Features
Diyawanna: Divine court or palace of duplicity?
By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana
An actor is behind bars because of his untamed tongue and as our Editor pointed out with a touch of sarcasm: “Going to jail is a heroic deed only in the celluloid world” (‘Ranjan behind bars’; The Island, 14 January). However, the drama unfolding following that episode in the Diyawanna Chamber beggar’s belief! Some of our lawmakers do not seem to understand how the laws they enact are translated into action by the judiciary. The actor committed contempt of court and received a four-year sentence by the Supreme Court, the highest in the land, precluding any reversal by an appeal. The only escape route apparently is a Presidential pardon, a matter that is supposed to have been discussed by the puppet with the master puppeteer, just in jest it is claimed!
According to a news item in ‘The Island’ on 21 January, SJB MP Harin Fernando told Parliament recently that he would wear a black shawl in the Chamber until Ranjan Ramanayake received justice and had stated “Unlike those who wear the kurahan sataka in the chamber to show their family power in Parliament, I will wear a black shawl in the Chamber seeking justice. I was shocked when we heard that he would be dragged like a dog similar to a terrorist leader for criticizing the high and mighty powers of this country”.
Ramanayake, whilst being a state Minister, came out of Temple Trees and made a statement to the effect that the majority of judges and lawyers in the country were corrupt. Two private plaints forced the hand of the Attorney General to file action against him in the Supreme Court and hearings started during the ill-fated Yahapalana regime. There is video evidence that on at least three occasions Ramanayake repeated this allegation while coming out of court, irrespective of what happened inside court. Is it not an absolute shame that MP Fernando sought to hide behind parliamentary privilege to insult the judiciary further? This attack on the judiciary has to be seen in the context of the damage done to the judiciary by other actions of Ramanayake, who allegedly leaked taped-conversations amply demonstrate how he tried to influence judgements and the admission of Ranil Wickremesinghe that the FCID that operated from Temple Trees was not legally constituted.
Another news item in the same edition of The Island bstates that the Chief Opposition Whip, Kandy District MP Lakshman Kiriella told Parliament yesterday that MP Ramanayake had not criticised all members of the judiciary when he stated that some judges were corrupt. This makes matters even worse as it implies that the verdict of these three Supreme Court Judges was incorrect. Was it not one of the members of the Opposition that defended Ramanayake? If what Kiriella states is correct, one has to assume that either the defence counsel did not do his job properly or the judges completely disregarded facts as presented to Parliament by Kiriella. As it is very unlikely that he implied a bad defence one has to assume that he is blaming the judges. Just to support one of his colleagues, making insinuations against the judiciary is not what we expect from members of Parliament, especially one holding the position of Chief Opposition Whip.
These statements make one wonder whether these Members of Parliament are attempting to ‘elevate’ the Parliament to the status of a court above the Supreme Court: A Divine Court, perhaps!
Kiriella had gone on to say, “Ranjan Ramanayake’s sentence is a severe punishment and not proportionate to the offence he is said to have committed. For example, three months ago a judge in India levelled accusations against that country’s Chief Justice and said that the latter was corrupt. What was the punishment imposed on the former? He was fined one rupee. He declined to pay that rupee. Now, the matter has been postponed.”
It is interesting that Kiriella is quoting precedents from India, very conveniently overlooking what happened during their Yahapalana regime. If I remember right, there was jubilation when Ven Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera was jailed for six years for contempt of court. Certainly, these justice-seeking gentlemen did not utter a word, either inside or outside Parliament, when that harsh punishment was meted out to that monk.
I, for one, had been critical of the behaviour of this Thero and other members of BBS. In a piece titled ‘Men in Robes’ (The Island, 14 October 2014) I commented: “It is not indulging in politics that we should be concerned with; it is the disgraceful way they behave and the demeaning language they use. Can you imagine a person who is supposed to be following in the footsteps of the ‘Compassionate One’, leading an attack on a safe-house giving shelter to refugees? Don’t they understand Buddhists extend compassion to all living beings, even enemies?”
However, having felt that the sentence on Gnanasara Thera was too harsh I inquired from a relation of mine who is a retired judge of the Supreme Court. He agreed that the sentence was far too harsh and commented that he was not aware of such a long sentence for contempt of court anywhere in the world. Mind you, Gananasara Thera never repeated his allegations unlike Ramanayake who, therefore, may have got a longer sentence.
Those who did not make an issue of the unfairness of the punishment meted out to a Buddhist priest but are now speaking for a colleague who repeated the offence he had been charged with—making derogatory statements about the judiciary—only demonstrate their duplicity.
