Midweek Review

Exquisite intermingling of the novelistic and the poetic

Published

4 years ago

2021/12/1

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

A debut novel rarely achieves the same excellence as Baththalangunduwa by Manjula Wediwardena. In any language, such first-novels are rare. Still there are many writers who have mesmerised readers with their first novels. This is certainly one among them. In writing this novel, the author does not hide the fact that he arrives at the art of novel, bringing with him the technical devices of poetry and short play, two genres he had excelled in earlier. He uses those elements to create a style that makes his novel a sensation in the contemporary Sinhala novel. The book has been translated into English. This essay, though based on Baththalangunduwa, is about the significance of style in a novel.

One of the challenges that new writers face is to create a ‘new language’ for the Sinhala novel. Not to argue that a single style fits all, but style is one area in which a writer can establish the novelty of his work. Our writers seldom experiment with language to create a style that is both simple and attractive at the same time. When it comes to experimentation with narrative techniques, even young writers do not show the youthfulness found in the work of senior writers such as Ajith Thilakasena, Siri Gunasinghe, Simon Nawagatthegama or Tennyson Perera, to name a few. Naturalist realism becomes rather stale, if it is not presented in an innovative style or using other experimental narrative devices. The realist mode is, however, extremely malleable, and an inventive writer can still make it look surprisingly fresh if he or she is imaginative enough with regard to the technical devices of fiction writing. Stories can be crafted in numerous ways. Possibilities of fiction can never be exhausted. Every once in a while, a writer or two appears to remind us about those possibilities. In recent times, Manjula Wediwardena was one such writer. Of late, there are others but we are yet to see if they would continue to develop literary careers.

Tissa Abeysekera, one of our greatest writers, points out this problem of style and language in his excellent collection of essays, Roots, Reflections and Reminiscences. In it, Abeysekera argues that even though Martin Wickramasinghe was able to produce a language for the realist novel in Sinhala no writer was able to surpass him. Abeysekera goes on to argue that Viragaya (The Way of the Lotus) is the pinnacle of the Sinhala novel. It can be said that this is an accurate observation. One can agree that Viragaya is an immortal novel. Yet, the weakness of Abesekara’s argument is that it does not mention any writer who has apparently attempted to surpass Wickramasinghe. The novels of Simon Nawagattegama, for example, are excellent examples of creating a fresh style of language for each novel. The characters or the environment of Dadayakkarayage Kathawa (The story of the Hunter), or Ksheera Sagaraya Kelambina (The Milky Ocean is Churned) cannot be properly portrayed in the language of Wickramasinghe’s Gamperaliya (Uprooted). Furthermore, those novels have levels of reality whose existence is predicated upon the existence of a unique language, and Nawagattegama creates that language. Let’s look at a paragraph of The story of the Hunter, even though it is hard to make my point in a translated segment:

“Those who belonged to the lineage of the hunter had no satisfaction by merely being hunters. To be a shooter, one only has to train himself in shooting a target. It is not such a big deal to brag about either. Is it? Even though one can aim at an animal and shoot it down, even though one can shoot every day all the animals one sees and carry them to the village, it only shows that one has already committed so much sin and one still has Karmic disposition to acquire sins that can bring Karmic fruits for five hundred lives to come. Does it not?”

The language of this novel is formed in such a way that it focalizes the story through the life and point of view of the hunter. This style takes the reader into the hunter’s consciousness and sustains the reader within the level of reality, where the hunter dwells.

Misconception

There is a misconception that there exists language or style suitable for all novels. It is an opinion constantly repeated by popular literary journalists. Poetic talents can be extremely useful for a novelist. More often than not, it gives immense pleasure to read novels written by poets. All novels by Michael Ondaatje are like long poems. Yet, each of his novels has its own language. If anyone expects a single language or style from all his novels, he simply does not know the meaning of novelized language. A British critic once claimed to have found Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost a bit too poetic, and might have reasons for that argument.

Possession by A.S. Byatt is very much a poetic novel, and there is a narrative reason for it: It is a story of love between a poet and a poetess. One might not be able to write a novel of that kind without a great deal of poetic skill within oneself. Byatt writes in a beautifully poetic language. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald is also a captivating novel about the life of the German poet Novalis. In it, the author’s controlled-use of poetry within the novel contributes considerably to the book’s immense attraction. That Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is poetic should not surprise anyone, for it is an epic of the life of a poet. But there poetry does not intermingle with prose. It is true that there are so much poetic description nearly everywhere in the book. But what is obviously poetic is included as a collection of Zhivago’s poems, at the end of the book. So negligible was the connection of poems to the structure of the novel, that the poems were later published as a separate book. Separation of that kind is not possible in Possession, where after every few pages poetic sections appear, helping to advance the plot. The immense appeal of Rainer Maria Rilke’s stunning novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, is predicated upon the author’s undisputed skills in poetry. In some ways, it is a Campu written in German translated into English!

