Features

Martin Wickramasinghe and A.G. Fraser

Published

3 years ago

2023/04/21

By Uditha Devapriya

On 7 February 1970, Trinity College, Kandy held its 99th annual Prize Giving. Presided by the then Anglican Bishop of Kurunegala, Lakshman Wickremesinghe, the ceremony featured Martin Wickramasinghe as its Chief Guest. By this point Wickramasinghe had established himself as Sri Lanka’s leading literary figure. A grand old man of 80, he was now writing on a whole range of topics outside culture and literature. His essays addressed some of the more compelling socio-political issues of the day, including unrest among the youth. His speech at the Prize Giving dwelt on these issues and reflected his concerns.

Wickramasinghe’s speech centred on A. G. Fraser, Principal of Trinity from 1904 to 1924. Considered one of the finest headmasters of the day, Fraser broke ground by incorporating vernacular languages to the school syllabus and indigenous cultural elements to the school environment. Fraser was 10 years into his principalship when Wickramasinghe wrote his first novel, Leela. His tenure coincided with some of the more transformative events in British Ceylon, including the McCallum and Manning constitutional reforms. His zeal, especially for indigenising Christianity and missionary education, won him as many allies as it did enemies. Eventually, it encouraged other educationists to follow suit.

The world Fraser saw through was different to the world Wickramasinghe grew up in. Yet in many ways, they were not too different. Fraser had been born to a typical colonial family: his father, Sir Andrew Henderson Leith Fraser, had served as Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal under Lord Curzon. Wickramasinghe, on the other hand, did not obtain a proper education: having left school at an early age, he had been self-educated and self-taught. Both, however, lived through an era of irreversible social transformation, and both played leading roles in that transformation. It is not clear whether the two of them ever actually met. But the two of them shared a disdain for the culture of imitativeness which had become fashionable among the colonial, Westernised middle-class. Through their fields – education in Fraser’s case, literature in Wickramasinghe’s – they strived to change that culture.

By 1970 that culture had changed, and Wickramasinghe’s contribution, as well as Fraser’s, had been widely acknowledged. It is this contribution which Wickramasinghe addressed in his speech at the Prize Giving. Hailing Fraser as a “genuine educationist”, Sri Lanka’s leading Sinhalese litterateur commended Trinity’s greatest principal’s efforts at indigenising the school and the syllabus. In doing so, he categorically refuted the allegation, popular among nationalist ideologues, that Fraser had “created a hostile attitude in the minds of the boys of Trinity to their own culture and language.” From that standpoint, he conceived an intelligent and, in my view, well-rounded critique of chauvinism, which scholars of the man have barely if at all touched in their appraisals of his work.

In a recent, intriguing essay on agrarian utopianism, Dhanuka Bandara invokes Stanley Tambiah’s claim that the concept of gama, pansala, wewa, yaya, so central to the Sinhala nationalist discourse, emerged from Martin Wickramasinghe’s work. To a considerable extent, this is true, and Dhanuka goes to great lengths to show it was. Wickramasinghe’s essays – including those on Sinhalese culture – depicts an almost pristine indigenous society, not unlike Ananda Coomaraswamy’s vision of Kandyan art and culture.

Dedication of Side Chapel, Trinity College – 1930

Comparisons between Wickramasinghe and Coomaraswamy are not as crude as they may appear to be. Both idealised rural Sinhalese culture, and both depicted it as an organic, tightly knit community pitted against the forces of modernity. Yet there were important differences. While Coomaraswamy, as Senake Bandaranayake’s essay on the man clearly argues, sought to preserve Kandyan art and culture throughout his life, his celebration of that culture led him to idealise a feudal, static social order. This critique, of course, can itself be critiqued, particularly by those who harbour a different view on Coomaraswamy and his work. But, in my opinion, it stands in marked contrast to Wickramasinghe’s celebration, not of cultural pristineness, but of cultural synthesis and pluralism.

