Features

An untold history of Sri Lanka’s Independence

Published

4 years ago

2022/02/5

By Uditha Devapriya

In Sri Lank, as in every other colonial outpost, resistance to foreign domination predated Western intervention by well more than two centuries. Surviving numerous onslaughts of South Indian conquest, the Anuradhapura kingdom gave way to the Polonnaruwa kingdom in the 11th century AD. The latter’s demise 200 years later led to a shift from the country’s north to the north-west, and from there to the south-west. It was in the south-west that the Sinhalese first confronted European colonialism, a confrontation that pushed the Kotte and the Sitava kingdoms to the last bastion of Sinhalese rule, Kandy.

The shift to Kandy coincided with the commencement of Portuguese rule in the island. Both Portuguese and Dutch officials emphasised, and sharpened, the line between the Maritime Provinces and the kanda uda rata. The Sitavaka rulers, in particular Rajasinghe I, had fought both Portuguese suzerainty and Kotte domination. These encounters more or less breathed new life into the country’s long history of resistance to foreign rule.

The Kandyan kings inherited this legacy and imbibed this streak. But under them resistance to colonial subjugation acquired a new logic and a fresh vigour. That was to define the island’s struggle against imperialism for well more than three centuries.

Sri Lanka’s confrontations with European colonialism took place in the early part of what historians call the modern period. The social, political, and economic transformations inherent in this period had a considerable impact on the trajectory of European imperialism and anti-imperialism. For that reason, any examination of Sri Lanka’s fight against colonial rule and its eventual independence must evaluate a broad array of historical trends. While the island’s lunge into statehood in 1948 followed a long period of peasant, elite, and radical struggles against foreign domination, the analysis would be incomplete without reference to how European colonialism itself influenced the course of such struggles.

The period between the British annexation of the island and the declaration of independence (1815-1948) unfolded in four successive but interrelated stages. In the first stage between 1815 and 1848, British colonialism was compelled to reckon with the reality of an unending series of peasant uprisings, beginning in Uva-Wellassa in 1817 and culiminating in Matale three decades later. In keeping with similar insurrections in other colonial societies, these were essentially Janus-faced: on the one hand, they sought liberation for a repressed group, the Kandyan peasantry, while on the other they envisaged a return to a pre-colonial polity. Yet, whatever their motives, they wanted to free the country of foreign rule.

The British government realised too late, the folly of assuming that its political-military grip over the island would weaken, and prevail over, peasant resistance. Since the annexation of 1815, the colonial government had drawn and redrawn the country’s borders, breaking up the former Kandyan kingdom into Central and North-Western provinces and separating the Kandyan kingdom from its Sabaragamuwa and Wayamba peripheries. With these measures, officials hoped for the breakup of Kandyan unity. The aim of these processes, notes K. M. de Silva, was “to weaken the national feeling of the Kandyans”.

However, for obvious reasons, none of these reforms could quieten or dispel the spirit of resistance among the peasantry. The Kandyan peasantry never accepted the notion of Sri Lanka as a unitary and united administration overseen by the colonial government. Indeed, when the subject of constitutional reform came up in the 1920s, the Kandyan delegation demanded federal autonomy, predating Tamil nationalist claims for a separate homeland by three decades. This showed very clearly that the British policy of amalgamating the Kandyan provinces with the rest of the country had not really worked out.

To complicate matters further, while dealing with peasant rebellions colonial officials had to put up with the growth of an assertive, and often radical, middle-class. To give one example, the Matala Uprising was never limited to Matale and Kurunegala: it erupted in Colombo as well, where Sinhalese, Tamil, and Burgher middle-classes protested the government’s tax policies. K. M. de Silva observes that attempts by these middle-classes to influence Kandyan agitation “achieved little impact.” Yet that such an attempt was made at all showed that the colonial government had to reckon with two distinct dissenting groups.

The middle-classes may not have been revolutionaries, but as their interventions during the Matale Uprising showed, they could combine their dissatisfaction with the way things were with popular hatred of the government, to make their own demands. As a way of resolving this issue, between 1848 and 1870 – the second of the four periods pertinent to this essay – the colonial government began hiring and empowering a subservient elite, drawn from “the second echelon of the Kandyan nobility” as well as a low country bourgeoisie.

Newton Gunasinghe has noted the paradox underlying these reforms. While putting an end to the monopoly of the Kandyan aristocracy, the British government reactivated the very social relations that had undergirded traditional Kandyan society. By reviving rajakariya in modified form, feudal production relations in temple lands, and a network of gamsabhas, colonial authorities grafted archaic social customs and practices on what was, essentially, a capitalist mode of production. This had the effect of building up a class of subservient elites and reducing the revolutionary potential of the peasantry.

