Features

Brilliance at Royal College Colombo during the principalships of Major HL Reed and LHW Sampson

Published

2 years ago

2024/09/15

Thilina Walpola

Royal College

By Jayantha Gunasekera
President’s Counsel
Vice President, Royal College Union

Royal College Colombo-7 was formed by the British Government in 1835, primarily for the education of the children of the British administrators.The first principal was Rev. Joseph Marsh, (1835-38) and later Dr Barcroft Boake (1842-1870).

DL Seneviratne, a current vice president of the Royal College Union, took the trouble to visit the place where the then Colombo Academy and Royal College were located. It is a matter of regret that many Royalists did not bother to acquire and read the book edited by DL.

Major HL Reed, MA, was the principal of Royal College Colombo from 1920 to 1932. Major Reed had as his vice principal, LHW Sampson, BA, (1932-38) who succeeded him as principal.

Among some of the members of the staff whom the present generation of Royalists are familiar with were my Maths master, MM Kulasekeram, B.Sc. (Mathematics and Physics), better known as “Joule;” Cameron Samarasinghe (Bappa), who was my Chemistry master, and who was vice principal during my school days; Major LV Gooneratne, JP, ED, (1893-1971) who later became the first mayor of Dehiwala-Mt Lavinia Municipal Council. He had two sons at Royal, Jed and Puggy; TM Weerasinghe (Penda), because he walked like a pendulum; RC Edwards (Bobby); and JEV Pieris (Bada Pieris).

Of the prefects during this period whom I’m familiar with, were George Chitty, QC,

who was retained by the then government to lead the Attorney-General’s team in the prosecution of the SWRD Bandaranaike Assassination Case; OL de Kretser, former Supreme Court Judge; AHC de Silva, QC, RGC Pereira, son of RL Pereira, KC, who was a senior criminal lawyer; RGC Pereira outshone his father during his father’s lifetime, and who was to be elevated as Queen’s Counsel, but for his early demise. Because of differences he had with his eminent father he lived in a suite in the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo.

Another prefect was PH Wickremesinghe who entered the Indian Civil Service, who later transferred to the Ceylon Civil Service, became the Chief Government Valuer here and retired in that post. PH Wickremesinghe and his brother RH Wickremesinghe, were both civil servants.

Then, there was police DIG CC Dissanayake, better known as Jungle Dissanayake, who was the father of my classmate, TDSA Dissanayake, former ambassador of Sri Lanka in Indonesia; police DIG SA Dissanayake, better known as Jingle Dissanayake, who later became the IGP. Jungle and Jingle were brothers but were at daggers drawn; Major TF Jayawardene, cousin of former President JR Jayewardene; JL Jinendradasa, B.Sc., who functioned as principal of Nalanda Vidyalaya; Surgeon LDC Austin.

My close friend Eric Labrooy functioned as a magistrate, and was later chairman of the Colombo Apothecaries Company. Eric converted to Buddhism, and was also a devoted follower of God Kataragama. He visited Kataragama Devale almost every month. He was a chain smoker, and died at age 83-year with a cigarette between his fingers. Two brothers, ALS Sirimanne and my father’s contemporary, DQM Sirimanne, functioned as judges of the Supreme Court.

Dudley KG De Silva (1954-66), succeeded JCA Corea (1946-53), who was the first Sri Lankan principal of Royal College Colombo. Corea and Dudley were the principals during my career at Royal College Colombo.

ER de Fonseka, formerly of the Attorney-General’s Department, later functioned as a Commissioner of Assize. His daughter is a lawyer.

RG Senanayake (1911-70) a barrister and advocate, son of FR Senanayake (1882-1926), was the trade and commerce minister during the period 1952-56 in the Dudley Senanayake and Sir John Kotelawala cabinets and also held the same portfolio from 1956-60 in the SWRD Bandaranaike cabinet. FR, if not for his early demise at 43-years, would possibly have been our first prime minister. He was the elder brother of the Rt Hon. DS Senanayake, PC. Both, FR and DS, were incarcerated during the riots of 1915.

HTM Gunasekera was head prefect of Royal College Colombo. He had three brothers, UN, Chandra and Padma at Royal.

EFC Pereira, my Greek master, had as his classmates, Daya Hewavitharne and IGP SA (Jingle) Dissanayake.

DQM Sirimanne was a criminal lawyer at Balapitiya. He joined as a magistrate, and was later elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court.