Indeed, throughout his essays, Wickramasinghe hardly exudes an Arnoldian affirmation of high culture. He does not pretend to uphold a great tradition. He is concerned not with keeping intact the values of a pristine society, but with ensuring continuity and change within a certain framework and environment. Contrary to certain cultural nationalists who may imagine him to be one of them, this framework is neither exclusivist nor chauvinist. That is arguably most evident in his critiques of the vernacularisation of education in the 1950s. While admitting the need for the shift to swabasha, he criticises those who, in the guise of devising a “national” education system, went overboard in their attempts at reviving a dead, supposedly superior past in school curricula and syllabuses.

Wickramasinghe’s Trinity College speech presciently underlies these concerns. Addressing the students’ movement in the West and growing student unrest in Sri Lanka, he traces the angst of the youth to an increasingly fragmented society.

“The two causes peculiar to our country which generate discontent in the students of higher educational institutions and sometimes incite them to revolt are bureaucratic control, and the paternal attitude of the society towards them. The bureaucratic control of higher educational institutions based on foreign traditions and the class system that encouraged exploitation is an inheritance from the English colonial system. And the growth of the paternal attitude of the society to the student population is mainly due to an attempt of Buddhist monks and nationalists to revive the past with its dead culture.”

This is a remarkable observation, at odds with the conventional view of Wickramasinghe as an advocate of an organic, pristine past. He is criticising not just the English colonial system which has survived the transition to independent statehood in Sri Lanka, but also Buddhist monks and nationalists – none less! – who idealise a superior, classical culture and try to revive it everywhere. These issues, he contends, are at the centre of youth unrest, and they have pushed the young to rebel against their elders.

“The attempt to inculcate a blind and meek obedience in boys and girls for their elders and teachers is an attempt to revive the divine rights of kings. Parents deserve love, gratitude and kindness form their sons and daughters, but not surrender. What is required is not blind obedience which creates conscious and unconscious hypocrisy, but discipline on the basis of their own independent and changing culture.”

Here one is struck not merely by the author’s siding with the rebelling youth, but also by his unconditional support for their pursuit of an “independent and changing culture.” It ties in with his own belief in the inevitability of change and transformation, of the sort he and A. G. Fraser encountered and affirmed in their day. Indeed, like Fraser, Wickramasinghe critiques the colonial elite’s dismissal of national culture, yet does not embrace an exclusivist framing of this culture. “The word nationalism,” he comments, “apart from the consciousness of the cultural unity of a community, means chauvinism.” This is a remarkable observation from a man whom cultural nationalists today appropriate as one of them.

Some of his other essays from this time reveal an even more radical view on culture.

“There is a cultural unity among the common people in spite of differences of religion, language, and race. They are not interested in a state religion, communal and religious rights because they instinctively feel that there is an underlying unity in religion and race. Agitation for a state religion and communal rights emanates from a minority of educated people who have lost the ethos of their common culture.”

“Impetus for the Growth of a Multiracial Culture”

It is important to note that such views were entirely in line with A. G. Fraser’s. Fraser’s zeal for indigenisation, which inspired the two most prominent faces of Anglicanism in post-colonial Sri Lanka, Lakdasa de Mel and Lakshman Wickremesinghe, was one rooted not in the narrow frame of “Sinhala Only” and narrow communalism, but in an all-encompassing nationalism. Fraser’s intervention in the 1915 riots, derided by nationalist elites at the time, but defended eloquently by James Rutnam later, shows that to some extent.

Here, for instance, is Fraser speaking at the College Prize Giving in 1908.

“When I came here four years ago I was astonished to find that senior students who hoped to serve amongst their people could neither read nor write their own language… a thorough knowledge of the mother tongue is indispensable to true culture or real thinking power. More, a college fails if it is not producing true citizens and men who are isolated from the masses of their own people by ignorance of their language and thought can never fulfil the part of educated citizens or be the true leaders of their race.”