For a while, the strategy worked. However, while it kept the Kandyan peasantry in check and in control, it backfired when the same intermediate elite the government had employed to their ranks began demanding further reforms.

Here it’s important to clarify exactly what these elites wanted. In rebelling against the government, neither the newly co-opted aristocracy nor the middle-classes promoted the overthrow of the British government. They did not want a radical transformation of colonial society, largely because by then they had grown too dependent on that society to envisage, or desire, a Ceylon falling outside the British orbit. This is why, while clamouring for greater representation for themselves, they very carefully, and consistently, opposed the extension of the franchise. As Regi Siriwardena has noted, none of those celebrated as national heroes today – with the important exception of A. E. Goonesinha – wanted universal suffrage vis-à-vis the Donoughmore Commission. Such reforms had to be imposed on them.

Despite this, though, the British government’s policy of engaging with local elites worked fairly well. Colonial officials now had local emissaries through whom they could mediate potential peasant uprisings. Yet the policy necessitated the retention of archaic and quasi-feudal social relations, which in the long term stunted capitalist development. On the other hand, the new strategy paved the way for the revival of various art forms, most prominently the Dalada perahera. As scholars like Senake Bandaranayake have noted, the government defined the perimeters and the contours of cultural artefacts and objets d’art, ensuring that they were in line with the broader aim of legitimising colonial rule.

These reforms led, in the third period (1870-1915), to a Buddhist revival whose exponents alternated between championing opposing to and cooperation with colonial officials. These two lines were promoted, respectively, by the two Buddhist institutions of higher learning established in the late 19th century, Vidyalankara and Vidyodaya. While it’s rather difficult to draw a line between these two universities and their representatives, it is true, as H. L. Seneviratne suggests in The Work of Kings, that significant disagreements prevailed within the Buddhist clergy over the issue of British domination.

From their side, colonial authorities, especially governors like Henry Ward, William Gregory, and Arthur Gordon, sought closer cooperation with a conservative Buddhist bourgeoisie, legitimising British rule while implementing cultural and political reforms. Very often these reforms antagonised groups like Evangelical missionaries. Yet colonial officials ignored their concerns; endearing themselves to revivalists, orientalists, and moderate nationalist opinion to maintain the colonial administrative structure became the bigger priority.

The effect of these developments was to turn the Buddhist elite to the forefront of the reforms being supported by the British government. Towards the end of this period, the bourgeoisie, who were too entrenched economically in colonial rule to advocate radical change, yet too underrepresented politically to be content with the way things were, began to take the lead in these reforms through the Temperance Movement.

The Temperance Movement provided an impetus for a number of other organisations. K. M. de Silva has argued that none of them – not even the ambitious Ceylon National Association – fulfilled the aims for which they had been set up. Ranging from communal outfits like the Dutch Burgher Union to commercial groups like the Plumbago Merchants Union, these organisations, for the most, preferred gradual to radical change, dispensing with the sort of agitation politics that would come to define the Indian National Congress.

Moreover, Hector Abhayavardhana has noted that the bulk of the Sinhalese elite leadership consisted of “small men with narrow vision” who wanted to bring religion into politics. Any hopes for a multicultural alliance faded away with the establishment of Mahajana Sabhas, which campaigned for Buddhist candidates. However highly one may have thought of outfits like the Jaffna Youth Congress, the lack of enthusiasm for such alliances, among the colonial bourgeoisie, paved the way for their inevitable and tragic demise.

Meanwhile, the colonial bourgeoisie faced a more formidable foe, or competitor, in the form of nationalist firebrands like Anagarika Dharmapala. In a bid to blunt the fervour of such firebrands, who they viewed with much distaste, the Sinhalese bourgeoisie toed the Vidyodaya line, promoting change within the framework of a plantation economy while seeking more representation for themselves. This was necessitated by expedience: by the early 20th century a working class movement had begun to emerge in the country, as the Carters’ Strike of 1906 showed, and though it lacked proper leadership, it nevertheless concerned the bourgeoisie. Their rather ambivalent response to these developments had the unfortunate effect of stunting the rise of a mass struggle in the country.