Prose or Campu

Vilasiniyakage Premaya (The Love of a Courtesan) by Ediriweera Sarachchandra is a Campu poem, as the author prefers to name it. In a Campu, verses are a part of the structure because it is a genre that uses a mixture of prose and verse. In it, verses are used to express the inner feelings of characters, to express interior monologues or to send some coded message. Another novel that deals with poets, poetry and poetic talents is Milan Kundera’s Life is Elsewhere. It is clear from Baththalangunduwa itself, that Wediwardena has been heavily influenced by Kundera’s novel. Intertextual significations the Sinhala novel develops by constantly referring to Life is Elsewhere, and in reading it, an experienced reader is regularly reminded of many other novels in which the novelist and the poetry merge in an exquisite union. In the manner the author uses language in the novel, it is very much comparable with numerous other novels mentioned above.

A good novel, among other things, creates a style that refreshes the language of contemporary fiction. Baththalangunduwa does refresh the language of the Sinhala novel or novelistic Sinhala. Though there have been many recent newcomers to the genre, the promise made by those novels to renew novelistic Sinhala has not always been kept. Hundreds of novels are routinely published, written in a style which fails to attract and surprise us with its beauty and artistic fineness. Only a few novelists, Sunethra Rajakarunanayake for example, delivered on the promise, by writing several innovative novels. Perhaps, it has a lot to do with the fact that a style alone cannot give a novel lasting substance.

Insights into human life

Why have we failed to sustain the genre of novel as a text that generates unique insights into human life and society? Some Sinhala writers use attractive styles, but their thinking is a bit too plain to make them great novelists. Conservatism of thought has been plaguing the Sinhala novel in recent years. Cultural nationalism, as the most dominant ideology in the country, gets in the way of achieving literary greatness. In fact, the same nationalism, which is extremely conservative about the language, is one of the greatest obstacles for inventive writers. More often than not, writers who break away from conservative grammatical traditions, have to face considerable hostility from conservative thinkers. Wediwardena seems to be aware of these challenges. This book has a new style and a new content, and they supplement each other beautifully. Moreover, the book’s thematic content cannot be separated from its style.

This novel is quite minimal in its content. In time and space too, the novel’s scope is limited. For that very reason, its style is the central feature that breathes life into the text. Usually, a novel, which focuses on a relatively small life-world situated within a small space and short time period, places greater emphasis on its style. Such a novel aims to achieve its completeness through an innovative and captivating style. Baththalangunduwa is such a novel. There are such novels in world literature as well. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English August, for example, have achieved excellence primarily through their styles. Novels like, Karamazov Brothers, War and Peace, or Anna Karenina are so grand in their theme and scope that they achieve greatness even without any particular inventiveness in style. That is not to say that Tolstoy was not a great stylist. He certainly was, and there are memorable sentences and paragraphs everywhere in his novels.

Wediwardena’s novel tells a story set in an Island of the North-Western coast of Sri Lanka, and the novel becomes unique simply because of the sub-culture of the fishing community of the island. But he still faces the challenge of inventing a style suitable to create the world of that community in his text. He does invent that style wonderfully.

The challenge he had to face was a complex one. The community he is writing about is different from Sinhala Buddhists, which make up the largest chunk of the cultural world of Sri Lanka, and the community in this small island is different from the mainstream Christian community living on the main island. This small island is an island in the cultural sense as well. It is a tiny island that belongs to a larger island. The writer, writing in Sinhala, has to portray this small fishing community in a manner accessible to the readers living in the main island, who have little or no knowledge of this sub-cultural group.

In addition, there is another challenge, perhaps much more demanding: Sinhala language is mainly a product of Buddhist culture and many Sinhala words have Buddhist connotations. The majority of novel readers in Sinhala are also Buddhist. They know very little about Christian communities and much less about fishing communities in these small islands. In this sense, writing about Baththalangunduwa, the island, is as difficult as writing about a foreign land.