It would be useful to quote from Wickramasinghe’s 1970 speech.

“A child must adapt and respond to that environment of the greater society to develop his intellectual and creative faculties. If he is trained to adapt and respond only to the environment of his family circle who are mere imitators, the development of his intellectual and creative faculties will be retarded.”

Both Fraser and Wickramasinghe, in other words, are affirming the need for a child to grow amidst his environment, to learn from and absorb it, to adapt to it.Wickramasinghe’s Trinity College speech needs to be reassessed and reappraised. It distils his views on education and indigenous culture, and his critique of extremist and exclusivist variants of cultural nationalism. It is one of the best sources we have on the man’s views on these issues, and it needs to be placed in the context of its time: a year or so after the Prize Giving, Sri Lanka would encounter a widespread youth insurrection, the likes of which it had never encountered before. Martin Wickramasinghe would pass away six years after the Prize Giving, almost 15 years after Fraser’s passing. Fraser’s contribution, and Wickramasinghe’s affirmation of it, underlies a vision of nationalism and culture that was more inclusive, more diverse, and thus more representative of our country and our people.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.

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Features

High Stakes in Pursuing corruption cases

Published

10 hours ago

2026/05/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

Kapila Chandrasena

The death of the most important suspect in the Sri Lankan Airlines Airbus deal has drawn intense public speculation. Kapila Chandrasena the former CEO of the heavily loss-making national airline was found dead under circumstances that the police are still investigating.

He had recently been arrested by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption in connection with the controversial Airbus aircraft purchase agreement signed in 2013. Police investigations are continuing into the cause of death and whether or not he committed suicide. The unresolved death brings to light the high stakes involved in accountability efforts of this nature.

The uncertainty surrounding Chandrasena’s death has revived public memories of other mysterious deaths linked to corruption investigations and public scandals. Among them is the death of Rajeewa Jayaweera, a former SriLankan Airlines executive and outspoken critic of the Airbus transaction. He was following in the tradition of his father, the late foreign service officer and public servant Stanley Jayaweera who mentored the younger generation in good governance practices and formed the group “Avadhi Lanka” along with icons such as Prof Siri Hettige. Rajeewa had written a series of articles exposing irregularities in the deal before he was found dead near Independence Square in Colombo in 2020. The CCTV cameras in that high security area were turned off. Questions raised at that time whether or not he had committed suicide were not satisfactorily resolved.

The controversy about the cause of Chandrasena’s death is diverting attention away from the massive damage done to the country by the SriLankan Airlines deal itself. The value of the aircraft agreement was close to the size of the International Monetary Fund bailout package that Sri Lanka desperately needed by 2023 in order to stabilise the economy after bankruptcy. Sri Lanka’s IMF Extended Fund Facility amounted to about USD 3 billion spread over four years. The comparison shows the scale of the losses and liabilities that irresponsible and corrupt decisions have imposed on the country and which must never happen again.

Wider Pattern

The corruption linked to the Airbus transaction came fully into the open only because of investigations conducted outside Sri Lanka. In 2020 Airbus agreed to pay record penalties of more than EUR 3.6 billion to authorities in Britain, France and the United States to settle global corruption investigations. Sri Lanka was identified as one of the countries where bribes had allegedly been paid in order to secure contracts. The Airbus deal involved the purchase of six A330 aircraft and four A350 aircraft valued at approximately USD 2.3 billion. Investigations showed that Airbus paid bribes amounting to nearly USD 16 million in order to secure the contract. According to court submissions, at least part of this money amounting to USD 2 million was transferred through a shell company registered in Brunei and routed through Singapore bank accounts linked to the late airline CEO and his wife.

