Features
Benefactor who believes in helping them to help themselves

I cannot divulge the name of the humanitarian whose massive money donation plus planning, personal time and effort have helped a central school and surrounding villages in the Vanni. He reluctantly consented to me writing about his project with the insisted upon proviso I do not name him nor drop clues to his identity. The aim of the article is not only to praise this person but to make wider known what can be done for our country by its nationals. Most important is the message he wants conveyed, which is given as conclusion to this article.
The Altruist
As a child and teenager, he moved around the island with his doctor father transferred from district to district, but was at Royal College, Colombo, throughout his secondary and senior secondary education. He then joined Colombo Medical College, passed out in 1964; served as a doctor here and then moved to London once he married and had a child. He built his career as a general practitioner under the NHS; felt he’d worked enough and took early retirement at age 66.
He had consistently visited Ceylon/ Sri Lanka, lengthening the holidays as his mother grew older. The visits did not cease with her death and the migration of all his siblings. He and his wife continued their holidays in the home country; he extending them for six months as the years passed. He came alone in 2020 and got enmeshed in the stay-put restrictions of the Covid pandemic. His wife and son were happy enough in London while he was the same in his own home in Borella, having plenty friends and even a scattering of relatives, with an excellent Woman Friday and faithful driver to see to his domestic and moving around needs.
The projects
During the extended Covid stay in Colombo, Dr W (let’s name him thus) met student day friends Mr Pancharatnam and Dr and Mrs Kasynathan of Point Pedro. They asked him whether he could help seven students of Mallavi Central College. That initial ‘yes’ ended by him pledging support for 15 students. He was invited by his friend to visit the school his beneficiary students attended. Agreed to. That was the first time in 2013 that he actually stood in front of the Central College, Mallavi, and its dilapidated buildings. He met the Principal, Mr T Jesuthanathar who updated him on urgent needs of the coeducational school and its pupils. Sister Gowsala conducted him within the girls’ hostel.
Dr W’s attention was focused on the girls’ hostel which housed around 30 and was far from adequate in space, amenities and all else. It needed urgent expansion and refurbishing. Though Mallavi itself was a growing township and improving, students of the Central College cycled to school each day from afar, often through deserted jungle areas; totally unsafe for girls. The boys managed the daily bicycle or walk to and from their homes or were boarded in local homes.
Dr W’s sterling pension from England was substantial; his child was now an employed professional and his wife lived comfortably over there. The family agreed he spend more time in Sri Lanka as was his wish, with him visiting London and his family spending holidays here.
The girls’ hostel had been repaired in 2013, but it still lacked necessary amenities and demand for hostel accommodation was pressing. So Dr W decided to build a new, spacious hostel building. Spending millions, with the cooperation of the principal and others, to the delight of Sister Gowsala, a spanking new two storey building rose up with rooms of residence, well equipped bathrooms and toilets, recreation halls and all else. Engineers in the district gave of their skills; labour was entirely local. It was ceremonially declared open in 2017. The girl’s hostel now houses 80 to 90 kids with classes in the school from Grade 6 to A/L. Excellent results at GCE OL and even AL exams proved how beneficial the money and cooperative effort put in to improve the school, and particularly the hostels, had been.
At present, with the assistance forthcoming from the Colombo Head of the Good Shepherd Nuns’ Order, two Sisters of that Order and a matron are in charge of the girls’ hostel, with a third Sister from the Claretion Catholic Order, paid for by Dr W. They are not mere supervisors but carers and counselors since students still suffer consequent strain of the civil war: sorrow of losing family members and continuing angst and imbued fear. Three women tackle the cooking of meals.
The boys had no hostel in the school. A request was acceded to and again Dr W paid for the construction of a building, completed in 2021, which now houses 30 boys. They enjoy their supervised stay; good meals; residence comforts compared to home restrictions; support for study, sports and games. One student recently told Dr W he wants to continue living in the hostel. “Impossible. Once you pass your ALs you have to leave.” “I shall stay on as warden!” was the reply.
