Features

New Peradeniya pays tribute to old Peradeniya

Published

2 years ago

2023/08/20

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

Text of Speech made at at a function held on August 9, 2023 to celebrate the handing over to Professor Gananath Obyesekere’s personal library, the Obeyesekere Collection, to the library of University of Peradeniya.

When I was invited to speak on Professor Gananath Obeyesekere’s work, I said, ‘even though I am more than happy to speak and I am quite familiar with his work,’ I asked, ‘wouldn’t it be better if someone younger, such as Dhammika Herath speaks representing the department of Sociology.’ Here we are, representing the New Peradeniya in appreciating, paying tribute to the old Peradeniya.

My background is literature, and my training is in comparative literature, literary theory, postcolonial studies, Cultural Studies, and so on being the components of that training. In my speech, I will highlight what Professor Gananath Obeyesekere’s work has been to me as a scholar in above subjects teaching in Sri Lanka.

Prof. Gananath Obeyesekere

Let me begin with a short anecdote. In 1993, I was a third-year student at the university of Colombo. On one July day, the inter faculty drama competition was taking place. For the competition, I had written and directed a play. When my play was about to be staged, I peeked through the curtains to take a last look at the panel of judges to make sure they were ready to see the greatest short play in the world. The chairperson of the panel was an elegantly dressed lady, a beautiful madam, who spoke mostly in English.

After many hours, the competition was over but not the intense discussion of the panel. After a while, however, it also ended; my play won all major awards the best play, best script, best actor and so on. Soon after the awards were given away, professor Sarath Wijesooriya, then a lecturer, came to me and said, ‘Anna Ranjini Madam enna kiwwa.’ I went into that special room hoping very much that she would not speak to me in English. Ranjini Madam was that elegant lady, the chairperson of the panel of judges. She talked to me in Sinhala and appreciated the play, and asked me to meet her at Lauries Rd, Bambalapitya.

Gananath and Ranjini Obeyesekere at the book gifting event at Peradeniya

There we met not only in that summer, but nearly every summer after that, when Obeyesekeres were on vacation. In one of those conversations, I heard ‘Fulbright fellowship’ for the first time. In 1997 I won it; after winning the scholarship, I had to send out applications to universities. In that summer too, Obeyesekeres were in Sri Lanka. Professor Gananath Obeyesekere mentioned ‘the University of Wisconsin.’ In those were pre-internet days, and such little pieces of information mattered a lot. Now, it is 2023, and during the last 30 years, Professor Ranjini Obeyesekere has been my mentor, friend, and an inspiration for working tirelessly in my field. Though history is not always the best judge, let’s hope madam, that your mentee will be judged fairly.

Professor Obeyesekere’s work has been inspirational for me in many ways. Primarily, he has been one of the role models for me and some others in Sri Lankan academia, especially in the faculties of arts, where such role models are extremely rare. He has been an inspiration in speaking truth to power, in keeping a critical distance from all centers of power, and in feeling at home in the loneliness that often comes to you when you keep that distance.

Let me explain briefly, how I have worked some Obeyesekere thoughts into the curricular that I teach at the department of Sinhala here at Peradeniya. Last semester I taught a part of a course, recently introduced to our curriculum, and it deals with the European/colonial representations of Sri Lanka. Edward Said is, of course, an essential thinker there. Our own Obeyesekere is equally important, if not even more relevant. None of my students read scholarly books in English, but when I used Professor Obeyesekere’s Cannibal Talk, and The Apotheosis of Captain Cook translating some sections and explaining some more, my students could see a great thinker at work.

They are intelligent enough to see the main point. Cannibalism has been a conceptual tool of colonialism, the European colonizers representing certain groups of human beings as cannibals. Even more than Sati in India, cannibalistic practices, which were extremely rare, were over emphasized by the colonizers when representing certain groups of people. We have learned from Said’s Orientalism that representation of other people, Asian, African, American, and so on, in colonial discourses is mediated by power, and that power to represent overlaps with power to govern, power to punish, and power to murder.

In there, ‘knowledge’, the knowledge of ‘other’ constructed with the aim of subjugating the other, is a form of power. Foucault may have shown that knowledge is power. Obeyesekere’s work, especially the works mentioned above, shows a much more complex picture of that ‘knowledge/power’ axis. Once a discourse is constructed around a subject and a knowledge is produced within that discourse, many people contribute to sustaining it and giving it a life of its own, as ‘The Doomed King’ amply demonstrates.