The commissions involved in this deal may seem comparatively small compared to the overall value of the contracts but devastating in their consequences. But they also show that a few million dollars paid secretly to decision makers could lead to the country assuming liabilities worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars over decades. This is why corruption is not simply a moral issue. It is a direct economic assault on the living standards of ordinary people. Money lost through corruption is money unavailable for schools, hospitals, rural development and job creation. In the end the burden falls on ordinary citizens who are left to repay debts incurred in their name without receiving commensurate benefits in return.

The SriLankan Airlines transaction gives an indication of the wider pattern of corruption and misuse of national resources that has taken place over many years. This was not an isolated incident. There were numerous large scale infrastructure and procurement projects that imposed heavy debts on the country while enriching politically connected individuals and their associates. Other projects such as the Colombo Port City, Hambantota Harbour and highway construction reveal a similar pattern.

Less publicised but equally damaging scandals have involved fertiliser medicine and energy contracts. Investigations into medicine procurement in recent years uncovered allegations that substandard pharmaceuticals had been imported at inflated prices causing both financial losses and risks to public health.

Moral Renewal

The present government appears determined to investigate major corruption cases in a manner that no previous government has attempted. Those who ransacked and bankrupted the treasury need to be dealt with according to the law. There is considerable public support for efforts to recover stolen assets and ensure accountability.

In his May Day speech President Anura Kumara Dissanayake stated that around 14 corruption cases were nearing completion in the courts this very month and called upon the public to applaud when verdicts are delivered. Political opponents of the government claim that such comments could place pressure on the judiciary and blur the separation between political leadership and the courts. But the deeper public frustration that underlies the president’s remarks also needs to be understood.

The challenge facing Sri Lanka is twofold. The country must ensure that justice is done through due process and independent institutions. If anti corruption campaigns become politicised they can lose legitimacy. But if corruption and abuse of power continue without consequences the country will remain trapped in a cycle of economic decline and moral decay. Sri Lanka also needs to confront past abuses linked to the war period. There are allegations of kidnapping, extortion, disappearances and criminal activity in which members of the security forces have been implicated. Vulnerable sections of the population suffered greatly during those years. If political leaders turned a blind eye or actively connived in such crimes they too need to be held accountable under the law. Selective justice will not heal the country. Accountability must apply across the board regardless of political position, ethnicity or institutional power.

Sri Lanka has paid a very heavy price for corruption and impunity. The economic collapse of 2022 did not occur overnight. It was the result of years of bad governance, reckless decision making, abuse of power and the misuse of public wealth. If the country is to move forward the focus cannot be diverted by sensational speculation alone. Suspicious deaths and political intrigue may dominate headlines for a few days. But the larger issue is the system that enabled corruption to flourish without accountability for so long. The real national task is to end that system. Sri Lanka cannot build a prosperous future on a foundation of corruption and impunity. Unless those who looted public wealth are held accountable and the systems that enabled them are dismantled, the country risks repeating the same cycle again.

Jehan Perera

Features

When University systems fail:Supreme Court’s landmark intervention in sexual harassment case

Published

10 hours ago

2026/05/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

Over seven years after making an initial complaint of sexual harassment against her research supervisor, Dr. Udari Abeyasinghe, then a temporary lecturer and now a senior lecturer at the University of Peradeniya, has been finally served justice. On May 8, 2026, the Supreme Court made the following directions regarding Udari’s fundamental rights case: “1) The 1st Respondent [her research supervisor] is prohibited from accepting any post, whether paid or not or honorary, in any university, educational institute or other academic institution; 2) The UGC to issue a direction to all universities and other institutions, coming under its purview, to abstain from giving any appointment, whether paid or not, or honorary, to the 1st Respondent; and 3) The University of Peradeniya, including the Council and respective Respondent [sic], are directed to take appropriate measures to enforce and raise awareness of the University of Peradeniya’s policy on Sexual or Gender-Based Harassment and Sexual Violence for staff and students, including conducting mandatory annual seminars for all academics, staff and students.” I recently spoke with Udari to learn about her experience battling the University’s sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) procedures.