The comprador bourgeoisie shot to fame, so to speak, with the 1915 riots. A point often forgotten in contemporary reconstructions of the riots is that none of the elites arrested by the British government posed a direct threat to colonial rule. As Kumari Jayawardena has pointed out, it was a case of official overreaction to the faintest threat of an anti-colonial uprising. Much like the J. R. Jayewardene government proscribing the Left after the 1983 riots, there was no link between the riots and the causes attributed to it, be it the supposed agitation of Buddhist elites or the politics of the Temperance Movement.

Kumari Jayawardena and K. M. de Silva point out that the period after the 1915 riots – the fourth period relevant to our discussion – witnessed the dulling down and fading away of the Buddhist revival. This is indeed what happened. In the person of Anagarika Dharmapala, the revival had brought together both reformist and radical streams. The Sinhalese elites, obviously cooperating with British authorities, marginalised him to the extent of excluding him from political activity. Yet Dharmapala’s departure from the island gave rise to newer parties and forms of struggle, many of them inspired by his vision. Among these, the most prominent was the Labour Party, founded in 1928 by A. E. Goonesinha.

Naturally enough, working class unrest dominated much of the post-1915 period, leading to the formation of a broad, radical Left. The newly formed Left identified the limitations of Goonesinha’s politics and sought to transcend them. To this end the establishment of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), in 1935, marked a pivotal turning point in the country’s lunge towards independent statehood. Envisioning a complete, radical transformation of society, its representatives and ideologues broke with the dominant political outfit of the day, the Ceylon National Congress, charting their own course.

The LSSP’s original objectives, as radical in their time as in ours, included the socialisation of the means of production, the attainment of complete independence, and the abolition of all forms of inequality, including caste. Given the state of the economy at the time – it was a plantation enclave heavily dependent on a few sectors – no other programme would have sufficed for an organisation calling for a mass struggle against colonial rule. It goes without saying that it was the stalwarts of the Marxist Left – specifically Philip Gunawardena – who first advocated complete independence for Ceylon.

In the meantime, the colonial bourgeoisie managed, rather dismally, to turn the Ceylon National Congress into a pale echo of what it had once aspired to. With the departure of Ponnambalam Arunachalam in 1921, there came an end to an era where, as K. M. de Silva and Hector Abhayavardhana have observed, Sinhala and Tamil communities constituted in unison the majority of the country. In the hands of a predominantly Sinhalese bourgeoisie the Congress became a little more than a communal organisation, a point reinforced by the decision of its leaders to disenfranchise estate Tamils. In this they were occupied more than anything else with the preservation of their economic interests.

All these developments led to a situation where the Left could claim, very validly, that the ruling elite had not won independence, but had secured it on a platter from Whitehall. The elite themselves were not unaware of the inadequacy of their campaign for freedom: when the masses reacted vociferously against the cosmetic reforms they had obtained from the British government, the Congress bourgeoisie quickly went back and pressed for what was being demanded. Yet tied to three agreements which made the defence, foreign policy, and civil service blanks of the government subservient to British interests, Ceylon could become free only through a radical transformation of its political structures.

In breaking off all remaining ties with the colonial government, the 1972 Constitution sought to give effect to such a transformation. By then even the Sinhalese bourgeoisie had come to realise the folly of maintaining the status quo and the inevitability of change: whereas John Kotelawala could support Ceylon remaining a Dominion, Dudley Senanayake could a decade later support the idea of it becoming a Republic within the Commonwealth.

I believe we need a new account of our country’s emergence as an independent state. The accounts we have at present, barring very few, glorify one set of leaders over all others, marginalising and excluding everyone else. Conventional narratives depict the colonial elite as national heroes. This was not always so, though important differences did exist within the bourgeoisie. What we have learnt about our own independence is hardly adequate to the task of helping us understand our past. We badly need a new history.

The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

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Features

The NPP’s pivot to the past

Published

10 hours ago

2026/05/24

Thilina Walpola

“The elephant is crashing about in the room, trampling people to death, and politely ignoring it is no longer an option”.

AC Grayling (To Set Prometheus Free)

Before Anura Kumara Dissanayake promised a renaissance, Maithripala Sirisena promised good governance. The restoration of the rule of law was a key aspect of the different, better Sri Lanka Candidate Sirisena (and his chief supporter Ranil Wickremesinghe) offered in 2015. In that promised land, all wrongdoers will be brought before the law; justice will cease being a luxury only the rich and the powerful can afford and become a fact of ordinary life.