Professor Obeyesekere has taught us, how to challenge the received knowledge in a field of study. In Medusa’s Hair, he challenges Edmand Leach, an intellectual giant of the field of anthropology, and one of his teachers. Such debates are now almost nonexistent in our faculty. Some of the debates created by Obeyesekere are of a global scale. His famous book, Apotheosis of Captain Cook, generated a lasting debate with the famous anthropologist Martin Sahlins. Two great anthropologists of our times responded to each other by writing book-length responses.

That debate generated some other debates; other famous anthropologists such as Clifford Geerts, Stanley Thambiah, and so on dedicating special conference panels to the Obeyesekere-Sahlins debate. As I understood it, the thrust of Obeyesekere’s argument was that Hawaiian natives were not epistemologically naïve to accept colonizing Captain Cook as a powerful deity of a new order which was too powerful to resist. Sahlins did have extremely interesting points about what happened when the Old-world colonizers met the New World, the American continent. But my postcolonial Sri Lankan mind tend to agree with Obeyesekere.

Professor Obeyesekere is the most important theoretically oriented scholar in recent times. His psychoanalytic approaches and extremely agile and fluid readings of classical historical narratives and historical characters have rendered them much richer than they had been represented in some colonial, nationalist, or postcolonial readings.

His book, The Work of Culture, one of my favorite Obeyesekere masterpieces, is an extraordinary work beautifully demonstrating a great mind of our times at work. One of the greatest prose writers to be produced by Peradeniya and its department of English, Obeyesekere uses the paradigm of Oedipus to reexamine historical Buddhist characters such as Asoka, Dutugemunu, Kashyapa, and so on.

Given as a series of lectures in 1982, under the general title of “Psychoanalytic Anthropology and some problems of Interpretation,” the book, The Work of Culture, is a rich summary of the author’s previous work, and a demonstration of how a great thinker can work with already familiar materials and yet come up with new insights with surprise, delight, and wisdom. The book, as the case with Obeyesekere scholarship, is an exhibition of putting English language at work to make rich scholarly arguments in beautifully crafted prose, that is not threateningly difficult but yet deep and complex in thought.

In this book, Obeyesekere revisits his famous argument on the Dutugamunu’s conscience, and shows us once more that Gamani was a complex character with a complex personal history. Estranged from his father, under the shadow of a strong mother, married to a woman of whom the dominant historical narratives prefer to be silent, having a brother with whom his relationship is a ‘typical case of sibling rivalry,’ and then, and finally as a king who is forced by contemporary politics to kill a virtuous king. For Obeyesekere, the troubled conscience of Gamini as a son, brother, husband, father, and a ruler, can be used as a metaphor of reminding us of the need for a society conducive to have much more peaceful conscience not only for rulers for all of us.

Not surprisingly, this rich reading of historical events and characters was misunderstood, Obeyesekere was turned into a national villain in extremely one-dimensional nationalist/racist by the Sinhala press. Peradeniya university that produced Obeyesekere was to produce scholars who argue that Dutugemunu, by extension Sinhala people, has no sense of guilt in their conscience! No wonder that Sri Lanka has descended into the political, ethical, cultural abyss that it is in right now.

Obeyesekere has been a leading critic of European enlightenment rationalism. In ‘Medusa’s Hair’ he uses the theories of personal symbols and psychoanalysis to understand mythic-religious experience at the level of religious magic. His critique of Western rationalism finds its best expression in the ‘Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience,’ a stunning book close to my heart since I have been a writer and scholar looking for all possible alternatives to naturalist realism.

The critique of Western rationalism has been something fashionable in our country, with extreme cultural relativists getting themselves lost in the domain of Natha deviyo. Obeyesekere’s critique of rationalism is the kind that would not end up producing or promoting the racists such as Channa Jayasumana.

Professor Obeyesekere critically defends the enlightenment tradition, supplementing Cartesian rational cogito with all kinds of other forms of insight, intuition, or vision articulated within the European enlightenment tradition itself and beyond. Descartes famously said, ‘I think therefore I am.’ There, ‘to think’ means rational thought.

But meditative insight, vision, the sudden vision or the epiphany of poets, or what Freud calls, ‘lucid dreaming’ have been ‘forms of knowledge’ in nearly all traditions. Obeyesekere’s study is the only book-length treatment of these phenomena in recent years.