Dr W subsidizes the monthly boarding fees of Rs 11,000 of all boarders – 110 as at present – by parents being charged Rs 7,000 per student and he paying the rest. When parents find they are able to pay just Rs 2,000 or 3,000, they are permitted, with Dr W chipping in the rest. He also pays the full fee for around 25 students. For him what is needed and contributed for is education for children and to ensure their happiness as far as possible through kind concern and generosity.
Dr W is not a mere money donor nor remote philanthropist. No, he even surpasses Bill Gates who stays over in African States when his donations immunize children, to supervise the programs. Dr W is streets ahead. He takes residence in a part of the boys’ hostel, almost monthly for at least four days; eats, chats and plays games with the boys and visits the girls’ domain.
Mallavi Central School is in five acres of land separated between the two hostels and the school proper by fences. The land is under cultivation of vegetables and fruit trees; and had a poultry farm and cattle shed with two gardeners, and students helping. The poultry project had to be reduced to rearing free ranging gan kukulas and kikilis due to the prohibitive rise in cost of chicken feed. Another increasing menace is marauding monkeys. Tall fences are climbed over. The hostels are self-sufficient in milk, eggs, veggies, coconut, fruits which include papaw, plantain in all its varieties, mango of the best yellow variety, and others. Seedlings taken from Colombo by Dr W and planted around the hostels are now fully grown and bearing fruit; 200 mango trees included.
Once the school was abundant in its garden produce, Dr W bought seedlings of coconut and fruit trees and distributed them in neighbouring villages; each costing on average Rs 2,500.
At about the same time he first went to the Mallavi Central College, Dr W visited a very poor village – Jeevanagal – in the District of Oddusuttan, also in the Vanni, where 110 families with 140 children live in poverty. They were displaced Indian labourers of the hill country due to estate riots in 1977, and were settled by the government in lands opened up by the Accelerated Mahaveli Development scheme. The local school – a government Vidyalayam – has primary to OL classes. It has restarted supplying the kids with a mid-day meal. However most stay on till their parents pick them up in the evening with teachers helping with their homework. Dr W supplies them afternoon tea or milk with a substantial snack; needless to say supplementing their nutriment intake and felt delight. On Saturdays they flock to the Day Centre he got built to enjoy a sumptuous rice and curry lunch, unfailingly with chicken or sprats and an egg each. A meal costs Rs 300 to 500. Dr W foots the entire bill.
Thus this Do Good Person is certainly not a mere donor but a staying-in benefactor, humanitarian, altruist, also a friendly father-figure in Mallavi. He benefits education, happy co-living and food security to the deprived.
Futuristic Opinion
Dr W preferred to name what he strongly feels about ‘a vision of hope’. He opines that most professionals who migrate to foreign lands for employment had their entire education from primary through secondary to university in Sri Lanka. Their free education expenses were then paid for by indirect tax payers: the tiller of the soil, cinnamon peeler, tea plucker, rubber tapper; More recently, in addition to the above, the garment factory worker, the tourism employee and those toiling overseas in menial jobs are the major money contributors to the government.
Thus to Dr W, justifiably, those Sri Lankans employed lucratively in developed countries, should consider contributing to Sri Lanka in cash or kind as almost mandatory – a return – gesture of gratitude; particularly now as the home country is mired in her worst economic crisis. Sending of dollars or pounds sterling is charitable, but the better way is to visit the home country and supervise how the donated money is utilized in whichever the chosen arena of assistance: whether it be in education, medical or any other field. Identifying a desperate family, donating a home and supporting just this one family is large enough an act of gratitude. Many expatriates do visit and give of their skill and money. More assistance is called for. I must mention that on reading the draft of this article, Dr W expressed horror, yes horror, that I had written much on the messenger but minimally on the message he wanted conveyed to other expat Sri Lankans. I subsequently better balanced the two but to me, the benefactor is of most interest and significance.