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s elevation of the singularly unsuitable Sarath Silva to the august position of chief justice (an appointment some sought to justify on the irrelevant grounds that he was a Buddhist) had severely undermined judicial independence. Mahinda Rajapaksa dispensed with the rule of law entirely, enshrining in its stead the law of the ruling family. The illegal (and thuggish) impeachment of chief justice Shirani Bandaranayake destroyed even the pretence of judicial independence.

Today, Namal Rajapaksa is a born-again advocate of judicial independence and the rule of law. He seems to not remember the measure of the man his father and family picked as chief justice once they booted out Shirani Bandaranayake. Just one example would suffice to demonstrate Mohan Peiris’ suitability to be enthroned as the Rajapaksa chief justice. In November 2011, responding to a question about the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, Mr Peiris told the UN Committee against Torture, “Our current information is that Mr. Ekneligoda has taken refuge in a foreign country… It is something we can be reasonably certain of” (BBC– 25.11.2011). When summoned before the Homagama magistrate court (where the Ekneligoda case was being heard), he did a volte face. He rejected “the transcript of the statement he made in Geneva last year,” and said “he could not remember the source that revealed to him the whereabouts of Prageeth Ekneligoda,” adding that “I have no information that the corpus is alive or not and I do not think the government does either and that God only knows where Ekneligoda is” (Ceylon Today – 6.6.2012).

With Mohan Peiris controlling the judiciary, the law of the Rajapaksas could stalk the land unimpeded. For many voters who flocked to Maithripala Sirisena’s side in 2015, restoring the rule of law was not an abstract slogan but a vital necessity.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration did not betray that promise. Restoring judicial independence was the best – and the most enduring – achievement of an administration which violated the bulk of its promises and betrayed a large part of its mandate.

Unlike Maithripala Sirisena, Anura Kumara Dissanayake did not inherit a debased and a cowed judiciary. He inherited a strong judiciary confident enough to take on an executive president, a judiciary unafraid to stand up to a saffron mob and put a stop to the misuse of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as a blasphemy law. Today, the judiciary remains one of the very few relatively undebased and uncompromised (plus popular) institutions in the country. Consequently, President Dissanayake’s task does not involve any doing. His task is to refrain from doing. His May Day remark concerning an upcoming verdict is an example of what he should not to.

While the judiciary has been a beacon of hope in dark times (despite occasional backsliding), the same cannot be said of the police, an essential component in maintaining the rule of law. If the police fail to carry out investigations impartially and speedily, if they favour powerful suspects over powerless victims, then the rule of law is violated at the foundational level, a wrong that cannot be righted even by the most independent judiciary.

Is the saffron robe above the law?

Addressing a District Development Committee meeting last week, President Dissanayake said that his government has ended the impunity of those who believed that the law would never apply to them.

Does the president live in a parallel universe where a powerful monk accused of raping a 12-year-old child is being protected by a non-divine hand?

The crime is so horrendous it would have sufficed to cause the most powerful politician or the wealthiest businessman to fall from grace. Despite the necessary presumption of innocence, any political or economic leader accused of ‘purchasing’ a small child from her parents and raping her would have been arrested immediately, kicked out from whatever positions he occupied, and ostracized societally. If the government was dragging its foot, if the police were bending the law, the opposition and the media would have been on them like a tonne of bricks. If the accused had any connection with the opposition, the government would talk of little else for days. There would be parliamentary debates and press conferences, media exposes and public protests.

Not when the accused is Pallegama Hemaratana thera, the head of Atamasthana. Then the only sound from the usually garrulous political, economic, and religious leaders is silence.

Human Rights Council and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor have published extensive reports of how Israel systematically uses sexual violence against Palestinians ( and ). Last week, The New York Times carried its own expose detailing these atrocities. In his commentary on the findings, Nicholas Kristoff, a two-time Pulitzer winning journalist, wrote, “It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape” ().

Indeed. Similarly, we should be able to unite in condemning child abuse, whatever the identity of the alleged perpetrator. But when it comes to the Pallegama Hemaratana case, government and opposition, religious and economic leaders, most of the media and societal luminaries have united in wilful blindness and wilful deafness. Had it not been for judicial action and the effort made by the National Child Protection Authority, the monk would still be lording it over in Atamasthana. Even after the court ordered his arrest, he managed to evade prison and spend days in the Nawaloka hospital.

The Minister of Children and Women’s Affairs issued an anodyne statement after the judicial order rendered police inaction impossible. Nothing, though, from the president, the many would-be presidents, the PM, the leader of opposition, party leaders. Nothing also from the Mahanayake theros or the Cardinal. Just announce that children will be taught how to identify and protect themselves from child abusers and mark how quickly the silence ends and the cacophony of outrage begins.