That brings me to another point I want to make: ‘comparative nature of Obeyesekere scholarship.’ Some of his books are large, intimidatingly so. But written in elegant and unpretentious prose, they are invitingly readable, and once you get in, you would not come out of them without a feeling of remarkable expansion in your consciousness and awareness. Take for example, ‘Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth.’ Before I encountered this book, I did not know that the idea of Karma as a form of ethical rationality and as a form of causality explaining human life beyond our mundane world or this life, can be used as a theoretical category for intercultural understanding.

Karma, not necessarily in the Buddhist sense of the word, has existed in many other cultures. Deep, reflective thinking, and philosophical formations on life after death have not been unique to a single culture. This book, as several other Obeyesekere books and essays, demonstrates that serious big questions about life such as the meaning of life have been raised everywhere.

Sometimes, human beings have learned from each other the art of asking those questions. Sometimes, similar questions have been asked independent of each other. In many ways and on many times, Obeyesekere scholarship has shown us our shared humanity. I have tried to pass on that message to my students hoping to get them out of parochial nationalisms they have been brought up in for decades in our country.

Speaking of parochialism, let me touch on Professor Obeyesekere’s recent book, a lovely little book, ‘The Many Faces of the Kandyan Kingdom’, that invites us to reconsider the cosmopolitan nature of Kandyan kingdom through the 16th and 18th centuries. Several Kandyan kings such as Rajasingha II, enjoyed having foreigners in Kandy. While those foreigners were useful as servants, interpreters, craftsmen, soldiers, mechanics, gunners and so on, it was not for instrumental reasons, the king liked having international visitors around.

The king enjoyed seeing the many faces of humanity in his domain. With such cosmopolitan outlooks, the king and the elites were not threatened by the presence of cultural difference. There is no wonder that the subtitle of the book is ‘lessons for our time.’ In ‘our time, even when we beg for more tourism dollars and foreign support, those very nationalist forces that brought the country down, can be seen promoting extreme chauvinism and xenophobia.

Social theory has been something fashionable in Sri Lanka for decades. But many theory persons are insanely pretentious and esoteric. Some theoreticians are just name-droppers whose pretensions do no more than dulling the epistemological cutting edges of those theories. Obeyesekere, in contrast, demonstrates how theories can be applied in analyzing texts and rituals in a way the theories themselves are better honed. ‘Medusa’s Hair’ is a beautiful example of that fact. Even when one does not agree with Obeyesekere’s theories, one can still admire the way theories are used.

In Medusa’s Hair, the main theoretical approach was Jungian and Freudian psychoanalysis. The book deals with folk priests and priestess who perform magical religious acts. Abdin is one of them. He uses religious trance to bury himself in a grave for hours and come back unharmed. Obeyesekere spends years observing him. At one point, he asks Abdin if he ever had ejaculation while in the coffin, and Abdin answers, ‘Yes. Every time.’ Perhaps Freud is right in arguing that many of such religious-mythical heroics can be sublimations of unfulfilled sexual desires. We really do not know if Abdin lied. Obeyesekere was able to ask that question because he had a good grounding in psychoanalytic theory. All Obeyesekere books are full of such examples.

As a scholar in literature, let me wind up highlighting another hallmark of Obeyesekere scholarship, which is dear to my heart. Professor Obeyesekere has a rich literary mind. In fact, it runs in the family, Obeyesekere family. Gananath and Ranjini are the most celebrated literary couple in the country. In addition to Ranjini translating Sinhala literature into English, Gananath constantly uses literary works in his research. In using literature, especially narratives, for research Obeyesekere does not reduce them to mere facts but attends to the richness of narrative literature by paying attention to layered-meanings, connotations, sub-texts, the meanings of narrative structures and so on.

That requires a deeper understanding of how literature works. The younger generation of sociologists of this country must pay attention to the way Obeyesekere reads, interprets, and engages with literary works. It was clear from the early work of Obeyesekere that the taste for good literature was a hallmark of his work, and his early essays in Sinhala and English attest to the fact that he could have become the literary giant of this country in the generation after Sarachchandra and Ludowyke, had he stayed in the field of English or Sinhala. Nearly all his work contains constant reference to literature both European and South Asian, especially Sinhala.

I said earlier that Professor Gananath Obeyesekere has been one of my role models. Let me now qualify that statement a bit. We have a group of younger academics here at the faculty of Arts, who constantly speak of the ways of waking up from the nightmare of mediocrity we are trapped in. When mediocrity is the majority, the nightmare is, for them, their sweetest dream ever. A group of us regularly meet, informally, to discuss this issue.