Features
Understanding policy of neutrality

by Neville Ladduwahetty
In order to assuage the apprehensions of India regarding the intended arrival of the Chinese research vessel Shi Yang 6 to Sri Lanka, an informed source of the National Aquatic Resources Research Agency (NARA) is reported to have said “a team of officials from the NARA would board Shi Yang 6 to observe research activities”. This act is “widely seen by Sri Lankan interlocutors as an attempt by the Government to signal to the countries which are at loggerheads with China that Sri Lanka is privy to what is transpiring in the whole process and to make sure that it will pose no security threat to any third country” (Daily Mirror, September 19, 2023).
Continuing the above DM report states: “Sri Lanka advocates a neutral foreign policy. However, India, Japan and the United States are skeptical about Chinese maritime activities in the Sri Lankan territorial waters since they fear that it is part of a major effort by China to systematically map the seabed across the vast swath of the Indian Ocean. They fear hydrographic data, collected in the process, can be used for security related purposes later …. Nevertheless, Sri Lanka insists that it is a neutral venue to all countries, and won’t allow its territory, be it sea, air space or land to be used against the security interests of another country, particularly India” (Ibid).
EXERCISING SOVEREIGN RIGHTS
Sri Lanka is indeed encouraged and heartened by the stand the country has taken to exercise its rights in keeping with its stated policy of Neutrality backed up by provisions of Internationally accepted Customary Law relating to entitlements, such as exploring within Exclusive Economic Zones of Coastal states. However, this stand could be strengthened by incorporating provisions of International Law as stated in Part V of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea presented below.
By incorporating these provisions into the Corpus of Domestic Law, Sri Lanka would be in a much stronger position to exercise its sovereign rights in the Exclusive Economic Zone by way of imposing penalties on those who violate its provisions and in particular those who engage in illegal fishing and destroying natural resources by the fishing crafts of India and other countries.
ARTICLE 56: EXCLUSIVE ECONOMIC ZONE
Rights, jurisdiction and duties of the coastal State in the exclusive economic zone
1. In the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State has:
(a) sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting conserving and managing the natural resources» whether living or non-living» of the waters superjacent to the sea-bed and of the sea-bed and its subsoil» and with regard to other activities for the economic exploitation and exploration of the zone such as the production of energy from the water currents and winds
(b) jurisdiction as provided for in the relevant provisions of this Convention with regard to:
(i) the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations and structures:
(ii) marine scientific research:
(iii) the protection and preservation of the marine environment:
(c) other rights and duties provided for in this Convention.
2. In exercising its rights and performing its duties under this Convention in the exclusive economic zone the coastal State shall have due regard to the rights and duties of other States and shall act in a manner compatible with the provisions of this Convention.
3. The rights set out in this article with respect to the sea-bed and subsoil shall be exercised in accordance with Part VI.
CAPACITY to EXERCISE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS
A top source that is considered to be familiar with Indian affairs is reported to have stated: “Sri Lanka’s neutral position is acceptable but it is doubtful for India whether Sri Lanka being economically weak, has the strength to maintain such an approach” (Ibid), and cited the example of India purchasing fuel from Russia despite objections by the United States. That top source has forgotten that India despite its power, once “invaded” Sri Lanka hoping to resolve the conflict in Sri Lanka and was compelled to return in shame having failed to fulfill its mission.
According to him “India can act in this way because it is powerful enough to resist any pressure…”. For India to buy oil from Russia despite objections from the U.S. means that these objections are relatively benign because the U.S. needs India as part of QUAD to counter China. However, this being a commercial arrangement, it cannot be compared with the legacy of despicable acts repeatedly committed against humanity of weaker States by so called “powerful states” in the pursuit of their interests.
