Midweek Review

Light Sorrow: Peradeniya Imagination

Published

1 year ago

2024/08/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

Review of A Bend in the River by Ernest|
Macintyre (Vijitha Yapa, 2024)

By Laleen Jayamanne

The celebrated Lankan director and play-write Ernest Thalayasingam Macintyre (who has been active in English Language theatre for over 50 years), has given us a most unusual book (written in his 90s in Sydney, Australia), on his and his generations’ years as undergraduates at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in the mid 1950s. There are plans to translate it into Sinhala as well. Mac, as he is popularly known, characterises his book in the following way:

“Old Peradeniya University in Memory and Imagination with a play in one act to conclude. Under The Ola Leaves about the tragedy between man and beast in Sinhabahu”.

A selection of small black and white photographs (so reminiscent of the size and feel of photos of that era’s family albums), of the Peradeniya campus and of visionaries who contributed to its cultural and spiritual vitality, has been carefully placed within the text. These photo (light)-images texture our perception and make time move our minds in a non-linear manner (as we pause to look at them), like meandering rivulets of the great sweeping river of Lankan ethno-nationalist post-colonial history itself. Seeing the high-angle shot of the misty hills through which the Mahaweli winds its way, placed towards the end of the book, creates a melancholy feeling of a time lost. The very first photo, of the memorial honouring Shirley D’Alwis (the architect who designed the magnificent modern campus buildings to echo the architecture of the classical eras), situated at the first roundabout on the main Galaha road, is unavoidably shot through with the more recent memory of decapitated heads grotesquely arranged like lotuses, around the shallow pond surrounding that very monument, during the ‘second JVP vs the Government’ mass killings.

Indeed, this small book of ‘memory and imagination’ takes poetic license in creating three fictional characters through whom we experience the ebullient years that Mac spent (making life-long friendships), at Peradeniya University. These three characters, Sita Fernando (from Ladies College), Phillip Fernando (from St Peters College) and Sidharthan Rasanayagam (from Jaffna College), are actually dramatis personae borrowed from Mac’s Black Comedy Rasanayagam’s Last Riot (Sydney, 1996), on the July ‘83 Anti-Tamil pogram which inaugurated the near 30 year civil-war. This poetic strategy, where biography and fiction are entwined, provides the playwright (born in Colombo but educated at St Patricks’ College, Jaffna), ample room to ‘dramatise’ the everyday University life of the young intellectuals experiencing a remarkable measure of independence from family and their social milieus for the first time. Also, for the first time young Lankans of different classes, ethnicities and languages, and religions found themselves living with each other in close proximity.

In addition, there is real dramatic excitement through theatrical activities of staging plays in both English and Sinhala. Sita, Philip and even Rasa perform in a production of the English language Dramatic Society (with its prior distinguished history at the University College in Colombo), under the direction of Professor of English, E. F. C. Ludowyk. This dramatic society is considered foundational for modern Lankan theatre where students were first introduced to modern European drama with Professor Ludowyk playing a leading role. The occasion is poignant as it is his farewell production of Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion, before he leaves the country in ‘56 for good, to retire to England. The activities around the creation of modern Sinhala theatre history at the University of Peradeniya, the plans to produce Maname with undergraduates, by Professor Ediriweera Sarthchandra, in 1956 is among the high points of the book, as is a test run of Sinhabahu in the open-air theatre. The imagined lecture given (based on factual information), by Prof. Sarachchandra to drum up support for the production of Maname, and to welcome the students to the multi-faceted University experience, are brilliant moments, spot-lit one might say, at the heart of the multi-ethnic linguistic political vision of this book, which Mac calls the ‘Peradeniya imagination’. I will return shortly to this intellectually stimulating scene which feels like an inspiring lecture because of its dramatic conception.

I write this review as one who experienced Peradeniya of University with all its splendour for a very brief but intellectually unmatched two years as a Temporary Assistant Lecturer in Western Classics, from ‘69 to April ‘71. What I studied, learnt and experienced there, while teaching with Professor Cuthbert Amerasinghe, feels like a seed bed that still nourishes my mind at 77. The explosion of bombs in one of the male halls of residence set off a curfew with a state of emergency enforced immediately, marking the first JVP Insurgency of April ‘71, during which month bullet riddled bodies of educated young Sinhala men and women floated down that great river to the sea. So, it’s with much interest that I read Mac’s account of the legendry period of the 50s when the great hopes of C. W. W. Kannangara’s ‘free education’ policy of 1948 was to inaugurate a confident, fairer post-colonial Lanka. Reading about it now in 2024 one recalls the recently installed Bronze statue (by Sarath Chandrajeeva), of the first Vice Chancellor, Sir Ivor Jennings, the implementor of that vision, gently fashioning an enchanted natural landscape at Peradeniya which still appears to flourish despite all.

