Midweek Review

Does Sri Lanka contribute to global intellectual expansion of Social Sciences and Humanities?

Published

4 months ago

2025/10/29

Let me begin with a confession. Even though I have been conventionally located within social sciences in terms of training and university location, I have never been a discipline or subject puritan throughout my career. As a result, I have transgressed broad disciplinary borders and specific subject domains in search of what interested me. This has taken me from sociology to history, philosophy and bodies of theory across disciplines and more recently to creative writing including poetry and translation of literature. Much of this is beyond my formal training in social anthropology, but one can – and I believe one actually should – venture beyond the ramparts of one’s training.

This preface is to offer a simple explanation as a point of departure for the ideas I want to present here. From this eclectic – and what has been an adventurous academic background, I want to raise very briefly two broad, but fundamental questions today on the intellectual personality of both social sciences and humanities as they manifest in our country. These are questions I have raised both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia for well over two decades:

A) Does the research we produced locally in these disciplines make an impact on the corresponding global or regional discourses? For example, does Sri Lankan sociology, political science, literature, cultural studies and so on make a difference in the ways in which these disciplines work and think elsewhere in the world?

B) To what extent has theory and philosophy produced by our social sciences and humanities, which ideally should be so fundamental to these disciplines, impacted global discourses? Again, to simplify, have Sri Lankan social sciences and humanities taken a lead at any time in the intellectual histories of the world in theorising these disciplines more broadly as have bodies of knowledge that range from Marxism to Structuralism to Poststructuralism, all of which emanated from the West at different historical times which we have embraced without much reflection?

While the responses ought to be clear, I am not going to answer these questions. Instead, I will place several related issues in context and let you think and make up your own minds – but hopefully founded on concrete bases, as the social science tradition I come from insists.

Does the Research Produced Locally Have a Global or Regional Discursive Impact?

Until about the early to mid-1970s, at least where the University of Peradeniya-based social sciences were concerned, the work of scholars such as Ralph Pieris, Gananath Obeyesekere, Leslie Guanwardena among a few others, did write for us as well as for the world. Their work had an impact on the ways in which historical sociology was to be conducted; how Theravada Buddhism might be studied as a distinct category through its practice rather than simply via precepts; and the ways in which ethnicity and similar ethno-cultural markers could be seen – or might be absent – in ancient historical sources and in latter day historiography, and how these would impact identity formation in the present.

All this was local research produced by social science scholars working in our country at the time. And their work was read across the world in their own disciplines and beyond. More importantly, not only were they read, but they contributed to scholarly discourses beyond our shores.

Fast forward to the present.

Does this happen now? Today, we certainly have many more scholars in these disciplines in universities, practitioners beyond universities and almost limitless forums for publishing locally. Universities, faculties and even departments run journals. But do we speak to the world convincingly through our research? Do we even speak sense to ourselves based on what we do? Why is it that we still often talk about the theoretical contributions of ‘dead white men’ in these journals – and that too, centuries after their demise and newer ideas have emerged and overtaken theirs – in the most simplistic terms without reference to any new sources or ideas that might allow their thinking to be reinterpreted?

This situation comes about as the result of three inherent problems. One, the lapses in the academic networks in which we have become a part. These networks decide where we present our ideas abroad and who we invite to our deliberations here. What if these networks are spurious and mediocre? How would these interactions impact knowledge production? Two, there is no intellectually serious encouragement from universities or other entities within the country to produce core research in social sciences and humanities. The questionable and school-like award schemes adopted by many universities and conferences to offer recognition to so-called best papers’ will not pave the way for this. It is precisely this lack that led to the brain drain of the 1960s and 1970s which significantly impacted social sciences and humanities, a situation from which we have not yet fully recovered. Three, this also results from very insular and often non-reflexive and non-critical writing appearing locally without offering core research outcomes through which comparable social systems or analytical domains can be read elsewhere in the world. This is also directly linked to the space that becomes available to take our writing to the world outside – basically where and how we publish and how that knowledge circulates. Will this kind of situation allow us to be leaders in global knowledge production?

Does Sri Lankan Theory and Philosophy in Social Sciences and Humanities have a Global Impact?