It is evident that the “top source” is unaware that the International Order does not make a difference between “powerful states” and the rest, because one of the principal pillars on which the United Nations Charter rests states in Article 2 (1) that “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members”.
Furthermore, Principles and Duties of a Neutral State are based on International Customary Law, which in its Introduction states: “The sources of the international law of neutrality are customary international law and, for certain questions, international treaties, in particular the Paris Declaration of 1856, the 1907 Hague Convention No. V respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land, the 1907 Hague Convention No. XIII concerning the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers in Naval War, the four 1949 Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I of 1977 (ICRC Publication June 2022).
Despite the existence of such International provisions “powerful states” have not hesitated to brazenly flout its provisions in the pursuit of their interests most of which are warped imaginations.
For instance, it was India that imposed its will on Sri Lanka when it forced Sri Lanka to accept the 13th Amendment; an act that denied Sri Lanka the fundamental right of self-determination enshrined in Article 1 (2) of the Charter of the United Nations that state:
“To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples…”. This Amendment crafted by India compels Sri Lanka to adopt devolution to Provinces as a form of internal government to satisfy the imaginations of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. This was violently rejected by the People when it was first introduced and ironically even after more than three decades continues to be rejected not only by the majority but also by the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. Despite such rejections, India keeps insisting the Sri Lanka should live by its provisions; the latest being at the ongoing General Assembly Secessions in New York.
Under the circumstances, Sri Lanka has to come up with an innovative strategy within the provisions of the Constitution to get free of 13A because its entrenched contradictions hinder peripheral development. What is most objectionable about devolution as a concept is that it fosters the operation of Central Government and Provincial Government functions simultaneously that often are at variance thus perpetuating disparities within and among Provinces amounting to entrenching discrimination among the Peoples; a fact that is starkly evident among the States in India and other countries that have divested Central power.
Another practice adopted by “powerful” India is to overlook the violations committed by the Fishing community in Tamil Nadu at the expense of the Fishing community in Sri Lanka, by robbing the maritime resources and vandalizing the marine environment by resorting to bottom trawling within Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone notwithstanding the fact that it is a violation of Article 56 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Instead of raising such issues at bilateral meetings, despite the presence of the Minister of Fisheries, Sri Lanka has been trapped into commitment to issues of connectivity that bolster India’s influence over Sri Lanka.
CONCLUSIONS
While Sri Lanka appreciates and is proud of the position taken by NARA and the Government in respect of the intended arrival of the Chinese research vessel, Sri Lanka has to exploit all International safeguards to overcome potential threats from the so called “powerful states”. In a background where “powerful states” would not miss an opportunity to exploit the circumstances in other States, countries such as Sri Lanka have to depend on the shield or weapon of international law to protect their interests.
Therefore, for them, it is the codified rule of the Rights and Duties of a Neutral State and the incorporation of the relevant provisions of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea into Domestic Law or the fact that its provisions are part of Customary Law to protect its sovereign rights and enforce its interests in the Exclusive Economic Zone.
Such material should form the framework of a Standard Operating Procedure as suggested in a previous article (Neutral Foreign Policy in Practice, August 22, 2023). A strengthened Sri Lanka would then be in a position to avail itself of the resources of the International Court of justice, as other countries have done to seek redress. Furthermore, since they are numerically greater, their strength lies in a Rules based World Order and not on “power”, irrespective of its source.
Features
Some buildings with their attributes gone forever

Rest houses were places we grew up with and most had existed during the later years of British rule in Ceylon. Counterpart in India was called a dakh bungalow, or so Cass remembers from staying overnight long ago in one in Sanchi. Rest houses were really what their name implied: places to rest in; mostly for government administrators when they travelled on government business termed circuits. There were the circuit bungalows too but they were in remote areas and with much less amenities.