The first chapter, ‘A Train Comes In’, introduces both Sita and Phillip from Colombo, strangers at first who find themselves congenially in the same carriage (and even married much later when they appear in Rasanayagam’s Last Riot), and also the lay out of the campus. The second chapter has Phillip and Sidharthan as ‘Room Mates’ where the former promptly decides to call the latter Rasa, establishing a lifelong friendship which ends tragically (in the play Rasanayagam’s Last Riot), in July ‘83 when, caught by a Sinhala mob, he refuses on principle to pronounce the word bucket in Sinhala as baldiya and meets his death. It is as room-mates that Phillip casually taught him in a jocular manner, the difference between Baldi and Valdi.

The main focus of the book is around the rich theatrical activities on campus in both English and Sinhala, which laid the foundations, after their undergraduate days, for the development of a robust bi-lingual theatre in the 60s, centred at first at the Lionel Wendt Theatre Colombo with the Stage and Set Group formed by Mac and his Peradeniya friends, strengthened by the exceptional acting talents of Irangani and Winston Serasinghe too. Given the theatrical emphasis in the book, one gets the impression that above all, it is theatre that galvanised Mac’s imagination at Peradeniya far more than any academic subject as such, for there is no scene set in the magnificent library, amidst the stacks for example, a favourite spot for lovers. Importantly, he shows persuasively that these theatrical activities were integrally linked to wider political currents of the country as well and offers a vision of Lanka imbibed at the University, which is universalist and humanist in outlook, inclusive and open to the world, not parochially ethno-nationalist and myopic.

At a student meeting held by a government official to discuss the proposed national flag for the country, a Muslim student, Ibrahim, known as a resident ‘joker’ makes fun of the manner in which concessions are made to ethnic minorities of the country who are marginalised with simplistic colour coding by the national emblem of the sword-carrying lion taking the lion’s share of space. This mythical lion, emblem of the Sinhala folk, recurs in various dramatic forms right across this book creating an emotional resonance that vibrates across their student lives and also across several aspects of the post-colonial history of the country. Mac treats the iconic lion as a poetic emblem to critique the emerging ethno-nationalism in the wake of the 1956 ‘Sinhala Only Act’ which affects the students for generations to come, as well. Mac poses a challenge to ethno-nationalism in the following way:

“In the connected event of ‘56, Maname of Peradeniya may be conceived in relation to Sinhala Only Act. It is a great Sinhala play because it is not Sinhala only” (p.64).

Mac gives us an understanding of the wide range of world historical theatrical research which was essential for Sarachchandra in developing his scholarly book on Lankan Folk Drama at first, and then his two plays, Maname and Sinhabahu. These include the knowledge of Indian theatrical traditions and theory, Greek theatre and theatrical theory and Japanese Noh drama as well. Without a knowledge of English, such wide ranging research in depth would have been impossible. At the marvellously conceived, well attended lecture organised by the Sinhala Natya Mandalaya, Professor Sarachchandra speaks (seated flanked by Charles Silva Gunasinghe Gurunanse from Balangoda and Dr Siri Gunasinghe, a lecturer in Sanskrit), of this rich context in which Maname was conceived. The importance of the Tamil folk form Natu Kuthu (originally from South India and then performed in the North East of Lanka), for the development of the Sinhala Nadagam form, on which Maname in turn is based, is also made explicit. Mac then adds other sources such as the Kurosava’s film Rashomon as a vital influence on Sarachchandra in transforming the moralistic, misogynist ending of the folk tale into a Modern parable of a multi-perspectival reading of the controversial ending of the play. He does something similar in his own play Under the Ola Leaf at the end of this book.