I am personally not aware of theoretical or philosophical contributions from Sri Lankan social sciences and humanities in recent times that have or could contribute to theory-building, methodological fine-tuning or conceptualization in these disciplines at a regional or global scale. The reason is that we have become mere followers and imitators of borrowed bodies of theory and other forms of abstract thinking rather than being inventors of core bodies of knowledge ourselves, based on our histories, experiences, research and thinking. We continue to be blinded by the false colonial legacy of the alleged ‘universality’ of theory and philosophy. In our country and elsewhere in South Asia, it almost seems that the abstract thinking we profess today have to be imported from the west for our disciplines to survive and thrive.

It is in this context, but with reference to India that Prathama Banerjee, Aditya Nigam and Rakesh Pandey have observed in their important essay, ‘The Work of Theory Thinking across Traditions’ (2016), “theory appears as a ready-made body of philosophical thought, produced in the West …” while “the more theory-inclined among us simply pick the latest theory off-the-shelf and ‘apply’ it to our context, notwithstanding its provincial European origin, for we believe that ‘theory’ is by deﬁnition universal.”

Though on a different intellectual trajectory, this is also what Dipesh Chakrabarty attempted to argue in his 2008 book, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. He hoped to show his readers the limitations of western social science when they attempt to explain the historical experiences of political modernity in South Asia. However, it was not his intention to reject western thought completely. Instead, he wanted to renew western and particularly European thought ‘from and for the margins.’ It was a matter of bringing in diverse histories from marginalized regions when it came to global knowledge production. That is, to count knowledges and historical and political experiences of South Asia, Africa, Latin America and other such marginalised regions in the production of knowledge for the world.

Is it not this same blindness to the limitations of theory and absence of innovation in constructing knowledge in general, and theoretical knowledge in particular, that also prevails in social science and humanities classrooms in our universities and in related discourses beyond? That is, we are trained to be intellectually subservient and inferior, and be mere followers, not innovators and inventors. So, how can any disciplinary domain thrive and produce serious knowledge for the world in such conditions? My young friend Prof. Renny Thomas from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research – Bhopal, and I have attempted to address this issue in our forthcoming book to be published in December this year, Decolonial Keywords: South Asian Thoughts and Attitudes.

In it, we have provided space for thirty South Asian scholars from across disciplines in social sciences and humanities to “discusse[s] words and ideas from a variety of regional languages, ranging from Sinhala to Hebrew Malayalam” encapsulating “the region’s languages and its vast cultural landscape, crossing national borders.” Each encyclopedic-entry-like chapter “reiterates specific attitudes, ways of seeing and methods of doing that are embedded in the historical and contemporary experiences of the region” keeping in mind “the contexts of their production and how their meanings might have changed at different historical moments.

Crucially, the volume explores “if these words and concepts can infuse a certain intellectual rigour into reinventing social sciences and humanities in the region and beyond.” In short, we are initiating a fairly comprehensive and culturally, linguistically and politically inclusive effort at theory-building and conceptual fine-tuning based on South Asian experiences that might be able to speak to the world in the same way schools of thought in politically dominant regions of the world have done so far to us. This is a matter of decolonising our disciplines.

When Sri Lankan social sciences and humanities thoughtlessly embrace knowledges imported in conditions of inequal power relations, it can never produce a forum or discourse from which we can speak to the world with authority. Renny Thomas and I have made an initial and self-conscious effort to literally and metaphorically turn the tables on theory-building and conceptualisation in social sciences and humanities in South Asia in our favor.

Nevertheless, our aim is to do this without succumbing to crude and parochial forms of nativism that are also politically powerful in the region including in Sri Lanka. I flagged this example to show both what is possible and what is necessary if we are truly keen to infuse power into the discourses we author.

As I said at the outset, I did not answer the two questions I posed. But when I pose these questions, I do not wish to abrogate my share of the responsibility. I am sure at another time in our country’s intellectual history, I may have been part of the problem too. But I continued to reflect. I continued to look for ways to act and search for similarly inclined people to create a critical mass who might be able to make changes. The book I referred to earlier is one clear outcome of these explorations. Another is the PhD theory course I co-designed and co-taught with my colleague Ravi Kumar at South Asian University titled, ‘.’ Its sole purpose, while teaching theory, was to look at regional knowledge sources across history to build a body of theory and analytical categories to read our social systems.