The best-known rest houses were Nuwara Wewa and Tisa Wewa in Anuradhapura, the one jutting into the Parakrama Samudra in Polonnaruwa, in Belihuloya, Ella, Hambantota Tissamaharama, Kankesanturai and Elephant Pass, and in Peradeniya, opposite the Botanical Gardens. They were well known for their gentlemanly keepers, most dressed in cloth and shirt, and the food served: excellent lunches with the invariable fried karola or hal messo; the wonderful coconut sambol and the fried red chillies which was not a usual homemade appetizer.
Now, most of these wonderful places of staying in comparatively cheap, are called resorts and expanded, losing the old-world charm, the warm welcoming ambience, and the spacious one storey roominess. They were tossed aside by hotels being constructed and so they too changed ‘shape’. One or two deteriorated – the Hambantota RH accompanied by the deterioration in standard of clientele too becoming more a water hole than temporary stay-in place. Some surpassed their previous selves like the Ella RH which was transformed to a high-end inn.
We often lunched and stayed in several times and remembered was the Peradeniya RH with its wide veranda with tables to lunch or dine at, looking across at the trees in the Gardens, particularly that variety which had red drooping down flowers bordered by bright red spathes which we called kukul kakul and even ate, delighting in its sour flavour. No more. None of the view of glorious nature; none of the almost al fresco lunching; none of the old-world charm and particular ambience of the old rest house. It has been rebuilt and ‘developed’ to a horrible state.
Change – for better, for worse
On a recent visit to Kandy after many years the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens was walked through, with plenty others, both local and foreign. One small niggle of doubt was the fee charged from foreigners Rs 3,500, Cass believes. Too excessive is her opinion particularly in comparison to what locals pay. We should not fleece foreigners though they are with dollars, pounds sterling, euros or whatever.
The gardens are excellently maintained; the orchid house glorious in its blooms and the banning of vehicular traffic very wise. Unlike many of our Buddhist places; visitors who found it difficult to walk much and toddlers were amply catered for by frequently running motorised open vehicles. The layout of the Gardens is almost the same as it was for many decades previous, but improved and maintained sprucely clean.
In sharp contrast was the Peradeniya Rest house. Cass forgot to note its name. The old building was so stately yet with a comforting, welcoming air about it. You usually parked yourself in the wide quarter-walled verandah at a table or in a comfy, un-upholstered chair. Now you are led to the first floor to a fully curtained room. Tall windows were all closed and the drawn curtains obliterated even a glimpse of the outside. Cass ordered rice and curry since she did not want a buffet lunch. Not possible to serve rice and curry a la carte was the waiter’s reply. Only Chinese dishes could be ordered. Cass was aghast.
Imagine not being able to order our basic meal in a restaurant that was a rest house previously with the reputation of serving the best rice ’n curry. You had to have the buffet if you wanted rice and curry; if you ordered your lunch it would be Chinese – fried rice, chopsuey, etc. Isn’t that a travesty? You are enclosed claustrophobically in a heavily curtained room with fans; cut off from fresh air and all the greenery around, and dictated to on what you eat. That is development for you!! Cass calls it mudalali aberration. The buffet was simple enough with a couple of additions like soup to a rice and curry meal costing 1800. Chinese was 1200.
Special committees
I am sure all adults of Sri Lanka object to President RW’s promise to set up a Parliamentary Committee to look into and report on the Easter Sunday suicide bombs in April 2019. A comment people make is that RW’s solution to any problem/matter is to appoint a committee; never mind the report and taking action.
You can bet your last thousand rupees that if a Parliamentary Committee is set up to report on the C4 documentary and its repercussions etc., all politicians will be exonerated and the ones who are pointed at as the accused, would be pronounced lily white. Zahran did it all by himself with ISIS control. We millions of Ordinaries too cry out against a fully local panel of investigators, and never a group of MPS.
A boxed news item on page 1 of The Island of Tuesday September 19 had this heading: CID takes over probe into gun attack on MP. The car with Anuradhapura District MP Uddika Premarathne was shot at. No one was injured. But quick as lightning, the Police handed over the hunt for perpetrators to the CID. They too will work overtime and catch the miscreants.