While there is no need to rehearse that ending of Maname here, the point Mac makes is that if all scholars or play-wrights knew was ‘Sinhala only’, then much of world drama and film would be inaccessible to Lankans, creating an academic parochialism. A small but very significant feminist angle is introduced by shifting the emphasis to the actress who was to play the princess. In her school days she had played the role in the old folk version where the princess is condemned as being fickle in betraying her husband, the prince. The student’s training in movement and singing by Gunasinghe Gurunanse while she was still at school has been decisive in being chosen for the role in the current play. But it’s the dialogue between Professor Sarachchandra and her which I find most remarkable. When he asks her if she was ‘happy to act the evil princess in the folk tale’, instead of answering the question, she queries the professor as to why he asks that specific question in the first place. This rather rare critical ability (of not taking anything for granted), pleases Professor Sarachchandra who says: ‘I knew I was meeting a creative woman’.

We experience the ‘race-riots’ of ‘58 through Sita and Philip who have gone down to Colombo with Rasa having been invited to stay in the safety of Philip’s house. Though they are safe, the effects of the violence are felt by all three young intellectuals and casts a dark shadow on the short time they have left at Peradeniya. In the concluding section of the book (shaken by the national tragedy, made all the more acute by their protective, deep friendship with Rasa, enacted so close to home by the burning down of Saraswathi Lodge where they’d just eaten the night before), Mac offers as an olive branch, through a dramatic enactment of what he calls the ‘Peradeniya imagination’.

The setting is a conversation among the three friends as they walk on the Galaha road in the dark, after having seen a test performance of Sinhabahu at the famous open-air theatre of the Peradeniya campus on the eve of their departure from University life in 1959. The mood is thoughtful, sombre. Sita leads the conversation with her sharp analytical mind which the other two take in quietly. All three have registered the pathos of the ending, the sudden blackout and long silence, as did the rest of the audience in being very slow to applaud and that too so quietly as the actors come forward slowly.

“As the stage lights went out to end the experience, almost abruptly, when the Lion Sinhaya fell down from his human son’s third arrow in the chest, the dumb founded silence, lasting seemingly to continue without let up, covertly suggested other considerations beyond the extracted part of the Mahavamsa story… it seemed to invite the audience to think of what was left unperformed in the large story of the Mahavamsa which the audience were familiar with. The origin of the Sinhalese” (72-73).

Patricide is a terrible crime and as in Oedipus Rex, leaves the ‘innocent’ killer/son tormented and blind. The play Under the Ola Leaf written by Sita is an effort to offer a new perspective on the old Mahavamsa legend by exploring the sense of pathos, the ‘pity and fear’ they all registered at the end of Sinhabahu that night in the open-air theatre. Precisely because there is no ‘catharis’ or release possible (as mandated by Aristotle in his conception of Tragedy), after the horrific act of patricide, the ending of the play creates a sense of desolation.

In Ludowyk’s decision to stage Androcles and the Lion as his farewell play in 1956, he had the lion’s head worn by the actor designed like the one on Lankan heraldry. Mac states that the choice of this play was a political gesture of farewell, (a parable on gratitude and compassion), to a country that Ludowyk loved dearly and contributed so much of value to enrich its multiethnic cultural and intellectual life. That all too human lion, grateful to the slave Androcles who once removed the thorn from his wounded paw, refuses to kill him later, and instead embraces him.

Mac’s one act play is also a parable for our times. He refuses to forget the heart- rending line, ‘me mage puthu novedo!’ (Is this not my son!). But he also refuses to forget (contrary to the Mahavamsa legend), the affective point of view of the son, Sinhabahu. In the play he is a man with a conscience and the patricide a swift ‘mercy killing’ so that his lion-father may not be trapped, tortured and beaten to death by the blood thirsty villagers.

In addition, Mac gives Vijaya, Sinhabahu’s own son (the legendry founder of Lanka), a more enlightening role than that of a rebellious son attributed by the Mahavamsa. Vijaya is a post Darwinian human, and so for him the lion on his flag (his grandfather), is to be remembered not as a killer but as embodying love. In so doing he appears to acknowledge our kinship with the animal world and therefore the seated lion on his flag, pointedly does not carry a sword. This is Mac’s alternative enlightening avihimsa perspective on the national patricidal legend, where the father, son and the grandson appear to evolve ethically, which augurs well for the new hybrid, multi-ethnic nation yet to be born. Mac reminds us, through Rasa, that Buddhism once flourished among the Tamils of South India as well.