Violence and injustice

Udari was a temporary lecturer when she began working on her MPhil degree. Her research supervisor was a Senior Professor and Dean of her faculty. The harassment began in 2017.

When Udari reached out for support to the SGBV Committee of the University of Peradeniya, the Chair explained the complaint procedure, including how a third party could make a complaint on her behalf. In July 2018, Udari’s mother made a written complaint to the Vice Chancellor (VC). “The very next day [my supervisor] called me … and asked me to withdraw the complaint because it would look bad for me … the university should have taken measures to separate the complainant from the perpetrator … but nothing like that happened.”

Before making the formal complaint, Udari reached out to other academic staff at her Faculty. She shared her experience with a few close colleagues. Many advised her to leave the Faculty. “No one in the Faculty supported me publicly, although some sympathised privately … I was a temporary lecturer … no one really cared.” Some of her colleagues and non-academic staff who knew about the harassments, asked her to avoid involving them because they feared retaliation from higher powers.

Udari faced a preliminary inquiry and then a formal inquiry. The preliminary inquiry took place about four months after her complaint, and the inquiry committee recommended proceeding to a formal inquiry. The latter was held about a year after the initial complaint. “I got to know unofficially that [my supervisor] had got hold of all the statements made at the preliminary inquiry and pressured some colleagues to change their statements before the formal inquiry.” During the time of the formal inquiry, an anonymous letter (“kala paththaraya”) was circulated among staff: “It was a character assassination … the same kala paththaraya would get circulated from time to time.” After the formal inquiry committee submitted its report and recommendations, Udari was informed, in writing, that the University Council had dismissed the report.

“Neither the preliminary inquiry report nor the formal inquiry report were shared with me … I had to make a formal request to the VC and only then did I get a copy of the preliminary inquiry report… I had to get the formal inquiry report through an RTI (a request under the Right to Information Act). What I understand is that [my supervisor] had influenced the Council … that’s why they rejected the report…saying there had been a delay of six months to make a complaint ….” (N. B. there are no time limitations for submitting a complaint in the SGBV by-laws of the University of Peradeniya, although such time bars exist at other universities).

Udari then submitted formal complaints to the University Grants Commission (August 2020) and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (December 2020), and finally filed a fundamental rights case at the Supreme Court in March 2021. Five years later, on May 8th 2026, Udari’s complaint was vindicated.

University procedures and inquiries

When her mother submitted the complaint against her supervisor, Udari was a temporary lecturer. She had given up her dream of pursuing an academic career because she did not think she would be recruited to a permanent position after making a complaint against a faculty member. It is encouraging that Udari was recruited, but in most instances, students and junior staff endure and stay silent to avoid jeopardising their academic careers. We currently have no procedures in place at universities to protect victims and witnesses from backlash.

According to Udari, the former Chair of the SGBV Committee and the members of her preliminary inquiry panel played a crucial role in her case, and, in her words, “could not be influenced.” But SGBV by-laws at state universities place inordinate power in the hands of the Council and VC. According to the SGBV by-laws of the University of Peradeniya, the Council appoints the 15-member SGBV Committee comprising “[t]wo (02) persons from among the members of the Council; [t]en (10) persons drawn from the permanent and senior members of the academic community; and [t]hree (03) persons external to the University, from among the retired academic or administrative staff of the University” (Section 2.1). While the by-laws recommend appointing persons who have demonstrated “gender-sensitivity, proven interest in working on issues of gender equality and equity, and trained to investigate and inquire into cases of sexual or gender-based harassment and sexual violence” (Section 2.1), we know this is often not the case. In many universities, VCs control which cases are taken up and end up in an inquiry. Most students and staff at state universities have little faith in the existing SGBV complaint procedures.