Good! But what happens over the several motorbike shootings and those guilty of distributing dangerous drugs and making this lovely island rotten with drug importers, peddlers and takers? Oh, those can be taken time over and never nail the guilty and punish them. Rather assist those caught and jailed to get out or at least attempt escape.
Heartwarming story
An Indian friend sent me this story which so gladdened my maternal heart. It is shared here so more mothers could feel appreciated.
Ninth Grader Ajunath Sindhu Vinayala of Trissur (Kerala), often heard his father brush his mother aside as “just a housewife. She does not work.” Ajunath was surprised because he never saw his mother not busy so he painted this picture (published with this article) depicting all the chores she did. His teacher sent it to the State govt office where it got selected as the cover for the 2021 gender budget document. The appreciative son with more of his pictures can be accessed on the Internet.
Almost all Sri Lankan mothers will agree with Cass that our sons and daughters are wonderfully grateful and caring people, with many living overseas but still visiting, transferring money and sending parcels of goodies and necessities. Bless them, we mothers/grandmothers chorus.
Features
Amunugama on Anagarika: A partial review

By Uditha Devapriya
In the course of his study of myths and legends, Bruce Kapferer observes that those who attempt to rationalise myths are as much in error as those who believe in their literal meaning. There are several points in his book with which I beg to differ, but I agree with this specific point. Myths have a logic and a life of their own, and any external compulsion to alter or rationalise them will be met with hostility. Kapferer’s other contention, that myths are continually being renewed and reborn, is also tenable. The narrative around which these myths revolve may stay the same, but the implications of such stories change from era to era. Millenarian platitudes about glorious pasts and histories, of utopic Edens before the Fall, whether in Buddhist or Christian societies, fall into that category.
I reflected on Kapferer when I reread Sarath Amunugama’s impressive book on Anagarika Dharmapala, The Lion’s Roar, the other day. Dharmapala has gone down as perhaps the most misunderstood national figure or figurehead in our history. For close to two centuries if not more, Sri Vikrama Rajasinghe got a bad press as well, but thanks to recent forays by Gananath Obeyesekere, we have come to understand and, as a nation, identify with the tragic figure that he was. Dharmapala, however, is more complex, because his writings and speeches lend themselves to a multiplicity of interpretations: out of necessity, he made it a point to speak differently to different people. Ultimately, I believe all national figures end up being misunderstood. Dharmapala was no different.
What Amunugama tries to do in The Lion’s Roar is to present Dharmapala in a new light. As one reads through his book, one realises how predictably he has been presented until now. Most contemporary assessments of Anagarika Dharmapala place him at the forefront of the Buddhist Revival of the late 19th century. Though, in later years, he broke ranks with the organisation which gave the revival its impetus, the Theosophical Society, he nevertheless maintained contacts with it. Sociologists and anthropologists have presented the Revival as having been led by an emergent, nascent Buddhist bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The latter were constantly frustrated in their efforts to join the ranks of the former, a point which more or less pitted them against foreign traders and minority groups.
Until now, social scientists have been content in casting Dharmapala as a messiah, of sorts, of this petty bourgeoisie. Dharmapala’s actions certainly did not endear him to the up-and-coming Sinhala bourgeoisie. Unlike his brothers Edmund and Charles, he was alienated from the many elite and bourgeois groups which formed the basis of later political associations, of which the most prominent would have to be the Ceylon National Congress. That may have been because of Dharmapala’s own background, which stood a tier or two below that of the Senanayakes and the Attygalles. Sarath Amunugama goes as far as to contend that the death of F. R. Senanayake in India closed the possibility of an open conflict between Dharmapala and these families. Yet even Senanayake’s death did not wholly foreclose these possibilities, as the many press campaigns against Dharmapala shows.