In his autobiography We don’t know ourselves – A personal history of modern Ireland, Irish author Fintan O’Toole writes of a priest-teacher who abused his students, “openly, constantly, shamelessly…” The perpetrator picked his victims carefully, “the vulnerable boy, the kid who got into trouble, the kid whose father had died.” Mr O’Toole calls clerical child-abuse “…the open secret, the thing that everybody knew and nobody grasped, the truth that could be seen but never identified. We were adepts at epistemology. Most of us could walk like circus performers across tightropes that were strung between private knowledge and public acknowledgement. The only ones who ever looked down were those who were badly abused, and they became even better at suppressing reality.” For decades, individual acts of resistance went nowhere. A friend calls out the abusive priest-teacher in class. The priest ignores him and tells the class to turn to another page in the Latin grammar, which they do. “David was defeated. He just sat down again and everything went on as if his accusations had never been voiced.”

In Sri Lanka too, clerical child-abuse is obfuscated by a ‘cloud of unknowing’. Occasionally, the cloud lifts, when the victim has parents who care, who are able to protest and protect. This week, the Appeal Court confirmed the seven-year sentence passed on Hambegamuwe Chandananda by the High Court for abusing a nine-year old novice monk the day after he was ordained. If we ignore or tolerate such horrors in the name of Sasana, then we cannot be adherents of The Buddha.

Like any suspect, the monk Pallegama Hemaratana is innocent until and unless proven guilty by a court of law. But for him to be proven innocent (or guilty), there has to be a proper investigation and a speedy trial. How can there be any hope of a fair and a transparent investigation and a speedy trial given how hard various authorities tried first to keep the story under the wraps, then not to arrest the monk, and finally to keep him in the Nawaloka Hospital?

Given the range and magnitude of this preferential treatment, the involvement of the political authority up to and including the president cannot be ruled out. The Opposition’s complicity in this matter has given the government-enabled impunity wings. Suddenly, it’s as if the Rajapaksas never left.

The first step down the abyss

In his 1968 article The Territories, Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz issued a warning to his own countrymen and women. “Rule over the occupied territories could have social repercussions… The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the state of Israel.” In his 1988 essay 40 years after, he returned to the theme. “That a subjugated people would fight for its freedom against the conquering ruler, with all the means at its disposal, without being squeamish about their legitimacy, was only to be expected. This has been true of wars of liberation of all peoples… We are creating – and have already created – a political atmosphere affecting the public as well as its individual members… In this same atmosphere one hears of cases of soldiers attempting to bury Arab boys alive; the Attorney General tries to distinguish between torture and ‘reasonable’ torture; those in charge of the army distinguish ‘burial alive’ from the burying alive of bodies without interring the heads.”

Consider the end. Resist the beginnings. In Sri Lanka, warnings about the danger of clerical impunity were made as far back as the 1930’s when the country was still Ceylon. One such Cassandra-figure who foresaw the future, whose words went unheeded was Munidasa Kumaratunga. In his 2 October 1934 editorial in Lakmini Pahana, he wrote, “If a monk engages in wrongdoing, we should not close our eyes. Instead, we should ensure that the monk is given the punishment appropriate for his wrongdoing.” Ignoring that sage warning, we developed into a fine art the devise of worshipping the robe irrespective of the quality of the wearer.

The police while treating an alleged child-rapist with kid gloves publicly arrested a monk in Rajanganaya for insulting a minister and two top cops. That differential treatment points to two dangerous developments which, if not nipped in the bud, can take us right back to the Rajapaksa days. One is the reincarnation of impunity. The other is the politicisation of the police.

The undermining of the police at the institutional level reached its zenith under Rajapaksa rule. Two examples from the South and the North would suffice to show the consequences of this debasement.

In July 2009, a coordinating secretary of the Minister of Human Rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe was abducted. The minister eventually uncovered that the victim had not been abducted by criminals (as was supposed initially) but ‘arrested’ by the police. He protested saying that the “police cannot simply barge into people’s houses without appropriate documents and take people away” (Bottom Line – 5.8.2009). The police’s response was, yes we can; the abduction was the work of a ‘special squad that had wide powers to arrest anybody in any part of the country” (The Island – 7.8.2009).