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Midweek Review

Aragalaya: GR blames CIA in Asanga Abeyagoonasekera’s explosive narrative

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Asanga

Did CIA chief William Burns visit Colombo in Feb 2023? Sri Lanka and the US refrained from formally confirming the visit. The Opposition sought confirmation of the then CIA Chief’s visit to Colombo in terms of the Right to Information Act but the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government sidestepped the query. A former Republican congressman from Texas and Director of National Intelligence (2020–2021) John Ratcliffe succeeded Burns in late January 2025.

On the sheer weight of new evidence presented by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera’s ‘Winds of Change’, readers can get a clear picture of the forces that overthrew President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022.

Even five years after the political upheaval, widely dubbed ‘Aragalaya,’ controversy surrounds the high-profile operation that forced wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa to literally run for his dear life.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, formerly of the Army but a novice to party politics, comfortably won the 2019 November presidential election against the backdrop of the Easter Sunday carnage that caused uncertainty and suspicions among communities. The economic crisis, also clandestinely engineered from abroad, firstly by crippling vital worker remittances from abroad, almost from the onset of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency, overwhelmed the government and created the environment conducive for external intervention. Could it have been avoided if the government, that enjoyed a near two-thirds majority in Parliament, sought the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

The costly and well-funded book project, undertaken at the time Abeyagoonasekera was working on a governance diagnostic report for the IMF, in the wake of the change of government in Sri Lanka, meticulously examined the former Lieutenant Colonel’s ouster, taking into consideration regional as well as global developments. Abeyagoonasekera dealt efficiently and furiously with rapidly changing situations and developments before the unprecedented 03 January, 2026, US raid on Venezuela.

Lt. Col. (retd) Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for some unexplainable reason and a considerable time after the events, has chosen to blame his ouster on the United States. We cannot blame him either, by the way we have seen how other regime changes had been engineered, in our region, by Washington, since and before Gotabaya’s ouster. The accusation is extraordinary as Gotabaya Rajapaksa in his memoirs ‘The conspiracy to oust me from presidency’ refrained from naming the primary conspirator, though he clearly alluded to an international conspiracy.

April 8, 2019 meeting

Launched in March 2024, in the run-up to the presidential election that brought Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) to power, almost in a dream ride, if not for the intervening outside evil actors, ‘The conspiracy to oust me from presidency’ discussed the international conspiracy, but conveniently failed to name the primary conspirator. What made the former President speak so candidly with Abeyagoonasekera, the founding Director-General of the national security think tank, the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSS), under the Ministry of Defence, from 2016 to 2020?

Abeyagoonasekera also served as Executive Director at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute (LKI), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2011–2015), during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second term as the President. The author, both precisely and furiously, dealt with issues. Readers may find very interesting quotes and they do give a feeling of the author’s general hostility towards the US, India, as well as to the US-India marriage of convenience. Those who sense so may end up thinking ‘Change of Winds’ being supportive of the Chinese strategy. Among the highly sensitive quotes that underlined the Indian approach were attributed to Indian Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra. The author quoted Mitra as having declared: “We need the MRCC centre [Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre], and you cannot give it to another nation.” As pointed out by the author, it was not a request but an order given to Sri Lanka on 8 April, 2019, meant to prevent Sri Lanka from even considering a competing proposal from China. Against that background, the author, who had been present at that meeting at which the Sri Lanka delegation was led by then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, questioned the failure on the part of the delegations to take up the Easter Sunday attacks. Terrorists struck two weeks later. Implications were telling.

That particular quote reveals the circumstances India and the US operated here. No wonder the incumbent government does not want to discuss the secret defence MoUs it has entered into with India and the US as they would clearly reveal the sellout of our interests.

The following line says a lot about the circumstances under which Gotabaya Rajapaksa was removed: “In Singapore, a senior journalist recounted how Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation was scripted, under duress, at a hotel, facilitated by a foreign motorcade.”

In the first Chapter that incisively dealt with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the author was so lucky to secure an explosive quote from the ousted leader in an exclusive, hitherto unreported, interview in June 2024, a few months after the launch of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s memoirs. The ex-President hadn’t minced his words when he alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated his removal. He also claimed that he had been under US surveillance throughout his presidency.