Son searching for father, father in search of son

The other side of Wediwardena’s challenge is even more complex: When the narrator-son goes to this remote island to look for his father, he is a young man exposed to the postmodernist conditions in Colombo. He takes with him a Sinhala translation of Milan Kundera’s Life is Elsewhere. It is through this character that the fishing island and its people are presented to us. Thus, the challenge of style gets even more complicated. The writer has to come up with a style that can hold together two worlds, which are strikingly different from each other: The postmodern urban world of the son and the unsophisticated life of the fishing community, where the father makes his home. It does not end there. Since the narrator is a poet, the style of the novel needs to be one that can facilitate poetic sensibilities. As I see it, the author successfully meets all these challenges. At times, the novel’s style is too poetic to be novelistic but, in the main, it is able to breathe life into ‘postmodern Antony’, (the son) and the men and women in the fishing community. The style wonderfully absorbs fishermen’s wisdom of the ocean without destroying their epistemological foundations. In other words, those folkloric views of the fishing community enter the author’s prose without being subjected to any rationalist comments of an urban observer. Thus, one is able to listen to the most beautiful descriptions of the ocean through the dialogues of those fishermen.

Though characters of a novel exist in language, characterisation largely belongs to the plot. The complications of characters appear in the way they react to different incidents of the story. But in this novel, the style is instrumental in characterisation as well. Wediwardena allows the language of these Island-dwelling fishermen to merge with the author’s narration in a way that provides important glimpses into the lives of those men and women.

This novel does not have large dramatic events. Thus, the plot is not all that crucial in characterisation. Instead, the author skillfully uses his style to present his unique characters.

Organic connections with characters

The author deeply loves the characters he portrays and he is honest to life there on the island. Consequently, very much like the main character, Antony, the writer himself has no hesitation in mingling with life on the island. He is not a detached observer of that life. Antony does not detach himself from the community in the island as an elitist visitor from Colombo. But rather he eats, drinks and have sexual relationships with those people. The ethical rationality that undergirds those activities is not something brought from metropolitan Colombo; it is a form of ethics unique to the island. Both Antony and his father share everything that the island offers: food, drink, lodging, and even sex. For the conservative moralists, the island might look like an abode of sin. But the ideal reader of the novel, the reader this novel seeks to ‘create’ might see this island as a place where primordial innocence still exists. That innocence is something we have lost with the advent of modern life. It would not be surprising for the reader to feel like eating fish curry, drinking locally made illegal alcohol with those fisher folk and making love freely as they normally do. This aesthetic effect is achieved primarily through style.

New facet of Sinhalaness

This novel shows us another beautiful facet of Sinhala culture. The culture of this island made with Catholic faith, the trade of fishing and folkloric beliefs about the ocean should also belong in the Sinhala culture at large. Some of the Sinhala people on this island only speak Tamil. But the island is open to Milan Kundera. It is clear from the way the culture of this island intermingles with other cultures that no culture is pure or impure. This novel reminds us of Sri Lanka’s cultural diversity and the intricate connections among different cultural elements. This is, perhaps, one thematic dimension that could have been developed further.

In this novel the impressionist portrayal of life on the island is prioritised over elucidating a strong thematic line. The novel revolves around the trip Antony makes to see his father, the meeting of the father and the eventual separation. What are the themes of this journey; of the search for his father; or of seducing the father’s girlfriend? Is it a case of a son seducing his symbolic mother? Our author does not allow us to make any thematic summaries of the plot. In Faulkner’s As I lay dying, a family takes a dead woman’s body across the Southern US to bury her. That journey itself makes much of the novel. But the mythical allure of the journey lends itself to multiple meanings. Antony’s trip to this exotic island has that mythical quality, whose realization perhaps needed better care. Still Baththalangunduwa is one of the most original works of fiction to be published in recent times.

(Amarakeerthi is a professor of Sinhala, University of Peradeniya)

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Midweek Review

How massive Akuregoda defence complex was built with proceeds from sale of Galle Face land to Shangri-La

Published

3 days ago

2025/12/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

Defence Headquarters Complex (DHQC) at Akuregoda

The Navy ceremonially occupied its new Headquarters (Block No. 3) at the Defence Headquarters Complex (DHQC) at Akuregoda, Battaramulla, on 09 December, 2025. On the invitation of the Commander of the Navy, Vice Admiral Kanchana Banagoda, the Deputy Minister of Defence, Major General Aruna Jayasekara (Retd) attended the event as the Chief Guest.

Among those present were Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, the Defence Secretary, Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha (Retd), Commander of the Army, Lieutenant General Lasantha Rodrigo, Commander of the Air Force, Air Marshal Bandu Edirisinghe, Inspector General of Police, Attorney-at-Law Priyantha Weerasooriya and former Navy Commanders.