On 20 September 2011, Antony Nithyaraja, a man wanted by the police, appeared before the Jaffna magistrate through his lawyer. “The Magistrate after considering the police submissions and court documents released him. However, seven police officers in civilian clothes arrested him and started beating Antony in the presence of the Magistrate, lawyers, court staff and a large number of people. He was dragged to the Jaffna Headquarters Police Station for detention” (Asian Human Rights Commission – 23.9.2011).

The police could take the law into their own hands because the rulers created an enabling environment for such illegalities. The rot was begun by politicians, and can only be ended by politicians. Reforming the police was a key promise of Maithripala Sirisena in 2015 and Anura Kumara Dissanayake in 2024. Mr Sirisena broke it. Mr Dissanayake is breaking it. The carcinogen has returned to the body.

by Tisaranee Gunasekara ✍️

Features

Cinnamon Tea Stick project aims to reprice Lanka’s tea economy

Published

10 hours ago

2026/05/24

Thilina Walpola

On a humid tea-growing slope in Sri Lanka’s south-western highlands, where mist drifts over the edges of the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a quiet experiment is attempting to reimagine one of the country’s most enduring export lifelines.

For generations, tea has been both livelihood and legacy for thousands of smallholders across Sri Lanka. Yet beneath the global reputation of Ceylon Tea lies a persistent grievance. Growers say their earnings have remained largely stagnant even as value-added tea products fetch premium prices in overseas markets.

It is against this backdrop that entrepreneur Sarathchandra Ramanayake is promoting a new product he believes could shift more value back to the farmer. The product is called the Cinnamon Green Tea Stick, designed as a portable, bag-free infusion format aimed at premium and health-conscious consumers.

Sarathchandra Ramanayake

World Tea Day, observed on the 21st of this month, adds context to a wider debate about who benefits most from the global tea economy, the planter or the processor.

Ramanayake’s proposal is ambitious. He argues that while tea leaves currently fetch modest farm-gate prices, a redesigned value chain built around specialty processing could generate significantly higher returns. In his model, a kilo of finished product could translate into substantially improved earnings for growers, particularly through export-oriented niche markets.

He said the aim is to move away from bulk commodity pricing and toward value-driven tea consumption. The concept replaces conventional tea bags with a solid stick format infused with cinnamon, sourced from Sri Lanka’s spice-growing regions.

The Kalawana area in the Ratnapura District, where small tea holdings dominate the agricultural landscape, has been identified as a potential production base. In these communities, tea remains the backbone of rural livelihoods and sustains entire families.

Ramanayake said the initiative is not intended to replace traditional supply chains but to complement them. Farmers would continue supplying factories while also contributing selected high-quality leaves for the new production process.

Regulatory approval has been obtained under handmade tea production guidelines from the Tea Board, and a patent application has been submitted under intellectual property provisions.

Early signs of commercial interest are emerging. According to Ramanayake, small export orders have already been received from markets including the United Kingdom, suggesting tentative international interest in the product’s positioning.

The project also highlights long-standing structural issues within Sri Lanka’s tea economy, where value addition, branding and export margins are often concentrated far away from the farmer who produces the leaf.

Ramanayake’s pitch is both economic and social. By incorporating cinnamon, another of Sri Lanka’s globally recognised agricultural exports, the product also seeks to strengthen rural spice growers and diversify farm-level income.

Still, questions remain over whether such boutique innovations can meaningfully shift earnings at scale in an industry shaped by established auction systems and large processors.

For now, the Cinnamon Green Tea Stick sits at the intersection of tradition and innovation, carrying an ambition to reprice the leaf, reframe the farmer’s role and reimagine Sri Lanka’s iconic tea industry for a changing global market.

Text and Pix By Upendra Priyankara Jathungama ✍️

Features

Admitting a New Investor – Lessons from Dankotuwa – Episode 5

Published

10 hours ago

2026/05/24

Thilina Walpola

LESSONS FROM MY CAREER: SYNTHESISING MANAGEMENT THEORY WITH PRACTICE – PART 37

In today’s episode, I will relate several incidents from my final years at Dankotuwa Porcelain and the lessons I learned from them. Looking back now, I realise that these years taught me not only about management, finance, labour relations, and corporate survival, but also about human emotions, loyalty, fear, stubbornness, and resilience. They also marked the gradual end of a very long line of executive appointments that had consumed most of my adult life.

The contract labour issue

Because of the uncertainty of export demand, we had adopted a flexible system of recruiting some employees on fixed-term contracts or through labour suppliers. However, unlike many organisations, we took great care to ensure that these employees were not treated as second-class workers. In practice, they enjoyed almost all the benefits of permanent employees. If they served beyond a stipulated period, they were entitled to gratuity as well. We also had to comply with stringent labour and ethical compliance standards imposed by our foreign buyers, many of whom conducted regular audits.