The ousted leader has confidently cleared India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of complicity in the operation. What made him call Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval ‘a good man,’ in response to Abeyagoonasekera’s pointed query. Abeyagoonasekera quoted Gotabaya Rajapaksa as having said: “… he would never do such things.” The ex-President must have some reason to call Doval a good friend, regardless of intense pressure exerted on him and the Mahinda Rajapaksa government by the Indians to do away with large scale Chinese-funded projects. (Doval in late October last year declared “poor governance” was the reason behind uprisings that led to change of governments in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka over the period of past three-and-a-half years. The media quoted Doval as having said, during a function in New Delhi, that democracy and non-institutional methods of regime change in countries, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, created their own set of problems. That was the first time a senior Indian government official made remarks on Nepal’s government change, followed by the Gen Z uprising in early September, 2025.)

Gotabaya Rajapaksa also cleared the Chinese of seeking to oust him. It would be pertinent to mention that China reacted sternly when at the onset of the Gotabaya presidency, the President suggested the need to re-negotiate the Hambantota Port deal.

During the treacherous ‘Yahapalana’ administration (2015 to 2019) Gotabaya Rajapaksa told me how Doval had pressed him to halt not only the Colombo Port City project but to take back Hambantota Port as well. By then, the Chinese had twisted the arms of the Yahapalana leaders Mairthpala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe and secured the Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease in a one-sided USD 1.2 bn deal. The Colombo Port City project, that had been halted by the Yahapalana government, too, was resumed possibly under Chinese threat or for some money incentive.

Once Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, declared, at a hastily arranged media briefing at Sri Lanka Foundation (SLF), that Sri Lanka would be relentlessly targeted as long as the Chinese held the Hambantota Port. The writer was present at that media briefing.

Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe said so in the aftermath of the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage, while disclosing his abortive bid to convince the Yahapalana government to abrogate the Hambantota Port deal. Did the parliamentarian know something we were not aware of? The author’s assessment, regarding the Easter Sunday attacks, based on interviews with Chinese officials and scholars, is frightening and an acknowledgement of a possible Western role in Sri Lanka’s destabilisation plot.

The ousted leader, in his lengthy interview with Abeyagoonasekera, made some attention-grabbing comments on the then US Ambassador here, Julie Chung. The ex-President questioned a particular aspect of Chung’s conduct during the protest campaign but his decision not to reveal it all in his memoirs is a mystery. Perhaps, one of the most thought-provoking queries raised by Abeyagoonasekera is the rationale in Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s claim that he didn’t want to suppress the protest campaign by using force against the backdrop of his own declaration that the CIA orchestrated the project.

Author’s foray into parliamentary politics

Gotabaya

For those genuinely interested in post-Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga developments, pertaining to international relations and geopolitics, may peruse ‘Winds of Change’ as the third of a trilogy. ‘Sri Lanka at Crossroads’ (2019) dealt with the Mahinda Rajapaksa period and ‘Conundrum of an Island’ (2021) discussed the treacherous Sirisena–Wickremesinghe alliance. The third in the series examined the end of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s (SLPP) President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s rule and the rise of Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) whom the author described as a Marxist, though this writer is of the view the JVP and NPP leader AKD is not so. AKD has clearly aligned his administration with US-India while trying to sustain existing relationship with China.

Among Asanga Abeyagoonasekera’s other books were ‘Towards a Better World Order’ (2015) and ‘Teardrop Diplomacy: China’s Sri Lanka Foray’ (2023, Bloomsbury).

Had Abeyagoonasekera succeeded in his bid to launch a political career in 2015, the trilogy on Sri Lanka may not have materialised. Abeyagoonasekera contested the Gampaha district at the August 2015 parliamentary election on the UNP ticket but failed to garner sufficient preferences to secure a place in Parliament. That dealt a devastating setback to Abeyagoonasekera’s political ambitions, but the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena administration created the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSS), under the Ministry of Defence, for him. Abeyagoonasekera received the appointment as the founding Director-General of the national security think tank, from 2016 to 2020.