With the relocation of the Navy at DHQC, the much-valued project to shift the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Headquarters of the war-winning armed forces has been brought to a successful conclusion. The Army was the first to move in (November 2019), the MoD (May 2021), the Air Force (January 2024) and finally the Navy (in December 2025).

It would be pertinent to mention that the shifting of MoD to DHQC coincided with the 12th anniversary of bringing back the entire Northern and Eastern Provinces under the government, on 18 May, 2009. LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed on the following day.

The project that was launched in March 2011, two years after the eradication of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), suffered a severe setback, following the change of government in 2015. The utterly irresponsible and treacherous Yahapalana government halted the project. That administration transferred funds, allocated for it, to the Treasury, in the wake of massive Treasury bond scams perpetrated in February and March 2015, within weeks after the presidential election.

Maithripala Sirisena, in his capacity as the President, as well as the Minister of Defence, declared open the new Army Headquarters, at DHQC, a week before the 2019 presidential election. Built at a cost of Rs 53.3 bn, DHQC is widely believed to be the largest single construction project in the country. At the time of the relocation of the Army, the then Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva, the former Commanding Officer of the celebrated Task Force I/58 Division, served as the Commander.

Who made the DHQC a reality? Although most government departments, ministries and armed forces headquarters, were located in Colombo, under the Colombo Master Plan of 1979, all were required to be moved to Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte. However successive administrations couldn’t go ahead with the massive task primarily due to the conflict. DHQC would never have been a reality if not for wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa who determinedly pursued the high-profile project.

The absence of any reference to the origins of the project, as well as the significant role played by Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the just relocated Navy headquarters, prompted the writer to examine the developments related to the DHQC. The shifting of MoD, along with the Armed Forces Headquarters, was a monumental decision taken by Mahinda Rajapaksas’s government. But, all along it had been Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s determination to achieve that monumental task that displeased some within the administration, but the then Defence Secretary, a former frontline combat officer of the battle proved Gajaba Regiment, was not the type to back down or alter his strategy.

GR’s maiden official visit to DHQC

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who made DHQC a reality, visited the sprawling building in his capacity as the President, Defence Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces on the morning of 03 August, 2021. It was Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s maiden official visit to the Army Headquarters, located within the then partially completed DHQC, eight months before the eruption of the externally backed ‘Aragalaya.’ The US-Indian joint project has been exposed and post-Aragalaya developments cannot be examined without taking into consideration the role played by political parties, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, media, as well as the weak response of the political leadership and the armed forces. Let me stress that a comprehensive probe should cover the period beginning with the Swiss project to humiliate President Gotabaya Rajapaka in November, 2019, by staging a fake abduction, and the storming of the President’s House in July 2022. How could Sri Lanka forget the despicable Swiss allegation of sexual harassment of a female local employee by government personnel, a claim proved to be a blatant lie meant to cause embarrassment to the newly elected administration..

Let me get back to the DHQC project. The war-winning Mahinda Rajapaksa government laid the foundation for the building project on 11 May, 2011, two years after Sri Lanka’s triumph over the separatist Tamil terrorist movement. The high-profile project, on a 77-acre land, at Akuregoda, Pelawatta, was meant to bring the Army, Navy, and the Air Force headquarters, and the Defence Ministry, to one location.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s visit to Akuregoda would have definitely taken place much earlier, under a very different environment, if not for the eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, just a few months after his victory at the November 2019 election. The worst post-World War II crisis that had caused devastating losses to national economies, the world over, and delivered a staggering blow to Sri Lanka, heavily dependent on tourism, garment exports and remittances by its expatriate workers.

On his arrival at the new Army headquarters, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was welcomed by General Shavendra Silva, who also served as the Chief of Defence Staff. Thanks to the President’s predecessor, Maithripala Sirisena, the then Maj. Gen Shavendra Silva was promoted to the rank of Lt. Gen and appointed the Commander of the Army on 18 August, 2019, just three months before the presidential poll. The appointment was made in spite of strong opposition from the UNP leadership and US criticism.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa hadn’t minced his words when he publicly acknowledged the catastrophe caused by the plunging of the national income and the daunting challenge in debt repayment, amounting to as much as USD 4 bn annually.