I hope the related issues I placed in context would lead readers to think through these issues on their own. One can also disregard my thinking in preference to one’s own comfort zones. Interestingly, whenever I talk about these issues, the polemical title of Kishore Mahbubani’s 1998 book, Can Asians Think? often comes to my mind. In this context, I want to ask from colleagues, friends and former students in Sri Lankan social sciences and humanities, why we are so reluctant to think? Why are we so lackluster and backward in creating knowledge not just for ourselves but for the world as well? My fear is, if we continue along this path, we will always remain in the margins in the worlds of knowledge.

(This essay is adapted from the keynote address titled, ‘Social Sciences and Humanities: Does Sri Lanka Contribute to the Global Intellectual Expansion of Disciplines?’ delivered at the inauguration session of the ‘Annual Research Symposium 2025’ of the University of Colombo on 28th October 2025)

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Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

Published

3 days ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

In September 1939, as Europe descended once more into catastrophe, E. H. Carr published The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Twenty years had separated the two great wars—twenty years to reflect, to reconstruct, to restrain. Yet reflection proved fragile. Carr wrote with unsentimental clarity: once the enemy is crushed, the “thereafter” rarely arrives. The illusion that power can come first and morality will follow is as dangerous as the belief that morality alone can command power. Between those illusions, nations lose themselves.

His warning hovers over the present war in Iran.

The “thereafter” has long haunted American interventions—after Afghanistan, after Iraq, after Libya. The enemy can be dismantled with precision; the aftermath resists precision. Iran is not a small theater. It is a civilization-state with a geography three times larger than Iraq. At its southern edge lies the Strait of Hormuz, narrow in width yet immense in consequence. Geography does not argue; it compels.

Long before Carr, in the quiet anxiety of the eighteenth century, James Madison, principal architect of the Constitution, warned that war was the “true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” War concentrates authority in the name of urgency. Madison insisted that the power to declare war must rest with Congress, not the president—so that deliberation might restrain impulse. Republics persuade themselves that emergency powers are temporary. History rarely agrees.

Then, at 2:30 a.m., the abstraction becomes decision.

Donald Trump declares war on Iran. The announcement crosses continents before markets open in Asia. Within twenty-four hours, Ali Khamenei, who ruled for thirty-seven years, is killed. The President calls him one of history’s most evil figures and presents his death as an opening for the Iranian people.

In exile, Reza Pahlavi hails the moment as liberation. In less than forty-eight hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps collapses under overwhelming air power. A regime that endured decades falls swiftly. Military efficiency appears absolute. Yet efficiency does not resolve legitimacy.

The joint strike with Israel is framed as necessary and pre-emptive. Retaliation follows across the Gulf. The architecture of energy trade becomes fragile. Shipping routes are recalculated. Markets respond before diplomacy finds its language.

It is measured in the price of petrol in Colombo. In the bus fare in Karachi. In the rising cost of cooking gas in Dhaka. It is heard in the anxious voice of a migrant worker in Doha calling home to Kandy, asking whether contracts will be renewed, whether flights will continue, whether wages will be delayed. It is calculated in foreign reserves already strained, in currencies that tremble at rumor, in budgets forced to choose between subsidy and solvency.

Zaara was the breadwinner of her house in Sri Lanka. Her husband had been unemployed for years. At last, he secured an opportunity to travel to Israel as a foreign worker—like many Sri Lankans who depend on employment in the Middle East. It was to be their turning point: a small house repaired, debts reduced, dignity restored.

Now she lowers her eyes when she speaks. For Zaara, geopolitics is not theory. It is fear measured in distance—between a construction site abroad and a village waiting at home.

The war in Iran has shattered calculations that once felt practical. Nations like Sri Lanka now require strategic foresight to navigate unfolding realities. Reactive responses—whether to natural disasters or external shocks like this conflict—can cripple economies far faster than gradual pressures. Disruptions to energy imports, migrant remittances, and foreign reserves show how distant wars ripple into daily lives.