Several persons dealt with ‘Aragalaya’ (the late Prof. Nalin de Silva used to call it (Paragalaya) before Abeyagoonasekera though none of them examined the regional and global contexts so deeply, taking into consideration the relevant developments. Having read Wimal Weerawansa’s (Nine: The hidden story), Sena Thoradeniya’s (Galle Face Protest; Systems Change or Anarchy?). Mahinda Siriwardena’s (Sri Lanka’s Economic Revival – Reflection on the Journey from Crisis to Recovery) and Prof. Sunanda Maddumabandara’s (Aragalaye Balaya), the writer is of the opinion Abeyagoonasekera dealt with the period in question as an incisive insider.

Abeyagoonasekera, as a person who left the country, under duress, in 2021, painted a frightening picture of a country with a small and vulnerable economy trapped in major global rivalries. The former government servant attributed his self–imposed exile to two issues.

The first was the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage. Why did the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena government ignore the warning issued by Abeyagoonasekera, in his capacity as DG INSS, in respect of the Easter Sunday bombing campaign? There is absolutely no ambiguity at all in his claim. Abeyagoonasekera insists that he alerted the government four months before the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) bombers struck. The bottom line is that Abeyagoonasekera had issued the warning several weeks before India did but those at the helm of that inept administration chose to turn a blind eye.

The second was the impending economic crisis that engulfed the country in 2022. Abeyagoonasekera is deeply bitter about his arrest on 21 July, 2024, at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) over an alleged IRD –related offence as reported at that time, especially because he was returning home to visit his sick mother.

Asanga’s father Ossie, a member of Parliament and controversial figure, was killed in an LTTE suicide attack at Thotalanga in late Oct. 1994. The Chairman and leader of Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya had been on stage with then UNP presidential election candidate Gamini Dissanayake when the woman suicide cadre blasted herself. The assassination was meant to ensure Kumaratunga’s victory. The LTTE probably felt that it could manipulate Kumaratunga than the experienced Dissanayake who may have had reached some sort of consensus with New Delhi on how to deal with the LTTE.

Let me reproduce a question posed to Asanga Abeyagoonasekera and his response in ‘Winds of Change’ as some may believe that the author is holding something back. “Didn’t they listen?” a US intelligence officer had asked me incredulously after the bombings. Years later, during my role as a technical advisor for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) amid Sri Lanka’s collapse, the question resurfaced: “How did you foresee the collapse of a powerful regime with a majority in parliament?” My answer remained the same—patterns. Rigorously gathered data and relentless analysis reveal the arcs of history before they unfold.

Perhaps, readers may find what former cashiered Flying Officer Keerthi Ratnayake had to say about ‘Aragalaya’ and related developments (https://island.lk/ex-slaf-officer-sheds-light-on-developments-leading-to-aragalaya/)

Bombshell claim

Essentially, Abeyagoonasekera, on the basis of his exclusive and lengthy interview with former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, confirmed what Wimal Weerawansa and Sena Thoradeniya alleged that the US spearheaded the operation.

But Prof. Maddumabandara, a confidant of first post-Aragalaya President Ranil Wickremesinghe has bared the direct Indian involvement in the regime change operation. In spite of Gotabaya Rajapaksa confidently clearing Indian NSA Doval of complicity in his ouster, Prof. Maddumabandara is on record as having said that the then Indian High Commissioner here Gopal Baglay put pressure on Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to take over the government for an interim period. (https://island.lk/dovals-questionable-regional-stock-taking/)

Obviously, the US and India worked together on the Sri Lanka regime change operation. That is the undeniable truth. India wanted to thwart Wickremesinghe receiving the presidency by bringing in Speaker Abeywardena. That move went awry in spite of some sections of both Buddhist and Catholic clergy throwing their weight behind New Delhi.

The 2022 violent regime change operation cannot be discussed without taking into consideration the US-led project that also involved the UNP, JVP and TNA to engineer retired General Sarath Fonseka’s victory at the 2010 presidential election and their backing for turncoat Maithripala Sirisena at the 2015 presidential election.

The section, titled ‘Echoes of Crisis from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh: South Asia’s Struggle in a Polycrisis’, is riveting and underscores the complexity of the situation and fragility of governments. Executive power and undisputable majorities in Parliament seems irrelevant as external powers intervene thereby making the electoral system redundant.

Having meticulously compared the overthrowing of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Bangladesh’s Premier Sheikh Hasina, the author condemned them for their alleged failures and brutality. Abeyagoonasekera stated: “When the military sides with the protesters, as it did in Sri Lanka and now in Bangladesh, it reveals the rulers’ vulnerabilities.” The author unmercifully chided the former President for seeking refuge in the West while alleging direct CIA role in his ouster. But that may have spared his life. Had he sought a lifeline from the Chinese so late the situation could have taken a turn for worse.