The decision to shift the tri-forces headquarters and the Defence Ministry (The Defence Ministry situated within the Army Headquarters premises) caused a media furor with the then Opposition UNP alleging a massive rip-off. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa reiterated his commitment to the project. If not for the change of government in 2015, the DHQC would have been completed during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s third term if he was allowed to contest for a third term successfully. Had that happened, Gotabaya Rajapaksa wouldn’t have emerged as the then Opposition presidential candidate at the 2019 poll. The disastrous Yahapalana administration and the overall deterioration of all political parties, represented in Parliament, and the 19th A that barred Mahinda Rajapaksa from contesting the presidential election, beyond his two terms, created an environment conducive for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s emergence as the newly registered SLPP’s candidate.

Shangri-La move

During the 2019 presidential election campaign, SLPP candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa strongly defended his decision to vacate the Army Headquarters, during Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency, to pave the way for the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo. Shangri-La was among the hotels targeted by the Easter Sunday bombers – the only location targeted by two of them, including mastermind Zahran Hashim.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is on record as having said that vacation of the site had been in accordance with first executive President J.R. Jayewardene’s decision to move key government buildings away from Colombo to the new Capital of the country at Sri Jaywardenepura. Gotabaya Rajapaksa said so in response to the writer’s queries years ago.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that a despicable attempt was being made to blame him for the Army Headquarters land transaction. “I have been accused of selling the Army Headquarters land to the Chinese.”

Rajapaksa explained that Taj Samudra, too, had been built on a section of the former Army Headquarters land, previously used to accommodate officers’ quarters and the Army rugger grounds. Although President Jayewardene had wanted the Army Headquarters shifted, successive governments couldn’t do that due to the war and lack of funds, he said.

President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared open Shangri-La Colombo on 16 November, 2017. The Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Asia invited Gotabaya Rajapaksa for dinner, the following day, after the opening of its Colombo hotel. Shangri-La Chairperson, Kuok Hui Kwong, the daughter of Robert Kuok Khoon Ean, was there to welcome Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had cleared the way for the post-war mega tourism investment project. Among those who had been invited were former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, former External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris, former Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, and President’s Counsel Gamini Marapana, PC.

The Cabinet granted approval for the high-profile Shangri-La project in October 2010 and the ground-breaking ceremony was held in late February 2012.

Rajapaksa said that the Shangri-La proprietor, a Chinese, ran a big operation, based in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Another parcel of land was given to the mega ITC hotel project, also during the previous Rajapaksa administration. ITC Ratnadipa, a super-luxury hotel by India’s ITC Hotels, officially opened in Colombo on April 25, 2024

Following the change of government in January 2015, the remaining section of the Army headquarters land, too, was handed over to Shangri-La.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa emphasised that the relocation of the headquarters of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as the Defence Ministry, had been part of JRJ’s overall plan. The change of government, in January 2015, had caused a serious delay in completing the project and it was proceeding at a snail’s pace, Rajapaksa said. Even Parliament was shifted to Kotte in accordance with JRJ’s overall plan, Gotabaya Rajapaksa said, explaining his move to relocate all security forces’ headquarters and Defence Ministry into one complex at Akuregoda.

Acknowledging that the Army Headquarters had been there at Galle Face for six decades, Rajapaksa asserted that the Colombo headquarters wasn’t tactically positioned.

Rajapaksa blamed the inordinate delay in the completion of the Akuregoda complex on the Treasury taking hold of specific funds allocated for the project.

Over 5,000 military workforce

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s maiden visit to DHQC on 3 August, 2021. General
Shavendra Silva is beside him

Major General Udaya Nanayakkara had been the first Director, Project Management Unit, with overall command of approximately 5,000 tri-forces personnel assigned to carry it out. The Shangri-La transaction provided the wherewithal to implement the DHQC project though the change of government caused a major setback. Nanayakkara, who had served as the Military Spokesman, during Eelam War IV, oversaw the military deployment, whereas private contractors handled specialised work such as piling, AC, fire protection and fire detection et al. The then MLO (Military Liaison Officer) at the Defence Ministry, Maj. Gen Palitha Fernando, had laid the foundation for the project and the work was going on smoothly when the Yahapalana administration withheld funds. Political intervention delayed the project and by September 2015, Nanayakkara was replaced by Maj Gen Mahinda Ambanpola, of the Engineer Service.

In spite of President Sirisena holding the Defence portfolio, he couldn’t prevent the top UNP leadership from interfering in the DHQC project. However, the Shangri-La project had the backing of A.J.M. Muzammil, the then UNP Mayor and one of the close confidants of UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. Muzammil was among those present at the ground breaking ceremony for Shangri-La held on 24th February, 2012 ,with the participation of Minister Basil Rajapaksa.