War among great powers is debated in think tanks. Its consequences are lived in markets—and in quiet kitchens where uncertainty sits heavier than hunger.

The conflict does not unfold in isolation. It enters the strategic calculus of China and Russia, both attentive to precedent. Power projected beyond the Western hemisphere reshapes perceptions in the Eastern theater. Iran’s transformation intersects directly with broader alignments. In 2021, Beijing and Tehran signed a twenty-five-year strategic agreement. By 2025, China was purchasing the majority of Iran’s exported oil at discounted rates. Energy underwrote strategy. That continuity has been disrupted. Yet strategic relationships do not vanish; they adjust.

In Winds of Change, my new book, I reproduce Nicholas Spykman’s 1944 two-theater confrontation map—Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War. Spykman distinguished maritime power from amphibian projection. Control of the Rimland determined balance. Then, the United States fought across two vast theaters. Today, Europe remains unsettled through Ukraine, the Pacific simmers over Taiwan and the South China Sea, Latin America remains sensitive, and the Middle East has been abruptly transformed. The architecture of multi-theater tension reappears.

At this juncture, the reflections of Marwan Bishara acquire weight. America’s ultimate power, he argues, resides in deterrence, not in the habitual use of force. Power, especially when shared, stabilizes. Force, when used with disregard for international law, breeds instability and humiliation. Arrogance creates enemies and narrows judgment. It is no surprise that many Americans themselves believe the United States should not act alone.

America’s strength does not rest solely in its military reach. Its economy constitutes roughly one-third of global output and generates close to 40 percent of the world’s research and development. Structural power—economic, technological, institutional—has historically underwritten deterrence. When force becomes the primary instrument, influence risks becoming coercion.

The United States now confronts simultaneous pressures across continents. The Second World War demonstrated the capacity to sustain multi-theater engagement; the post-9/11 wars revealed the exhaustion that follows prolonged intervention. Iran, larger and geopolitically deeper, presents a scale that cannot be resolved by air power alone.

Carr’s “thereafter” waits patiently. Military victory may be swift; political reconstruction is slow. Bishara reminds us that deterrence sustains stability, while force risks unraveling it.

At the edge of a potential world war, the decisive question is not who strikes first, but who restrains longest.

History watches. And in places far from the battlefield, mothers wait for phone calls that may not come.

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Millennium Project, Washington, D.C., and the author of Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, published by World Scientific

Midweek Review

Live Coals Burst Aflame

Published

3 days ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Live coals of decades-long hate,

Are bursting into all-consuming flames,

In lands where ‘Black Gold’ is abundant,

And it’s a matter to be thought about,

If humans anywhere would be safe now,

Unless these enmities dying hard,

With roots in imperialist exploits,

And identity-based, tribal violence,

Are set aside and laid finally to rest,

By an enthronement of the principle,

Of the Equal Dignity of Humans.

By Lynn Ockersz

Midweek Review

Saga of the arrest of retired intelligence chief

Published

5 days ago

2026/03/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay’s recent arrest attracted internatiattention. His long-expected arrest took place ahead of the seventh anniversary of the bombings. Multiple blasts claimed the lives of nearly 280 people, including 45 foreigners. State-owned international news television network, based in Paris, France 24, declared that arrest was made on the basis of information provided by a whistleblower. The French channel was referring to Hanzeer Azad Moulana, who earlier sought political asylum in the West and one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan aka Pilleyan. May be the fiction he wove against Pilleyan and others may have been to strengthen his asylum claim there. Moulana is on record as having told the British Channel 4 that Sallay allowed the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing the 2019 presidential election. The French news agency quoted an investigating officer as having said: “He was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks. He has been in touch with people involved in the attacks, even recently.”

****

Suresh Sallay of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) received the wrath of Yahapalana Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, in 2016, over the reportage of what the media called the Chavakachcheri explosives detection made on March 30, 2016. Premier Wickremesinghe found fault with Sallay for the coverage, particularly in The Island. Police arrested ex-LTTE child combatant Edward Julian, alias Ramesh, after the detection of one suicide jacket, four claymore mines, three parcels containing about 12 kilos of explosives, to battery packs and several rounds of 9mm ammunition, from his house, situated at Vallakulam Pillaiyar Kovil Street. Chavakachcheri police made the detection, thanks to information provided by the second wife of Ramesh. Investigations revealed that the deadly cache had been brought by Ramesh from Mannar (Detection of LTTE suicide jacket, mines jolts government: Fleeing Tiger apprehended at checkpoint, The Island, March 31, 2016).