The comment that had been attributed to Gotabaya Rajapaksa seemed to belittle Ranil Wickremesinghe who accepted the challenge of becoming the Premier in May 2022 and then chosen by the ruling SLPP to complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s five-year term. Ranil was definitely seen as an opportunistic vulture who backed ‘Aragalaya’ without any qualms till he saw an opening for himself out of the chaos.

On Wickremesinghe’s path

Abeyagoonasekera discussed the joint US-Indian strategy pertaining to Sri Lanka. Whatever the National People’s Power (NPP) and its President say, the current dispensation is continuing Wickremesinghe’s policy as pointed out by the author. In fact, this government appears to be ready even to go beyond Wickremesinghe’s understanding with New Delhi. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on defence and the selling of the controlling interests of the Colombo Dockyard Limited (CDL) to India, mid last year, must have surprised even those who always pushed for enhanced relations at all levels.

The economic collapse that resulted in political upheaval has given New Delhi the perfect opportunity to consolidate its position here. Uncomplimentary comments on current Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha in ‘Winds of Change’ have to be discussed, paying attention to Sri Lanka’s growing dependence and alleged clandestine activities of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Abeyagoonasekera seemed to have no qualms in referring to RAW’s hand in 2019 Easter Sunday carnage.

Overall ‘Winds of Change’ encourages, inspires and confirms suspicions about US and Indian intelligence services and underscores the responsibility of those in power to be extra cautious. But, in the case of smaller and weaker economies, such as Sri Lanka still struggling to overcome the economic crisis, there seems to be no solution. Not only India and the US, the Chinese, too, pursue their agenda here unimpeded. Utilisation of political parties, represented in Parliament, selected individuals, and media, in the Chinese efforts, are obvious. Once parliamentarian Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe raised the Chinese interventions in Sri Lanka. He questioned the Parliament receiving about 240 personal laptops for all parliamentarians and top officials. The then UNPer told the writer his decision not to accept the laptop paid for by China. Perhaps, he is the only Sri Lankan politician to have written a strongly worded letter to Chinese leader Xi warning against high profile Chinese strategy.

Winds of Change
is available at
Vijitha Yapa and Sarasavi

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

Beginning of another ‘White Supremacist’ World Order?

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Donald Trump’s complete lack of intelligence, empathy and common sense have become more apparent during the current term of his presidency. Ordinarily, a country’s wish to self-destruct as the United States seemingly does at present, and as the violence against US citizens and immigrants alike at the hands of federal authorities have shown in Minnesota, can be callously considered the business of that country. If the Trumpian imbecility was unfolding in Sri Lanka, anywhere else in South Asia or some other country of the purported Third World, the so-called World Order, led by the United States, would be preaching to us the values of democracy and human rights. But what happens when the actions of a powerful country, such as the United States, engulfs in the ensuing flames the rest of us? Trump and his madness then necessarily become our business, too, because combined with the military and economic power of the United States and its government’s proven lack of empathy for its own people, and the rest of the world, is quite literally a matter of global survival. Besides, one of the ‘positive’ outcomes of the Trumpian madness, as a friend observed recently, is that “he has single-handedly exposed and destroyed the fiction of ‘Western Civilisation’, including the pretenses of Europe.”

It is in this context that the speech delivered by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, on 20 January, 2026, deserves attention. It was an elegant speech, a slap in the face of Trump and his policies, the articulation of the need for global directional change, all in one. But, pertinently, it was also a speech that did not clearly accept responsibility for the current world (dis)order which Carney says needs to change. The reality of that need, however, was overly reemphasised by Trump himself during his meandering, arrogant and incohesive speech delivered a day later, spanning over one hour.

My interest is in what Carney did not specifically say in his speech: who would constitute the new world order, who would be its leaders and why should we believe it would be any different from the present one?

Speaking in French, Carney observed that he was talking about “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.” He was, of course, responding to the vulgar script for global domination put in place by the Trumpian United States, given Trump’s declared interest in seeing Canada as part of the United States, his avarice for Greenland, not to mention his already concluded grab for Venezuelan oil. But within this scenario, bound by ‘no limits’ and ‘no constraints’ he was also talking of Russia and China albeit in a coded language.