Having identified the invaluable land, where the Army Headquarters and Defence Ministry were situated, for its project, Shangri-La made its move. Those who had been aware of Shangri-La’s plans were hesitant and certainly not confident of their success. They felt fearful of Defence Secretary Rajapaksa’s reaction.

But, following swift negotiations, they finalised the agreement on 28 December, 2010. Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya was the then Commander of the Army, with his predecessor General Fonseka in government custody after having been arrested within two weeks after the conclusion of the 2010 26 January Presidential poll.

Addressing the annual Viyathmaga Convention at Golden Rose Hotel, Boralesgamuwa, on 04 March, 2017, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, perhaps for the first time publicly discussed his role in the Shangri-La project. Declaring that Sri Lanka suffered for want of, what he called, a workable formula to achieve post-war development objectives, the war veteran stressed the pivotal importance of swift and bold decision-making.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa explained how the government had acted swiftly, and decisively, to attract foreign investments though some such efforts were not successful. There couldn’t be a better example than the government finalising an agreement with Shangri-La Hotels, he declared.

Declaring that the bureaucratic red tape shouldn’t in any way be allowed to undermine investments, Rajapaksa recalled the Chairman/CEO of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Robert Kuok Khoon Ean, wanting the Army Headquarters land for his Colombo project. In fact, the hotels chain, at the time, had proposed to build hotels in Colombo, Hambantota and Batticaloa, and was one of the key investors wanting to exploit Sri Lanka’s success in defeating terrorism.

“Khoon-Ean’s request for the Army Headquarters land caused a serious problem for me. It was a serious challenge. How could I shift the headquarters of the war-winning Army? The Army had been there for six decades. It had been the nerve centre of the war effort for 30 years,” said Rajapaksa, who once commanded the First Battalion of the Gajaba Regiment (1GR)

Rajapaksa went on to explain how he exploited a decision taken by the first executive president J.R. Jayewardene to shift the Army Headquarters to Battaramulla, many years back. “Within two weeks, in consultation with the Secretary to the Finance Ministry, Dr. P.B. Jayasundera, and the Board of Investment, measures were taken to finalise the transaction. The project was launched to shift the Army, Navy and Air Force headquarters to Akuregoda, Pelawatte, in accordance with JRJ’s plan.”

The Hong Kong-based group announced the purchase of 10 acres of state land, in January 2011. Shangri-La Asia Limited announced plans to invest over USD 400 mn on the 30-storeyed star class hotel with 661 rooms.

The hotel is the second property in Sri Lanka for the leading Asian hospitality group, joining Shangri-La’s Hambantota Resort & Spa, which opened in June 2016.

Rajapaksa said that the top Shangri-La executive had referred to the finalisation of their Colombo agreement to highlight the friendly way the then administration handled the investment. Shangri-La had no qualms about recommending Sri Lanka as a place for investment, Rajapaksa said.

The writer explained the move to shift the Army Headquarters and the Defence Ministry from Colombo in a lead story headlined ‘Shangri-La to push MoD, Army Hq. out of Colombo city: Army Hospital expected to be converted into a museum’ (The Island, 04 January, 2011).

Yahapalana chaos

In the wake of the January 2015 change of government, the new leadership caused chaos with the suspension of the China-funded Port City Project, a little distance away from the Shangri-La venture. Many an eyebrow was raised when the then Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake declared, in March, 2015, that funds wouldn’t be made available to the DHQC project until the exact cost estimation of the project could be clarified.

Media quoted Karunanayake as having said “Presently, this project seems like a bottomless pit and we need to know the depth of what we are getting into. From the current state of finances, allocated for this project, it seems as if they are building a complex that’s even bigger than the Pentagon!”

The insinuating declaration was made despite them having committed the blatant first Treasury bond scam in February 2015 that shook the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration to its core.

In June 2016, Cabinet spokesperson, Dr. Rajitha Senaratne, announced the suspension of the Akuregoda project. Citing financial irregularities and mismanagement of funds, Dr. Senaratne alleged that all Cabinet papers on the project had been prepared according to the whims and fancies of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The then Minister Karunanayake spearheaded the campaign against the DHQC project alleging, in the third week of January, 2015, that Rs 13.2 billion, in an account maintained at the Taprobane branch of the Bank of Ceylon had been transferred to the Consolidated Fund of the Treasury. The matter was being investigated as the account belonged to the Ministry of Defence, he added. The Finance Minister stressed that the MoD had no right to maintain such an account in violation of regulations and, therefore, the opening of the account was being investigated. The Minister alleged that several illegal transactions, including one involving Samurdhi, had come to light. He estimated the Samurdhi transaction (now under investigation) at Rs. 4 billion.