The then Jaffna Security Forces Commander, Maj. Gen. Mahesh Senanayake, told the writer that a thorough inquiry was required to ascertain the apprehended LTTE cadre’s intention. The Chavakachcheri detection received the DMI’s attention. The country’s premier intelligence organisation meticulously dealt with the issue against the backdrop of an alleged aborted bid to revive the LTTE in April 2014. Of those who had been involved in the fresh terror project, three were killed in the Nedunkerny jungles. There hadn’t been any other incidents since the Nedunkerny skirmish, until the Chavakachcheri detection.

Piqued by the media coverage of the Chavakachcheri detection, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration tried to silence the genuine Opposition. As the SLFP had, contrary to the expectations of those who voted for the party at the August 2015 parliamentary elections, formed a treacherous coalition with the UNP, the Joint Opposition (JO) spearheaded the parliamentary opposition.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) questioned former External Affairs Minister and top JO spokesman, Prof. G.L. Peiris, over a statement made by him regarding the Chavakachcheri detection. The former law professor questioned the legality of the CID’s move against the backdrop of police declining to furnish him a certified copy of the then acting IGP S.M. Wickremesinghe’s directive that he be summoned to record a statement as regards the Chavakachcheri lethal detection.

One-time LTTE propagandist Velayutham Dayanidhi, a.k.a. Daya Master, raised with President Maithripala Sirisena the spate of arrests made by law enforcement authorities, in the wake of the Chavakachcheri detection. Daya Master took advantage of a meeting called by Sirisena, on 28 April, 2016, at the President’s House, with the proprietors of media organisations and journalists, to raise the issue. The writer having been among the journalists present on that occasion, inquired from the ex-LETTer whom he represented there. Daya Master had been there on behalf of DAN TV, Tamil language satellite TV, based in Jaffna. Among those who had been detained was Subramaniam Sivakaran, at that time Youth Wing leader of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the main constituent of the now defunct Tamil National Alliance. In addition to Sivakaran, the police apprehended several hardcore ex-LTTE cadres (LTTE revival bid confirmed: TNA youth leader arrested, The Island April 20, 2016).

Ranil hits out at media

Subsequent inquiries revealed the role played by Sivakaran in some of those wanted in connection with the Chavakachcheri detection taking refuge in India. When the writer sought an explanation from the then TNA lawmaker, M.A. Sumanthiran, regarding Sivakaran’s arrest, the lawyer disowned the Youth Wing leader. Sumanthiran emphasised that the party suspended Sivakumaran and Northern Provincial Council member Ananthi Sasitharan for publicly condemning the TNA’s decision to endorse Maithripala Sirisena’s candidature at the 2015 presidential election (Chava explosives: Key suspects flee to India, The Island, May 2, 2016).

Premier Wickremesinghe went ballistic on May 30, 2016. Addressing the 20th anniversary event of the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum, at the Sports Ministry auditorium, the UNP leader castigated the DMI. Alleging that the DMI had been pursuing an agenda meant to undermine the Yahapalana administration, Wickremesinghe, in order to make his bogus claim look genuine, repeatedly named the writer as part of that plot. Only Wickremesinghe knows the identity of the idiot who influenced him to make such unsubstantiated allegations. The top UNPer went on to allege that The Island, and its sister paper Divaina, were working overtime to bring back Dutugemunu, a reference to war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa. A few days later, sleuths from the Colombo Crime Detection Bureau (CCD) visited The Island editorial to question the writer where lengthy statements were recorded. The police were acting on the instructions of the then Premier, who earlier publicly threatened to send police to question the writer.

In response to police queries about Sallay passing information to the media regarding the Chavakachcheri detection and subsequent related articles, the writer pointed out that the reportage was based on response of the then ASP Ruwan Gunasekera, AAL and Sumanthiran, as had been reported.