A group of these employees had completed their two-year fixed-term contracts. Due to the uncertain external environment and fluctuating orders, we were unable to offer permanency. Instead, we offered another fixed-term contract for two years.

To our surprise, all of them refused and wanted permanent jobs which were too risky to offer in a volatile environment.

Despite repeated discussions and assurances from the Head of Human Resources, they insisted on nothing short of permanency. They would not budge. Finally, and very reluctantly, I instructed security not to permit them into the premises from the following day, because technically their contracts had expired.

The next morning, the entire group gathered outside the gate. They remained there until around ten o’clock before dispersing. Later, I heard that they were gathering at the residence of a Member of Parliament who lived nearby. This continued for several days.

The MP telephoned me repeatedly and urged me to make them permanent. I refused. The company simply could not absorb that level of rigidity at such an uncertain time. Then matters took an ugly turn.

One morning, some members of the group harassed the Chief Operating Officer while he was entering the premises. They sat on the bonnet of his car and forcibly opened the door. Security identified the main culprits immediately. I made up my mind that, regardless of future developments, those directly involved in intimidation and misconduct would never be taken back.

After nearly a month, the MP contacted me again. He said the matter had become a stalemate and that the group was now willing to accept the original contract terms. I replied immediately: “We now have only one-year contracts available. Anyone interested may report for work.” Some accepted. Others stubbornly refused.

Later, a few of those who had not been re-employed met me privately. They admitted they had been inexperienced young men and women who had merely followed the advice of union leaders. They confessed that it was the unions that had encouraged them to reject the original offer and even urged them to obstruct the COO’s vehicle. They pleaded with me to show mercy, saying they had been misled.

I genuinely felt sorry for them. But I stood firm.

Management sometimes requires compassion, but it also requires consistency. If discipline collapses, organisations collapse soon after.

The incident reinforced one of the most important lessons I learned in labour relations: leaders must distinguish between firmness and cruelty. A manager who constantly bends under pressure may temporarily avoid conflict, but in the long run loses credibility and control.

Thoughts of Retirement

By this time, I was just past 60 years of age. The stress of corporate life had begun taking a visible toll on my health. I often recalled my earlier days at the Employees’ Trust Fund under President Ranasinghe Premadasa, when relentless pressure had caused severe gastritis and ulcers. I still remember how those symptoms vanished within days of leaving the ETF.

I began dreaming of retirement, peace, and perhaps a quieter life devoted to agriculture, which had always fascinated me. But the Japanese directors would hear none of it.

They told me that in Japan, life begins at sixty. They pointed out that many Chairmen—Kaicho, as they are called in Japan—continue well into their seventies. One of the local directors was even sent to meet me personally and persuade me to abandon thoughts of retirement.

So I remained. The COLA problem

One of our biggest internal challenges was the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) system that had been introduced years earlier. During periods of high inflation, it spiralled out of control. In some months, increases amounted to nearly one thousand rupees—a very substantial figure at that time.

No other industry was granting such increases monthly.

The situation became unsustainable. Worse still, the COLA had been incorporated into calculations for overtime, provident fund contributions, and other benefits. The compounding effect was enormous. We were unable to correct this mistake at the current time.

After prolonged discussions with the unions, we finally managed to restructure the arrangement. The frozen COLA and increases were consolidated into the basic salary structure.

I regarded this as a major breakthrough.

The Labour Department admitted privately that mistakes had been made by the company when the scheme was originally designed, but said nothing could legally be altered retrospectively.

This episode taught me another important lesson: poorly designed compensation systems can haunt organisations for decades. A Board and Chairman must examine compensation schemes very carefully before implementation. A benefit introduced during prosperous times may become a crushing burden during difficult periods.

The search for a new investor

The Japanese shareholders eventually made it clear that they were unwilling to invest further funds into the company. A new investor had to be found if the company was to survive.

Once again, my retirement plans were postponed. The Board insisted that I remain until a suitable investor was secured.

One prospective investor came close to finalising a deal but withdrew suddenly due to uncertainty surrounding the GSP+ concession. Another investor emerged later, but with very strict conditions. One of their key demands was a freeze on salaries and allowances for three years. Negotiations with the unions dragged on for days and weeks. At times, it appeared we were on the verge of success. Then suddenly the unions would withdraw cooperation.