Features
Inside the ancient Indian ritual where humans become gods
For nearly 300 years, a family’s ancestral house in India’s southern state of Kerala has been the stage for theyyam, an ancient folk ritual.
Rooted in ancient tribal traditions, theyyam predates Hinduism while weaving in Hindu mythology. Each performance is both a theatrical spectacle and an act of devotion, transforming the performer into a living incarnation of the divine.
The predominantly male performers in Kerala and parts of neighbouring Karnataka embody deities through elaborate costumes, face paint, and trance-like dances, mime and music.
Each year, nearly a thousand theyyam performances take place in family estates and venues near temples across Kerala, traditionally performed by men from marginalised castes and tribal communities.
It is often called ritual theatre for its electrifying drama, featuring daring acts like fire-walking, diving into burning embers, chanting occult verses, and prophesying.
Historian KK Gopalakrishnan has celebrated his family’s legacy in hosting theyyam and the ritual’s vibrant traditions in a new book, Theyyam: An Insider’s Vision.
The theyyams are performed in the courtyard of Mr Gopalakrishnan’s ancient joint family house (above) in Kasaragod district. Hundreds of people gather to witness the performances.[BBC]
The theyyam season in Kerala typically runs from October to April, aligning with the post-monsoon and winter months. During this time, numerous venues near temples and family estates, especially in northern Kerala districts like Kannur and Kasaragod, host performances.
The themes of performances at Mr Gopalakrishnan’s house include honouring a deified ancestor, venerating a warrior-hunter deity, and worshipping tiger spirits symbolising strength and protection.
Before the performance honouring a local goddess, a ritual is conducted in a nearby forest, revered as the deity’s earthly home. [BBC]
Following an elaborate ceremony (above), the “spirit of the goddess” is then transported to the house.
Mr Gopalakrishnan is a member of the Nambiar community, a matrilineal branch of the Nair caste, where the senior-most maternal uncle oversees the arrangements. If he is unable to fulfill this role due to age or illness, the next senior male member steps in.
Women in the family, especially the senior-most among them, play a crucial role in the rituals.[BBC]
They ensure traditions are upheld, prepare for the rituals, and oversee arrangements inside the house.
“They enjoy high respect and are integral to maintaining the family’s legacy,” says Mr Gopalakrishnan.
The spectacle is a blend of loud cries, fiery torches, and intense scenes from epics or dances. [BBC]
Performers sometimes bear the physical toll of these daring feats, with burn marks or even the loss of a limb.
“Fire plays a significant role in certain forms of theyyam, symbolising purification, divine energy, and the transformative power of the ritual. In some performances, the theyyam dancer interacts directly with fire, walking through flames or carrying burning torches, signifying the deity’s invincibility and supernatural abilities,” says Mr Gopalakrishnan.
“The use of fire adds a dramatic and intense visual element, further heightening the spiritual atmosphere of the performance and illustrating the deity’s power over natural forces.”
Features
Death of tusker sparks serious conservation concerns
By Ifham Nizam
In a tragic incident, Deeghadanthu, the largest tusker in Kalawewa National Park, fell victim to electrocution on the night of November 27th, marking another devastating loss in Sri Lanka’s conservation history. This incident reflects a recurring tragedy in the region, where famed tuskers such as Barana, Revatha, and Walagamba have also met untimely deaths over the years.
Habitat degradation and development pressures
The Kalawewa National Park, renowned for its high population of tuskers, has faced severe ecological stress due to poorly planned development projects.
Supun Lahiru Prakash, an authority on elephants and environmental conservation, is of the view that “the failure to account for environmental factors in impact assessments for projects like the Moragahakanda Irrigation Project has confined elephants to small forest patches, disrupting their natural feeding behaviours.” The presence of invasive plant species and cattle grazing within the park further exacerbates this crisis, he claims.
Human-Elephant conflict
According to Supun, who has studied elephant mortality trends extensively, the three main causes of elephant deaths—electrocution, gunshots, and the use of explosives like Hakka Patas—account for over 60 percent of fatalities. “The lack of collaboration among authorities, including the Department of Wildlife Conservation, the Ceylon Electricity Board, and law enforcement, is evident from the repeated electrocutions of tuskers in the Kalawewa region,” he says.
Despite the existence of a National Action Plan for Mitigation of Human-Elephant Conflict, implementation remains stalled. Supun points out that “each year, we lose hundreds of elephants and dozens of human lives to this conflict, yet the government has failed to prioritise this critical issue.”
Economic and cultural value of Elephants
Elephants play a vital role not only in biodiversity but also in Sri Lanka’s economy. In 2024, the country’s national parks generated Rs. 2 billion in just the first quarter, with elephants being the primary draw for tourists. Supun notes, “The overall economic value of a single wild elephant to Sri Lanka’s tourism is close to Rs. 4 million annually. Yet, we continue to lose these iconic animals without accountability or actionable conservation strategies.”