Wickremesinghe alleged, at the Muslim media event, that a section of the media manipulated coverage of certain incidents, ahead of the May Day celebrations.

In early May 2016 Wickremesinghe disclosed that he received assurances from the police, and the DMI, that as the LTTE had been wiped out the group couldn’t stage a comeback. The declaration was made at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRIS) on 3 May 2016. Wickremesinghe said that he sought clarifications from the police and the DMI in the wake of the reportage of the Chavakachcheri detection and related developments (PM: LTTE threat no longer exists, The Island, May 5, 2016).

The LTTE couldn’t stage a comeback as a result of measures taken by the then government. It would be a grave mistake, on our part, to believe that the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity automatically influenced them to give up arms. The successful rehabilitation project, that had been undertaken by the Rajapaksa government and continued by successive governments, ensured that those who once took up arms weren’t interested in returning to the same deadly path.

In spite of the TNA and others shedding crocodile tears for the defeated Tigers, while making a desperate effort to mobilise public opinion against the government, the public never wanted the violence to return. Some interested parties propagated the lie that regardless of the crushing defeat suffered in the hands of the military, the LTTE could resume guerilla-type operations, paving the way for a new conflict. But by the end of 2014, and in the run-up to the presidential election in January following year, the situation seemed under control, especially with Western countries not wanting to upset things here with a pliant administration in the immediate horizon. Soon after the presidential election, the government targeted the armed forces. Remember Sumanthiran’s declaration that the ITAK Youth Wing leader Sivakaran had been opposed to the TNA backing Sirisena at the presidential poll.

The US-led accountability resolution had been co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo to appease the TNA and Tamil Diaspora. The Oct. 01, 2016, resolution delivered a knockout blow to the war-winning armed forces. The UNP pursued an agenda severely inimical to national interests. It would be pertinent to mention that those who now represent the main Opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), were part of the treacherous UNP.

Suresh moved to Malaysia

The Yahapalana leadership resented Sallay’s work. They wanted him out of the country at a time a new threat was emerging. The government attacked the then Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, who warned of the emerging threat from foreign-manipulated local Islamic fanatics on 11 Nov. 2016, in Parliament. Rajapakshe didn’t mince his words when he underscored the threat posed by some Sri Lanka Muslim families taking refuge in Syria where ISIS was running the show. The then government, of which he was part o,f ridiculed their own Justice Minister. Both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe feared action against extremism may cause erosion of Muslim support. By then Sallay, who had been investigating the deadly plot, was out of the country. The Yahapalana government believed that the best way to deal with Sallay was to grant him a diplomatic posting. Sally ended up in Malaysia, a country where the DMI played a significant role in the repatriation of Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias KP, after his arrest there.

Having served the military for over three cadres, Sallay retired in 2024 in the rank of Major General. Against the backdrop of his recent arrest, in connection with the ongoing investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage, The Island felt the need to examine the circumstances Sallay ended up in Malaysia at the time. Now, remanded in terms of the Prevention of terrorism Act (PTA), he is being accused of directing the Easter Sunday operation from Malaysia.

Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader and former Minister Udaya Gammanpila has alleged that Sallay was apprehended in a bid to divert attention away from the deepening coal scam. Having campaigned on an anti-corruption platformm in the run up to the previous presidential election, in September 2024, the Parliament election, in November of the same year, and local government polls last year, the incumbent dispensation is struggling to cope up with massive corruption issues, particularly the coal scam, which has not only implicated the Energy Minister but the entire Cabinet of Ministers as well.

The crux of the matter is whether Sallay actually met would-be suicide bombers, in February 2018, in an estate, in the Puttalam district, as alleged by the UK’s Channel 4 television, like the BBC is, quite famous for doing hatchet jobs for the West. This is the primary issue at hand. Did Sallay clandestinely leave Malaysia to meet suicide bombers in the presence of Hanzeer Azad Moulana, one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, aka Pilleyan, former LTTE member?

The British channel raised this issue with Sallay, in 2023, at the time he served as Director, State Intelligence (SIS). Sallay is on record as having told Channel 4 Television that he was not in Sri Lanka the whole of 2018 as he was in Malaysia serving in the Sri Lankan Embassy there as Minister Counsellor.

