Features

Narrative Fragments of Independence share a unifying Sri Lankan Narrative

Published

5 years ago

2021/01/31

by Rajan Philips

Sri Lanka turns 73 this week, 73 years since becoming independent. It is nearly 15 years since I started writing to the Sunday Island, and almost every February I have written a piece to mark Sri Lanka’s independence anniversary. I wrote one for the 70th anniversary, in 2018, but unbeknownst to me and many others, there was a different and far more precious souvenir that was being prepared to mark that special occasion. The precious product came out the following year, in 2019, entitled “Archive of Memory – Reflections on 70 years of Independence.” It was the brainchild and consummate achievement of Malathi de Alwis, who passed away recently causing great shock and much sadness in Sri Lanka’s social, activist, and academic circles.

I did not know Dr. de Alwis at all and never had the privilege of meeting her. But members of my family did, and the copy of the “Archive of Memory” that I am using for inspiration now was given by Ms. Alwis to my wife, Amali, when they met in Colombo in January 2019. Many of us knew of her work and her collaboration with Kumari Jayawardena, and we saw in her a gifted torch bearer for the next generation. As with Serena Tennakoon earlier, untimely death has snatched away another accomplished prodigy all too soon when Sri Lanka needs many more of them – among both women and men and among all its Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim co-existences.

On the positive side, and despite its seemingly unbridgeable political divisions, Sri Lankan society never runs short of people never giving up in keeping the social ties of unity, decency, tolerance, and humanity, alive and strong. Malathi de Alwis was one such person. The Archive of Memory which she conceptualized and produced, in collaboration with Hasini Haputhanthri, Shani Jayawardena and others, is testament to her life’s work and purpose. Even more, the Archive is a testament to Sri Lanka’s possibilities, notwithstanding all the recessionary and reactionary forces that are in command today.

The life of things

Malathi de Alwis was an Anthropologist. So was Serena Tennakoon. Anthropologists do not work with large populations, or look for statistical validations of social practices or processes. They look for experiential validations and try to discern sense and meanings from social norms, processes, customs, and practices. Practices involve symbols and objects and artefacts and things. Anthropologists talk about “The social life of things.” The Archive of Memory enshrines both the social and political life of Sri Lankan things. It is a photographic collection of objects and artefacts, and narratives about them educed from their owners and possessors.

The Archive includes seventy photographs depicting seventy objects and artefacts – one for each year of independence. Each photograph is supplemented by a narrative, authentically provided by the owners, and dialectically refined by the owners and the editors. Linguistic mediation was inevitable because the Archive of Memory is published in all three languages of Sri Lanka, the narratives involved translation from one language to another. Even in the same language – there was back and forth between the narrators and the editors as they ‘distilled’ the original tale to suit the physical limits of size and structure while retaining the authenticity of the narrative voices.

The archival project clearly seems to have resonated across a representative cross-section of Sri Lankan society. A network of collectors and interviewers literally contact-traced potential possessors of things that had tales to tell. They were drawn from all ethnicities and all social strata, from all occupations and walks of life, and from all religions as well as from atheists. The project received more than 150 interests, and settled on 70 objects and stories. The Archive includes at least one object-story pair from each Province, as well as from the diaspora, and the provincial tallies are – Western Province over 20 of them, Northern Province 14, Central Province 9, and five each in the Southern and Eastern Provinces.

Chronologically, the objects and stories span all seven decades of independence, some of them going back to pre-independence years, many of them converging around the 1980s and 2000s. It will not be justice to the Archive to try to describe in words any, let alone all, of the objects that are captured by the splendid photography of Sharni Jayawardena. The objects range from family jewelry, personal belongings, household items, musical instruments, food sampling, mechanical appliances, garden trees and many more. Not every object is a personal possession, but something that relates to someone’s experience, or a common event. The stories about them are personal, but they are also political – if not directly, but at least contextually.

The collection begins with a Silver Bangle and the story about the Pageant of Lanka that Deva Suriya Sena organized in London, in 1948, to celebrate Ceylon’s independence. The pageant was held over four days featuring episodes from the past through music, dance, and drama – Ravana and Sita; Introduction to Buddhism; Elara the Just; Arrival of the Portuguese; and the British Administration. Dakshini Fernando who narrates the story was a 20-year old, living in London in 1948, and wore the Silver Bangle for a dance performance at the pageant.

The book ending story is about a Suitcase that has been the life companion for Bandara Menike, born in 1948, in Sorantota, Badulla, in far less than fortunate circumstances. She even missed learning to read and write, which all her siblings did, and joined as a domestic help to a well-to-do family in Badulla. When that family moved to Colombo, they took Menike with them and bought her a new suitcase to pack her belongings. The Suitcase has stayed with Menike through much of the Independence years. She wouldn’t let go of it, and says “it keeps vigil under my sick bed.” She has seen Colombo at its best and at its worst – from the limitless ocean and the amusing zoo, to the fires of 1983, the sirens of the civil war, and the water wall of the tsunami.

In between, we are introduced by Sunethra Bandaranaike to the Wedding Necklace that her mother wore en route to becoming Sri Lanka’s and the world’s first woman Prime Minister. A.T. Ariyaratne recounts his initiative as a young schoolboy in Galle in setting up a co-operative for poor women who make coir rope, to get fair prices for their product. The initiative grew into a fully fledged Coir Rope Makers Co-operative encompassing 15,000 villages across the island after starting “80 destitute women” in Unawatuna. And we hear of the exploits of Ray Wijewardene making Micro-Light aircrafts.

Depressing stories surface on all sides as years roll by and the country is caught in the throes of a civil war. Udhayani Navaratnam (Tellipalai/New Delhi) and her family saved their keys but lost their house in Tellipalai. She was 14 in 1990, when the family had to evacuate their home as it came under the government security zone. They were reduced to living a nomadic existence, the father died of a heart attack in 2003, and in 2011 they were given permission to return to their house. After 21 years they went back, their mother clutching the bunch of keys. There was nothing left to open.

The things and the stories, assembled by Malathi de Alwis and her creative team of serious and dedicated friends, bring into rare relief the social facets of Independence – separate from political pretensions and the parades that go with them. The Archive’s introduction eschews pretension and speaks candidly about independence and its aftermaths:

“While there is much to celebrate in our overthrowing a 500-year yoke of colonial rule and embracing democratic politics, it is undeniable that Sri Lanka’s post-independence trajectory has also been rather turbulent and bloody. Communal riots, youth insurrections, natural disasters and a protracted civil war have cast a long, brooding shadow across recent decades. Any reflection on our past must acknowledge the positive advances we have made as a nation as well as question and learn from our negative experiences.”

The Archive captures samples of positive advances as well as negative experiences, and acknowledges that many “events of great political and historical significance” are not in the collection. However, what are included are worthy of repetitive reading and reflection, not for making political arguments but as a vehicle for political catharsis. Although they are fragments that have never been together, nor will ever be, together they interlace a Sri Lankan story that is not politically pretentious but is socially authentic. For that, we say Thank You to Malathi de Alwis, and salute her memory.

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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.