Meanwhile, our financial position was deteriorating rapidly. The Head of Finance confirmed in writing that we could no longer meet obligations as they fell due.

I realised we had reached a dangerous legal and ethical point.

Under the Companies Act, if directors continue operating while knowing the company is insolvent, they may become personally liable for further erosion of assets. This was no longer merely a corporate issue—it threatened my own personal assets accumulated over a lifetime.

I informed the Board that we had no option but to seriously consider winding up the company. The local directors agreed. The Japanese directors requested one week to obtain instructions from Tokyo.

Because of Stock Exchange requirements, we made a disclosure to the Colombo Stock Exchange regarding the possible winding up.

That announcement changed everything.

Copies were displayed throughout the factory and office. Over the weekend, I was inundated with telephone calls from employees.

Some pleaded emotionally with me to save the company. Many had spent their entire working lives there and felt deeply attached to the factory. One group telephoned to say they were conducting a Bodhi pooja at a temple for the company’s survival. Another group called from a church where special prayers were being offered.

Those calls affected me deeply. To all of them, however, I gave the same answer:

“The future of the company is in your hands. If the investor’s conditions are accepted, the company can survive.”

The Minister’s intervention

On Sunday, I received a call from Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa asking me to come to his residence immediately.

I went with the COO and found that he had also summoned the General Manager of Noritake Porcelain, whom he knew personally. After hearing my explanation, the Minister called for the union representatives as well.

We waited several hours for them to arrive. During that waiting period, the Minister spoke candidly about politics, privatisation, nationalisation, and the mistakes successive governments had made. It was an unexpectedly educational afternoon.

When the unions finally arrived, the Minister was direct and blunt.

He told them that many workers came from his electorate and that if the factory closed, they should not expect him to find employment for them elsewhere.

The mood changed.

After lengthy discussion, the unions agreed in principle, though they requested a small amendment to the proposed terms. The Minister supported their request.

I said I could not promise anything but would speak to the investor. Fortunately, after difficult negotiations, the investor agreed.

On Tuesday, we met at the Labour Department and signed the settlement. We then informed the stock exchange that an agreement had been successfully reached.

The sense of relief was immense.

The SEC hearing

Even after securing the investor, another obstacle remained. Since the investment involved a fresh issue of shares, approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka was required.

That process became another nightmare.

The agreed share price had been based on the prevailing market price, but speculation had driven the market upward rapidly. During the hearing, I faced intense questioning regarding the pricing.

I explained that we could not ethically change the agreed terms after giving our word. More importantly, I stressed that this was the only serious investor available. Losing them could doom the company.

I made a detailed presentation supported by charts and figures. I also spoke frankly.

I admitted that I was suffering sleepless nights worrying about the company’s future.

After the hearing, I stepped outside exhausted and had barely begun packing my laptop when I was summoned back in.

As I entered, the Chairman smiled and said: “Mr. Wijesinha, you can sleep tonight. We have approved your proposal.”

And indeed, that night, I slept peacefully.

Retirement at last

The new investors eventually assumed control. Initially there were difficulties because they came from strong financial and investment backgrounds and required time to understand manufacturing operations and export markets. I personally introduced them to foreign buyers to help them understand the realities of the industry.

The Japanese shareholders became minority stakeholders.

At last, I felt the time had truly come to retire. The new investors requested that I remain for another year to help stabilise the transition. I agreed.

Finally, on June 30, 2012, I retired with mixed feelings.

I had enjoyed the challenges enormously, but they had undeniably affected my health. Yet the experiences proved invaluable later when I served on many Boards. I realised that Dankotuwa had excellent systems, disciplined processes, and an outstanding product. The difficulty was not inefficiency. It was surviving intense global competition in a highly unforgiving industry.

Looking back now, I realise that management theories often sound neat and logical in classrooms and seminars. Real life is rarely so tidy. In practice, leadership involves balancing compassion with discipline, ethics with survival, and long-term strategy with short-term crises.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned at Dankotuwa was this: organisations are not saved by systems alone. They are saved by people—their sacrifices, emotions, loyalty, courage, and sometimes even their prayers.

More lessons from my Board experiences will follow in future episodes.

(Sunil G. Wijesinha is a Consultant on Productivity and Japanese Management Techniques

Former Chairman / Director of several listed and unlisted companies

Recipient of the APO Regional Award for Promoting Productivity in the Asia-Pacific Region

Recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays – Government of Japan

Email: bizex.seminarsandconsulting@gmail.com)

By Sunil G. Wijesinha ✍️