He reiterated, “that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states. The power of the less power starts with honesty.”

Who could disagree with Carney? His words are a refreshing whiff of fresh air in the intellectual wasteland that is the Trumpian Oval Office and the current world order it prevails over. But where has been the ‘honesty’ of the less powerful in the specific situation where he equates Canada itself within this spectrum? He tells us that “the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

That is stating the obvious. We have known this for decades by experience. Long before Canada’s relative silence with regard to Trump’s and US’ facilitation of the assault on Palestine and the massacre of its people, and the US President’s economic grab in Venezuela and the kidnapping of that country’s President and his wife, Canada’s own chorus in the world order that Carney now critiques has been embellished by silence or – even worse – by chords written by the global dominance orchestra of the United States.

He says the fading of the rules-based order has occurred because of the “strong tendency for countries to go along, to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.” Canada fits this description better than most other nations I can think of. But would Canada, along with other nations among the silent majority within the ‘intermediate powers’ take the responsibility for the mess in the world precisely that silence has directly led to creating? Who will pay for the pain many nations have endured in the prevailing world order? Will Canada lead the way in the new world order in doing this?

Carney further articulates that “for decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.”

But this is not true, is it? Countries like Canada prospered not merely because of the stability of rules of the world order, but because they opted for silence when they should not have. The rupture and the chaos in the world order Carney now critiques and is insanely led by Trump today is not merely the latter’s creation. It has been co-authored for decades by countries such as Canada, France, the United Kingdom to mention just a few who also regularly chant the twin-mantras of human rights and democracy. Trump is merely the latest and the most vocal proponent of the nastiness of that World Order.

It is not that Carney is unaware of this unpleasant reality. He accepts that “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”

While Canada seems to be coming to terms with this reality only now, countries like Sri Lanka and others in similarly disempowered positions in this world order have experienced this for decades, because, as I have outlined earlier, Canada et al have been complicit sustainers of the now demonised and demonic world order.

It is not that I disagree with the basic description Carney has painted of the status of the world. But from personal experience and from the perspective of a citizen from a powerless country, I simply do not trust those who preach ‘the gospel of the good’ not as a matter of principle, but only when the going gets tough for them.

At this rather late stage, Carney says, Canada is “amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.” Unfortunately, we, the people of countries who had to dance to the tunes of the world order led by the First World, have heard it for years, with no one listening to us when our discomforts were articulated. Now, Carney wants ‘middle powers’ or ‘intermediate powers’ within which he also locates Canada, “to live the truth?” For him, the truth means “naming reality” as it exists; “acting consistently” towards all in the world; “applying the same standards to allies and rivals” and “building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored.” This appears to be the operational mantra for the new world order he is envisioning in which he sees Canada as a legitimate leader merely due to its late wakeup call.

He goes on to give a list of things Canada has done locally and globally and concludes by saying, “we have a recognition of what’s happening and a determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.” He goes on to say Canada also has “the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.” He notes this is “Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.” Quite simply, this a leadership pitch for a new world order with Canada at its helm.

Without being overly cynical, this sounds very familiar, not too dissimilar to what USAID and Voice of America preached to the world; not too dissimilar to what the propaganda arms of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party used to preach in our own languages when we were growing up. It is difficult to buy this argument and accept Canadian and middle country leadership for the new world order when they have been consistently part of the problem of the old one and its excuses for institutionalised double standards practiced by international organisations such as the likes of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other hegemonic entities that have catered to the whims of that world order.

As far as Canada is concerned, it is evident that it has suddenly woken up only due to an existential threat at home projected from across its southern border and Trump’s threats against the Danish territory of Greenland. When Gaza was battered, and Venezuela was raped, there was no audible clarion call. Therefore, there is no real desire for democracy or human rights in its true form, but a convenient and strategic interest in creating a new ‘white supremacist’ world order in the same persona as before, but this time led by a new white warrior instead. The rest of us would be mere followers, nodding our heads as expected as was the case before.

As the 20th century American standup comedian Lenny Bruce once said, “never trust a preacher with more than two suits.” Mr. Carney, Canada along with the so-called middle powers and the lapsed colonialists have way more than two suits, and we have seen them all.