Lessons from Deeghadanthu’s legacy
Supun draws parallels between Sri Lanka and other countries like Kenya, where elephants like the legendary tusker Ahmed were given 24-hour protection by government-deployed rangers. “Deeghadanthu’s death underscores the urgent need for Sri Lanka to adopt a proactive approach to wildlife conservation, similar to global best practices,” he says.
The Department of Wildlife Conservation currently operates with less than 60 percent of its approved workforce, leaving vast areas unprotected. Supun warns that “unless significant reforms are made, the future of Sri Lanka’s wildlife and its conservation efforts remains bleak.”
Deeghadanthu’s untimely demise serves as a sobering reminder of the urgent need for systemic change. If lessons can be learned from this tragedy, it could pave the way for stronger conservation policies and a renewed commitment to protecting Sri Lanka’s wildlife heritage.
The Island
reliably learns that strict action is on the cards for the Director General of Wildlife Conservation Department.
Features
The President’s Envisioning of a Post-Racial Sri Lanka
by Rajan Philips
If President AKD’s inaugural Policy Statement at the opening of parliament 10 days ago was mellifluous in its delivery, it was also meticulous in detail, and sweeping in its themes and vistas. He literally spoke with words and numbers effortlessly flowing, but without notes or the help of the teleprompter even though he had the text in front of him. It was not soaring oratory but captivating eloquence. More like NM in English; and Bernard Soysa, given the pirivena roots of his education, in both Sinhala and English. Yet as an old Peradeniya friend of mine told me last week, what NM couldn’t do AKD has done. And in more ways than one.
The subtitles in the English text of the Policy Statement are quite revelatory. The middle of the speech, taking nearly half its length, is all about the economy. Naturally so and the economic themes and content are indicative of both the government’s approach to stabilizing and growing the economy, and the President’s studiousness in mastering the file. There is no other practical alternative to abiding by the agreements with the IMF entered into by the previous government, while looking for better agreements in what is left of debt restructuring and, more importantly, for restructuring the economy on a sustainable growth path.
Those who are chiding the government for going along with the IMF would also have been the first people to lambaste it for radical irresponsibility if it had chosen to repudiate the agreement. There are still uncertainties and challenges ahead, but as I wrote last week, there could not have been a better political start for the post Ranil-Rajapaksa era than what is being initiated by President AKD and his NPP government.
The start is even more impressive when one looks at the President’s thematic assertions on giving no room for racism and on building national unity; accepting a multi-party system, restoring the dignity of parliament and building a democratic state; and reforming the public service, affirming the rule of law, and delivering justice to victims of crime no matter who the perpetrators of crimes are. Somewhat of a mundane theme amidst all the lofty ones is about cleaning Sri Lanka. Mundane, but a very crucial and long overdue cleaning initiative.
There are those who are ready to smirk at what they see as the JVP’s fatefulness in having to uphold and abide by a political system that it once strove to overthrow. But such self-amusements are rather superficial, for the real irony is that the JVP is now having to save and stabilize not only the economy but also the political system both of which were undone by the same forces that once unleashed state violence to protect them from the JVP. Equally, there is no need for the JVP to show its democratic credentials to anyone in the west when western democracies are electing the real antichrists of democracy such as Donald J. Trump.
What is strikingly unique about these themes and their contents are their sincerity and seriousness that should be apparent to anyone who would view President AKD’s Policy Statement in a historical perspective and in comparison to presidential declarations and statements that we have had to suffer through in the last 20 years.
No Room for Racism
Of all the themes that President AKD touched on in his Policy Statement, the most path breaking thrust is in the commitment to end racism in Sri Lanka. It needs to be said that Sri Lankans – Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, do not belong to different races in the biological sense. That race is a social construct and not a biological reality is now universally accepted except for flat-earth counterparts in social studies.
In Sri Lanka, the tradition of identifying Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, not to mention the castes among the former two, as different races was conclusively put to rest, at least among social scientists and progressive activists, by the path breaking 1979 seminar on “Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka” organized by the Social Scientists Association. Kudos for that belongs exclusively to Kumari Jayawardena and Charles Abeysekera.
Yet the term race is commonly used to describe the two (Sinhala and Tamil) linguistic groups and the two religious (Moors and Malays) groups. Especially in the Sinhala and Tamil languages in which the same term(s) is used overlappingly to identify caste, ethnicity and race. Race and racism are also political terms that are universally used to describe and denounce discrimination based on differences of colour, place of origin, language and religion.
