcased across 20 large LED screens throughout the venue and across Matara City, and were also made available for download via mobile devices. Further, through the use of AI, traditional Jathaka Katha were reimagined in a digital format, demonstrating how technology can be used to preserve and enhance cultural and religious heritage. Together, these initiatives blended traditional Vesak celebrations with emerging technologies, offering visitors a unique and immersive way to engage with Vesak traditions.

Extending the spirit of Vesak through connectivity, Dialog conducted a special Data Dansala powered by its QR Reload platform, enabling visitors to receive complimentary mobile data by scanning QR codes placed across the venue. In addition to the Matara National Vesak Zone, similar Data Dansala activations were also conducted at the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones in Colombo.Visitors also had the opportunity to create personalised Vesak-themed digital photos through an AI Photo Booth, generating AI-enhanced portraits using their own photographs and adding a contemporary digital element to the Vesak celebrations.

Visitors watch AI-generated Jathaka Katha

Commenting on the initiative, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development, said, “The 2026 Dakshina Prabha Vesak Festival marked the first time AI-powered digital innovations were incorporated into a National Vesak Festival in Sri Lanka. Presenting Buddhist stories and teachings through technology created a new and engaging way for visitors to connect with these traditions. We thank Dialog for supporting this initiative and for working closely with us to bring our vision to life. Their contribution played an important role in making this first-of-its-kind event a reality.”

Lasantha Theverapperuma, Group Chief Marketing Officer of Dialog Axiata PLC said, “We thank the Government of Sri Lanka for the opportunity to support the 2026 Dakshina Prabha National Vesak Festival and for embracing technology as part of this year’s celebrations. As the Official Digital Partner, we were privileged to contribute through our Dialog 5G Ultra and AI capabilities, creating new ways for visitors to engage with Vesak traditions while preserving their cultural significance for future generations.”

Beyond supporting the National Vesak Zone in Matara, Dialog also enhanced the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones through a range of digital activations during the Vesak season. The company additionally continued its sustainability initiatives, including the Thirasara Aloka Poojawa, which illuminated rural places of worship through solar-powered lighting solutions.

Features

Beauty, elegance and talent…for women

Published

13 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Universal Woman is an international pageant focused on “beauty, elegance, and talent” for women, positioning itself as a platform to shape global ambassadors. The 2026 edition will be held in Cambodia, and Sri Lanka will be there, as well.

According to reports coming my way, contestants, at the international event, will work with industry trailblazers, under international standards.

Sri Lankan supermodel, runway and pageant trainer Chulpadmendra Kumarapathirana, is the National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026.

With over two decades in the industry, Chula was crowned Miss Sri Lanka 2006, and has since shaped the next generation of titleholders through her Colombo-based Chulpadmendra Catwalk Studio, widely regarded as one of the country’s leading modelling academies.

The team behind Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026

A former host of Derana Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World 2008 and a judge for Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2025, Chula now serves as National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026, leading the franchise’s search for Sri Lanka’s delegate to the international final in Cambodia.

Applications for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 are being taken, via WhatsApp: 077 659 4994, says Chula.

The judging panel for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 includes Senaka De Silva, Pageant Aesthetic Advisor & Chairperson of the Judging Panel, Angela Seneviratne, Caroline Jurie, Rozelle Plunkett, and Suraj Mapa.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 officially began its journey with a first round of auditions, held in Colombo, marking the start of an exciting new chapter in Sri Lanka’s pageant industry.

Launching the first round of auditions

The platform aims to empower women while selecting an intelligent, confident, and inspiring representative to compete at the Universal Woman International Pageant 2026 in Cambodia, this September.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka now moves forward with the vision of creating one of the country’s most prestigious and empowering pageants while preparing to crown a queen who will proudly represent Sri Lanka on the international stage.