Therefore, the accusation that he met several members of the National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), including Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran, in Karadipuval, Puttalam, in Feb. 2018, was baseless, he has said.

The intelligence officer has asked the British television station to verify his claim with the Malaysian authorities.

Responding to another query, Sallay had told Channel 4 that on April 21, 2019, the day of the Easter Sunday blasts, he was in India, where he was accommodated at the National Defence College (NDC). That could be verified with the Indian authorities, Sallay has said, strongly denying Channel 4’s claim that he contacted one of Pilleyan’s cadres, over, the phone and directed him to pick a person outside Hotel Taj Samudra.

According to Sallay, during his entire assignment in Malaysia, from Dec. 2016 to Dec. 2018, he had been to Colombo only once, for one week, in Dec. 2017, to assist in an official inquiry.

Having returned to Colombo, Sallay had left for NDC, in late Dec. 2018, and returned only after the conclusion of the course, in November 2019.

Sallay has said so in response to questions posed by Ben de Pear, founder, Basement Films, tasked with producing a film for Channel 4 on the Easter Sunday bombings.

The producer has offered Sallay an opportunity to address the issues in terms of Broadcasting Code while inquiring into fresh evidence regarding the officer’s alleged involvement in the Easter Sunday conspiracy.

The producer sought Sallay’s response, in August 2023, in the wake of political upheaval following the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected at the November 2019 presidential election.

At the time, the Yahapalana government granted a diplomatic appointment to Sallay, he had been head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). After the 2019 presidential election, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa named him the Head of SIS.

The Basement Films has posed several questions to Sallay on the basis of accusations made by Hanzeer Azad Moulana.

In response to the film producer’s query regarding Sallay’s alleged secret meeting with six NTJ cadres who blasted themselves a year later, Sallay has questioned the very basis of the so called new evidence as he was not even in the country during the period the clandestine meeting is alleged to have taken place.

Contradictory stands

Following Sajith Premadasa’s anticipated defeat at the 2019 presidential election, Harin Fernando accused the Catholic Church of facilitating Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory. Fernando, who is also on record as having disclosed that his father knew of the impending Easter Sunday attacks, pointed finger at the Archbishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, for ensuring Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena, as well as JVP frontliner Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa, accused India of masterminding the Easter Sunday bombings. Then there were claims of Sara Jasmin, wife of Katuwapitiya suicide bomber Mohammed Hastun, being an Indian agent who was secretly removed after the Army assaulted extremists’ hideout at Sainthamaruthu in the East. What really had happened to Sara Jasmin who, some believe, is key to the Easter Sunday puzzle.

Then there was huge controversy over the arrest of Attorney-at-Law Hejaaz Hizbullah over his alleged links with the Easter Sunday bombers. Hizbullah, who had been arrested in April 2020, served as lawyer to the extremely wealthy spice trader Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim’s family that had been deeply involved in the Easter Sunday plot. Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim had been on the JVP’s National List at the 2015 parliamentary elections. The lawyer received bail after two years. Two of the spice trader’s sons launched suicide attacks, whereas his daughter-in-law triggered a suicide blast when police raided their Dematagoda mansion, several hours after the Easter Sunday blasts.

Investigations also revealed that the suicide vests had been assembled at a factory owned by the family and the project was funded by them. It would be pertinent to mention that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government never really bothered to conduct a comprehensive investigation to identify the Easter Sunday terror project. Perhaps, their biggest failure had been to act on the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) recommendations. Instead, President Rajapaksa appointed a six-member committee, headed by his elder brother, Chamal Rajapaksa, to examine the recommendations, probably in a foolish attempt to improve estranged relations with the influential Muslim community. That move caused irreparable damage and influenced the Church to initiate a campaign against the government. The Catholic Church played quite a significant role in the India- and US-backed 2022 Aragalaya that forced President Rajapaksa to flee the country.

Interested parties exploited the deterioration of the national economy, leading to unprecedented declaration of the bankruptcy of the country in April 2022, to mobilie public anger that was used to achieve political change.