Having undermined Shangri-La and the DHQC projects, the UNP facilitated the expansion of the hotel project by releasing additional three and half acres on a 99-year lease. During the Yahapalana administration, Dayasiri Jayasekera disclosed at a post-Cabinet press briefing how the government leased three and a half acres of land at a rate of Rs. 13.1 mn per perch whereas the previous administration agreed to Rs 6.5 mn per perch. According to Jayasekera the previous government had leased 10 acres at a rate of Rs 9.5 mn (with taxes) per perch.

The bottom line is that DHQC was built with Shangri-La funds and the initiative was Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s whose role as rock solid wartime Secretary of Defence to keep security forces supplied with whatever their requirements could never be compared with any other official during the conflict.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

The Hour of the Invisible

Published

3 days ago

2025/12/17

Sahan Weerasooriya

Picking-up the pieces in the bashed Isle,

Is going to take quite a long while,

And all hands need to be united as one,

To give it even a semblance of its former self,

But the more calloused and hardy the hands,

The more suitable are they for the task,

And the hour is upon us you could say,

When those vast legions of invisible folk,

Those wasting away in humble silent toil,

Could stand up and be saluted by all,

As being the most needed persons of the land

By Lynn Ockersz

Features

Handunnetti and Colonial Shackles of English in Sri Lanka

Published

1 week ago

2025/12/10

Thilina Walpola

Handunetti at the World Economic Forum

“My tongue in English chains.
I return, after a generation, to you.
I am at the end
of my Dravidic tether
hunger for you unassuaged
I falter, stumble.”
– Indian poet R. Parthasarathy

When Minister Sunil Handunnetti addressed the World Economic Forum’s ‘Is Asia’s Century at Risk?’ discussion as part of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2025 in June 2025, I listened carefully both to him and the questions that were posed to him by the moderator. The subsequent trolling and extremely negative reactions to his use of English were so distasteful that I opted not to comment on it at the time. The noise that followed also meant that a meaningful conversation based on that event on the utility of learning a powerful global language and how our politics on the global stage might be carried out more successfully in that language was lost on our people and pundits, barring a few commentaries.

Now Handunnetti has reopened the conversation, this time in Sri Lanka’s parliament in November 2025, on the utility of mastering English particularly for young entrepreneurs. In his intervention, he also makes a plea not to mock his struggle at learning English given that he comes from a background which lacked the privilege to master the language in his youth. His clear intervention makes much sense.

The same ilk that ridiculed him when he spoke at WEF is laughing at him yet again on his pronunciation, incomplete sentences, claiming that he is bringing shame to the country and so on and so forth. As usual, such loud, politically motivated and retrograde critics miss the larger picture. Many of these people are also among those who cannot hold a conversation in any of the globally accepted versions of English. Moreover, their conceit about the so-called ‘correct’ use of English seems to suggest the existence of an ideal English type when it comes to pronunciation and basic articulation. I thought of writing this commentary now in a situation when the minister himself is asking for help ‘in finding a solution’ in his parliamentary speech even though his government is not known to be amenable to critical reflection from anyone who is not a party member.

The remarks at the WEF and in Sri Lanka’s parliament are very different at a fundamental level, although both are worthy of consideration – within the realm of rationality, not in the depths of vulgar emotion and political mudslinging.

The problem with Handunnetti’s remarks at WEF was not his accent or pronunciation. After all, whatever he said could be clearly understood if listened to carefully. In that sense, his use of English fulfilled one of the most fundamental roles of language – that of communication. Its lack of finesse, as a result of the speaker being someone who does not use the language professionally or personally on a regular basis, is only natural and cannot be held against him. This said, there are many issues that his remarks flagged that were mostly drowned out by the noise of his critics.

Given that Handunnetti’s communication was clear, it also showed much that was not meant to be exposed. He simply did not respond to the questions that were posed to him. More bluntly, a Sinhala speaker can describe the intervention as yanne koheda, malle pol , which literally means, when asked ‘Where are you going?’, the answer is ‘There are coconuts in the bag’.

He spoke from a prepared text which his staff must have put together for him. However, it was far off the mark from the questions that were being directly posed to him. The issue here is that his staff appears to have not had any coordination with the forum organisers to ascertain and decide on the nature of questions that would be posed to the Minister for which answers could have been provided based on both global conditions, local situations and government policy. After all, this is a senior minister of an independent country and he has the right to know and control, when possible, what he is dealing with in an international forum.