Is it accurate, then, to locate Dharmapala at that crucial juncture between the formation of the Theosophical Society, the beginning of the Buddhist Revival in the late 19th century, and the emergence of a weak but aspirant Buddhist petty bourgeoisie in the early 20th? This is how social scientists have generally viewed him, so far.
Dharmapala himself may not have been conscious of his role here. Yet as Regi Siriwardena eloquently put it once, “[t]o say that any thinker or leader served the interests of a particular class is not necessarily to say that he was conscious of doing so, still less that he was hired or commanded by that class.” The ultimatum of social scientists and anthropologists, hence, seems to be that he became the ideological vehicle of these groups, that as the latter’s attitudes to foreigners and minorities hardened, they saw in him a definitive “ancestor from antiquity.”
Amunugama attempts to shed new light on Dharmapala’s followers and acolytes by bringing to the foreground groups which have been excluded from most contemporary assessments of Dharmapala’s life. Prime among them are what Amunugama sees as “subaltern” groups, among whom he includes the Sinhala working class. This working class, he contends rather convincingly, were swept away from their roots into the cities, where they confronted a new and different social order.
As they became more aware of the conditions of their existence and sought to transform them, they began to encounter foreign traders and minority groups, hired by the colonial government to counter the growing tide of trade unionism and Sinhala proletarian discontent. It is against this backdrop that they saw Dharmapala as a saviour, and not just a saviour, but someone they could call their own.
This is, to be sure, an intriguing point. Yet how “subaltern” were these classes Amunugama associates with Dharmapala? Without splitting hairs too much, I think we must bear two points in mind. The first is that, until the formation of a Left movement in the 1930s, no political association, however radical, envisioned a Ceylon falling outside of the orbit of the British Empire. This was as true of bourgeois reformist associations as it was of nationalist ideologues. Whatever “subaltern group” in Sri Lanka at this juncture saw things differently, in contrast to their mobilisation by the Left after 1935. In that sense Dharmapala fulfilled a role, however limited, for these groups. The Marxists could not have been more different to his ideology, as their struggles on behalf of Indian Tamil plantation workers showed. But then Dharmapala was no Marxist, even if a scion of his family – Anil Moonesinghe – made a seminal contribution to the Left movement of the country.
The second point recalls an observation Gananath Obeyesekere once made in relation to Dharmapala and his disciples: namely, that their attitudes to the Other – which Amunugama dwells on at considerable length in his remarkable study – were paradoxically activated by their alienation from their social and kinship groups. In their quest for “identity affirmation”, the Dharmapalists sought a negative identity for themselves, in relation to the Other.
I think that more or less explains the Sinhala working class’s affinity for Dharmapala, at a time of rising anger against foreign traders and minority groups, including the Malayalis. Such anger cannot be condoned, especially when it transforms into racialist feelings. But it helps explain why, in the absence of an anti-imperialist Left movement in the country, these groups could gravitate to nationalist figures – and why even as key a representative of the Sinhala working class movement as A. E. Gunasinha could invoke him in his struggles.
Does this necessarily mean Dharmapala’s politics were not anti-imperialist, or in the least radical? I think the jury is still out there, though I believe that Dharmapala’s emphasis on industrialisation has been missed out by those who see only his ranting against other social groups and ethnicities. Dharmapala once counted among his defenders a highly unlikely figure: Yohan Devananda.
Writing in the Lanka Guardian, in response to Regi Siriwardena, Devananda contended that Dharmapala “did perform an essential historical function in rousing the national consciousness against the foreigner.” I do not know what to make of this assertion, given that for Dharmapala’s followers, “the foreigner” has come to include all groups deemed “alien” in the country. But there is no doubt that he did, at the end of the day, serve a function. The question that countless scholars have raised, which Amunugama tries to answer, is exactly in whose interests he served that function.
The writer is an international relations analyst, independent researcher, and freelance columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.
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