As Udari experienced, the decisions of inquiry committees can be overruled and dismissed by University Councils, indicating the importance of appointing appropriate members to the Councils. The Deans of faculties, who are Ex-officio members, usually collude to protect their own interests and fiefdoms, while the appointment of external members to Councils is deeply politicised. At present, there is no application process or vetting of candidates before they are appointed. They are usually persons who are seen to be sympathetic to the incumbent political dispensation. Furthermore, external members are dependent on the university hierarchy for information on the issues being discussed, the details of which are often hidden from them. It is not surprising then that University Councils would adjudicate on the side of power.

Final recommendation

Beyond barring Udari’s former research supervisor from holding positions in the university system, the Supreme Court has directed the University of Peradeniya to raise awareness on SGBV among staff and students. While SGBV is addressed in the induction courses and orientation programmes at universities, staff and students must be made aware of the nitty-gritties of complaint procedures, including time bars, which were crucial to the outcome of Udari’s case. But is raising awareness sufficient? Do we have ways to hold university authorities accountable for arbitrary and/or prejudicial decision-making and other abuses of power?

For Udari, life continues to be difficult, with constant surveillance of her activities.

“In November 2024 , I shared a post about my case.. it was a newspaper article stating that the Supreme Court had granted leave to proceed… I just took a photograph of it and posted it on my Facebook without any captions… a few weeks later I was summoned by higher authorities…I was informed that several academics had verbally complained about me using my social media to tarnish the name of the faculty and the university and, if that’s the case, that I should know that the University Council has the authority to take action against me … we also spoke briefly about the case and at one point I was told that this incident (harassment) happened to me because I showed some positivity towards (the perpetrator) …”

Let’s hope that university administrations pause before victimising and revictimising SGBV survivors in future. As a community, we have to rethink the hierarchical ways in which universities function and create a meaningful mechanism that supports students and staff to complain without fear of repercussion.

Thank you, Udari, for taking this step forward. University administrations will have to stop, listen and change their ways.

(Ramya Kumar is attached to the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna, and is an alumna of the University of Peradeniya).

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

By Ramya Kumar

Features

‘Nidahase’ in the spotlight

Published

10 hours ago

2026/05/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

Senani Wijesena, the Sri Lankan-Australian singer-songwriter, known for fusion pop/R&B with ethnic elements, like the tabla and sitar, is in the news again.

She was featured in The Island, in early April (2026), regarding her career in the music scene, and the release of her first ever Sinhala song ‘Nidahase.’

The song was released in Sri Lanka, on 17th April, with Senani in town to do the needful.

The music video was filmed at the Polgampola Waterfall, in Sri Lanka, and also features co-star Senura Ambegoda … playing the romantic interest.

Describing the setup, Senani had this to say:

“To achieve the high falls scenes, I had to climb large rocks and slippery edges to get to the top of the falls, and I had to do it in the yellow saree I was wearing. Of course the film crew assisted me.”

The initial scenes were filmed in bustling Pettah where Senani meets co-star Senura Ambegoda, working in a street stall, and when their eyes meet it triggers a memory of soul connection and transports her into another world entering the forest scene.

The forest, says Senani, symbolically represented a retreat to nature and peace.

The couple later rejoin at Colombo City Centre where they danced together and enjoyed each other’s company.

Says Senani: “The short dance routine was created on the spot, on set. Senura is a dance teacher, as well as a model and actor, and we learnt the routine, in 10 minutes, before it was filmed.”

‘Nidahase’ means Freedom in English – about being free in life, love, expression and movement.

It’s, in fact, a reworked version of her highly successful English song ‘Free’ which was nominated for a Hollywood Music In Media award in the RNB/Soul category, and also reached the Top 20 of the Music Week Dance charts in the UK.

‘Nidahase’ can be heard on all streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon.

Senani’s YouTube channel is www.youtube.com/senanimusic

Her social media pages are: www.instagram.com/senanimusic and www.facebook.com/senanimusic. Her website is www.senani.com

For the record, Senani is the daughter of film actress Jeevarani Kurukulasuriya and Dr Lanka Wijesena.