This manner of working is fairly routine in such international fora. On the one hand, it is extremely unfortunate that his staff did not do the required homework and obviously the minister himself did not follow up, demonstrating negligence, a want for common sense, preparedness and experience among all concerned. On the other hand, the government needs to have a policy on who it sends to such events. For instance, should a minister attend a certain event, or should the government be represented by an official or consultant who can speak not only fluently, but also with authority on the subject matter. That is, such speakers need to be very familiar with the global issues concerned and not mere political rhetoric aimed at local audiences.

Other than Handunnetti, I have seen, heard and also heard of how poorly our politicians, political appointees and even officials perform at international meetings (some of which are closed door) bringing ridicule and disastrous consequences to the country. None of them are, however, held responsible.

Such reflective considerations are simple yet essential and pragmatic policy matters on how the government should work in these conditions. If this had been undertaken, the WEF event might have been better handled with better global press for the government. Nevertheless, this was not only a matter of English. For one thing, Handunnetti and his staff could have requested for the availability of simultaneous translation from Sinhala to English for which pre-knowledge of questions would have been useful. This is all too common too. At the UN General Assembly in September, President Dissanayake spoke in Sinhala and made a decent presentation.

The pertinent question is this; had Handunetti had the option of talking in Sinhala, would the interaction have been any better? That is extremely doubtful, barring the fluency of language use. This is because Handunnetti, like most other politicians past and present, are good at rhetoric but not convincing where substance is concerned, particularly when it comes to global issues. It is for this reason that such leaders need competent staff and consultants, and not mere party loyalists and yes men, which is an unfortunate situation that has engulfed the whole government.

What about the speech in parliament? Again, as in the WEF event, his presentation was crystal clear and, in this instance, contextually sensible. But he did not have to make that speech in English at all when decent simultaneous translation services were available. In so far as content was concerned, he made a sound argument considering local conditions which he knows well. The minister’s argument is about the need to ensure that young entrepreneurs be taught English so that they can deal with the world and bring investments into the country, among other things. This should actually be the norm, not only for young entrepreneurs, but for all who are interested in widening their employment and investment opportunities beyond this country and in accessing knowledge for which Sinhala and Tamil alone do not suffice.

As far as I am concerned, Handunetti’s argument is important because in parliament, it can be construed as a policy prerogative. Significantly, he asked the Minister of Education to make this possible in the educational reforms that the government is contemplating.

He went further, appealing to his detractors not to mock his struggle in learning English, and instead to become part of the solution. However, in my opinion, there is no need for the Minister to carry this chip on his shoulder. Why should the minister concern himself with being mocked for poor use of English? But there is a gap that his plea should have also addressed. What prevented him from mastering English in his youth goes far deeper than the lack of a privileged upbringing.

The fact of the matter is, the facilities that were available in schools and universities to learn English were not taken seriously and were often looked down upon as kaduwa by the political spectrum he represents and nationalist elements for whom the utilitarian value of English was not self-evident. I say this with responsibility because this was a considerable part of the reality in my time as an undergraduate and also throughout the time I taught in Sri Lanka.

Much earlier in my youth, swayed by the rhetoric of Sinhala language nationalism, my own mastery of English was also delayed even though my background is vastly different from the minister. I too was mocked, when two important schools in Kandy – Trinity College and St. Anthony’s College – refused to accept me to Grade 1 as my English was wanting. This was nearly 20 years after independence. I, however, opted to move on from the blatant discrimination, and mastered the language, although I probably had better opportunities and saw the world through a vastly different lens than the minister. If the minister’s commitment was also based on these social and political realities and the role people like him had played in negating our English language training particularly in universities, his plea would have sounded far more genuine.

If both these remarks and the contexts in which they were made say something about the way we can use English in our country, it is this: On one hand, the government needs to make sure it has a pragmatic policy in place when it sends representatives to international events which takes into account both a person’s language skills and his breadth of knowledge of the subject matter. On the other hand, it needs to find a way to ensure that English is taught to everyone successfully from kindergarten to university as a tool for inclusion, knowledge and communication and not a weapon of exclusion as is often the case.

This can only bear fruit if the failures, lapses and strengths of the country’s English language teaching efforts are taken into cognizance. Lamentably, division and discrimination are still the main emotional considerations on which English is being popularly used as the trolls of the minister’s English usage have shown. It is indeed regrettable that their small-mindedness prevents them from realizing that the Brits have long lost their long undisputed ownership over the English language along with the Empire itself. It is no longer in the hands of the colonial masters. So why allow it to be wielded by a privileged few mired in misplaced notions of elitism?