JP Obeysekera, lawyer, who piloted an aircraft from England to Colombo, was the son of Maha Mudaliyar Obeysekera. JP’s wife, Siva Obeysekera, was a cabinet minister in Sirimavo RD Bandaranaike’s government of 1970-77. Their daughter is married to Dijen de Saram, son of Colonel FC de Saram. They lived in an enormous house opposite Royal College Colombo, named the Maligawa.

RES de Zoysa, father of the late Punyakanthie; DIG LI de Silva, Thoracic Surgeon ATS Paul, brother of Professor Milroy Paul, Dr GCI de Silva, owner of McCarthy Private Hospital, nephew of Peter de Abrew who gifted Musaeus College, Colombo-7, were classmates.

Mohamed Thahir Sameer (1914-89), a Surveyor-Inspector who was promoted to a special post as Superintendent in the Municipal Engineer’s Department at the Colombo Municipal Council, was a Group Leader and Acting Staff Officer in the Rescue Service in Havelock Town during WW2. He was nominated by the Ceylon government to attend the three week No. 9 Specialist Instructor Course in the Civil Defence Specialist School in Bombay, India from June-28, 1943.

He carried a letter dated June-19, 1943 from the Civil Defence Commissioner OE Goonetilleke (later Governor-General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, GCMG, KCVO, KBE, KStJ) appreciating any assistance given to him. MT Sameer was a prefect at Royal College in 1934. His son, author and company secretary, Firoze Sameer, lent me the details without which I would not have been able to write this piece.

Pararajasingam “Park” Nadesan, CMG, OBE, of the Ceylon Civil Service was the secretary to the Rt Hon. Sir John Kotelawala, PC, CH, KBE, KStJ . He lived close to my father’s house in Flower Road, Colombo-7. Nadesan was the grandson of Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, Kt., MLC, CCS, MRAS(CB), Registrar-General of Ceylon (1898), and the uncle of Jayantha M. Swaminathan, Partner of Messrs Julius & Creasy, Attorneys-at-Law.

Pieter Keuneman, lawyer and minister of Housing and Construction (1970-77) from the Communist Party. He was the son of a Royalist and puisne judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Arthur Eric Keuneman, KC.

Dr LSC Mendis, a private practitioner, issued the death certificate stating that Mrs Shirley Boonwaat died of natural causes, when in fact she was shot dead by her husband, the Burmese Ambassador WKH Sao Boonwaat, in their residence Carlton Lodge, now the Capri Club, fronted by Turret Road and Green Path in Colombo-7, on October 15, 1967. She was having an affair with a singer/entertainer.

SJ Kadirgamar, QC, whose father too was a lawyer. SJ’s brother, Lakshman Kadirgamar, PC, was the second Sri Lankan president of the Oxford Union. Lakshman was a cabinet minister and held the portfolio of foreign affairs in Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s cabinet.

A lawyer who was the shining light in this group of Queen’s Counsel HW Jayewardene, younger brother to President JR Jayewardene. HW was the president of the Bar Association. He confined his work only to the Court of Appeal. His son, Dr Hiran Jayewardene, was chairman of the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA). His elder daughter married Royalist Chandresar Abhayaratne, a current vice president of the RCU, and his younger daughter married Chartered Accountant Wijewardene.

Shirley Amarasinghe of the Ceylon Civil Service retired as a permanent secretary, and later worked for many years in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

LSB Perera too was a civil servant, and, after retirement, was appointment as high commissioner of Sri Lanka in Canada.

Tissa Ratnatunga entered the Ceylon Civil Service. He married the eldest daughter of Neil Hewavitharne. He retired as additional permanent secretary. Tissa’s son, the renowned Sinha Ratnatunga, attorney-at-law, functions as Director cum Editor of The Sunday Times newspaper.

Another distinguished civil servant was Walwin A de Silva, brother of Dr Colvin R de Silva. Colvin was a leading criminal lawyer who successfully defended cricketer M Sathasivam. Walwin, after retirement took to politics. Walwin was a member of Parliament in 1950, and a vice chancellor of the University of Colombo, in 1968. His son, Manik de Silva, has been the editor of the Daily News and Sunday Island newspaper for many years. Manik was a close to my classmate, Upali Wijewardene. Manik too is a distinguished Royalist.

Colonel FC de Saram, who played cricket for Royal also played for the Oxford University. He passed out as a barrister but took oaths as a proctor since he had to manage a leading firm of attorneys, Messrs DL & F de Saram in Colombo. It is strange that he sent his son, Dijen de Saram to S. Thomas’ College, Mt Lavinia, Royal College’s rival!

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

20 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

20 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

20 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.