The President makes it clear that his assertion that there is no room for racism is really an accusation that there has been too much room for ‘racism’ for too long in Sri Lanka – in the shaping of the country’s political framework and its power structures “along regional, ethnic, or religious lines.” And he goes on “such political divisions inevitably resulted in growing alienation among communities.”
This is quite a perceptive understanding because in many political societies pre-existing social and cultural differences aggravated political conflicts between communities. In Sri Lanka, it has been the other way around. Ethnic differences over every aspect of politics led to a breakdown of relationships between communities. Political differences spanned the entire spectrum of the state and its responsibilities – on citizenship, language rights, representation, and access to land, employment and education.
And the President’s dialectic that racism provokes counter-racism, and “racism in one part feeds and strengthens nationalism in another,” brings to mind a rather combative version of the same sentiment by TULF leader A. Amirthalingam in his maiden speech in parliament, as a 29 year old Federal Party (ITAK) MP in 1956, that it is “communalism of the majority that begets communalism of the minority.”
President AKD is striking a remarkably conciliatory note, and without pointing fingers at this or that community he is drawing on the electoral sweep in which “all communities across all provinces have trusted us and granted us this power.” He is also firm in assuring that his government will not allow “a resurgence of divisive racist politics” or any “form of religious extremism to take root again in Sri Lanka.” And again that no one “will be allowed to use nationalist or religious rhetoric as a means to gain political power in this country.”
Flights of Oratory
Sri Lankan politics has seen flights of oratory extolling national unity and equality for the first 20 years after independence. SWRD Bandaranaike waxed eloquent at the State Council that contributed to JR Jayewardene’s original bill on the national languages being changed to include both Sinhala and Tamil as official languages. Even though he would repudiate the original arrangement as Prime Minister in 1956, SWRD was never unclear about what was needed for Sri Lanka’s unity.
He went poetic envisaging an island that would someday be a “painted ship on a painted ocean.” Colvin R de Silva was polemical and blunter in presaging that with two languages there would be one country, but with one only there could be two of them. NM was inflexible in his stance on the parity of languages, even though it may have cost the Left an election or two, but it held the country together as both Amirthalingam and AJ Wilson would later acknowledge in their obituaries of NM.
There was more of them in the late 1960s. GG Ponnambalam, the father of fifty-fifty, was sincere and genuine when he perorated in parliament that “through fair weather and foul, in sunshine and in rain, I have held aloft the ideal of a united Lanka.” In fact, “from Point Pedro to Point Dondra,” was Ponnambalam’s rhetorical rejoinder to what he called the peninsularity in the idea of Tamil federalism. To sum it up, at the 50th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence, President Chandrika Kumaratunga acknowledge on behalf of everyone that “we have failed in the essential task of nation building.”
Now there is a chance for the remaking of a broken nation. President Dissanayake seems convinced of the great opportunity he, his government and the new parliament have, and he seems determined to make good use of it. The rhetorical flourishes of the past were all sincere expressions of individual political leaders. But none of them drew on electoral support from every part of the country and could be backed by the power of the state to the extent that President AKD and the NPP now seem to have.
Put another way, what AKD and his gallant team are manifesting is an organic possibility and not a synthetic experiment. In the past, resolving the inter-ethnic or the national question was attempted primarily through top-down initiatives and consociational (relating to or denoting a political system formed by the cooperation of different social groups on the basis of shared power) agreements. Now the initiative is equally grass-root at the electoral level and committedly government-led at the state level. This new fusion has never been experienced before.
There is authenticity as well, but it is the authenticity of the progressive kind and not the chauvinistic variety of old. So, there is plenty of room for optimism. The prospects are not only pleasing, but those in power are also not vile. At the same time, there is no denying the pitfalls ahead even though there is none that is obvious now. For caution, just look at the fall of the United States of America. From the cloudy heights of post-racial America that Barak Obama briefly heralded to the racial pits of Donald Trump. Fortunately for Sri Lanka, it may be that the country has had its share of Trumps already and is now ready for a new beginning.
-
Sports6 days ago
A lot at stake in Sri Lanka – South Africa Tests
-
News4 days ago
Dialog Smart Home Celebrates Continued Partnership as Gold Sponsor for Kadella 2024
-
Editorial2 days ago
Greed for diplomatic appointments
-
Business5 days ago
Current deflation situation would not adversely impact economy – CBSL Governor
-
News5 days ago
First-ever floating solar photovoltaic power plants operational
-
News4 days ago
Ex-Northern Governor: Deployments prerogative of armed forces
-
News23 hours ago
AKD gladdens Ranil’s heart
-
Editorial5 days ago
Shadow education in spotlight