The name Obeyesekere, both Gananath and Ranjini, constantly appear in those discussions. Both of them are role models for all of us. But here comes the qualification: I wish Professor Gananth wrote more in Sinhala. If he did so through 1980s through 1990s, the parochialisms that led to the nightmare mentioned above would not have engulfed all of us. I also wish that the group of excellent scholars made of Ganananth, Michael Roberts, Stanley Thambiah, Siri Gunasinghe, Sugathapala de Silva, Kithsiri Malalgoda, C.R. de Silva, H. L. Seneviratne, and so on did not leave the country. For example, the vacuum created by Siri Gunasinghe by leaving the country and not writing enough in Sinhala, was filled by extremely one-dimensionally nationalist ideologues.

Yet again, if professor Obeyesekere did not leave country, when he did, and if he did not write in English until he became a leading anthropologist in the world, he would not have been able to build up the rich personal library donated to us today, and, perhaps, he would not have been able to write the great books, I mentioned above. I invite younger scholars in our faculty, and the brightest of our students, to learn your English well and come of your parochial worlds, here we have now the biography of Obeyesekere and, his library, a road map of his intellectual journey, and make them your own.

I own twelve of his books, I can be the only one to own a copy of the Pattini book in my generation, because it is so rare now. But I don’t have time to touch on all of them here. Let’s organize ourselves into a group, and collectively read Obeyesekere books, and the Obeyesekere collection.

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Features

Trump’s Venezuela gamble: Why markets yawned while the world order trembled

Published

8 hours ago

2026/01/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

The world’s most powerful military swoops into Venezuela, in the dead of night, captures a sitting President, and spirits him away to face drug trafficking charges in New York. The entire operation, complete with at least 40 casualties, was announced by President Trump as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘brilliant.’ You’d think global financial markets would panic. Oil prices would spike. Stock markets would crash. Instead, something strange happened: almost nothing.

Oil prices barely budged, rising less than 2% before settling back. Stock markets actually rallied. The US dollar remained steady. It was as if the world’s financial markets collectively shrugged at what might be the most brazen American military intervention since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

But beneath this calm surface, something far more significant is unfolding, a fundamental reshaping of global power dynamics that could define the next several decades. The story of Trump’s Venezuela intervention isn’t really about Venezuela at all. It’s about oil, money, China, and the slow-motion collapse of the international order we’ve lived under since World War II. (Figure 1)

The Oil Paradox

Venezuela sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves, more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. We’re talking about 303 billion barrels. This should be one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Instead, it’s an economic catastrophe. Venezuela’s oil production has collapsed from 3.5 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to less than one million today, barely 1% of global supply (Figure 1). Years of corruption, mismanagement, and US sanctions have turned treasure into rubble. The infrastructure is so degraded that even if you handed the country to ExxonMobil tomorrow, it would take a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars to fix.

This explains why oil markets barely reacted. Traders looked at Venezuela’s production numbers and basically said: “What’s there to disrupt?” Meanwhile, the world is drowning in oil. The global market has a surplus of nearly four million barrels per day. American production alone hit record levels above 13.8 million barrels daily. Venezuela’s contribution simply doesn’t move the needle anymore (Figure 1).

But here’s where it gets interesting. Trump isn’t just removing a dictator. He’s explicitly taking control of Venezuela’s oil. In his own words, the country will “turn over” 30 to 50 million barrels, with proceeds controlled by him personally “to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.” American oil companies, he promised, would “spend billions of dollars” to rebuild the infrastructure.

This isn’t subtle. One energy policy expert put it bluntly: “Trump’s focus on Venezuelan oil grants credence to those who argue that US foreign policy has always been about resource extraction.”

The Real Winners: Defence and Energy

While oil markets stayed calm, defence stocks went wild. BAE Systems jumped 4.4%, Germany’s Rheinmetall surged 6.1%. These companies see what others might miss, this isn’t a one-off. If Trump launches military operations to remove leaders he doesn’t like, there will be more.

Energy stocks told a similar story. Chevron, the only U.S. oil major currently authorised to operate in Venezuela, surged 10% in pre-market trading. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and oil services companies posted solid gains. Investors are betting on lucrative reconstruction contracts. Think Iraq after 2003, but potentially bigger.

The catch? History suggests they might be overly optimistic. Iraq’s oil sector was supposed to bounce right back after Saddam Hussein fell. Twenty years later, it still hasn’t reached its potential. Afghanistan received hundreds of billions in reconstruction spending, most of which disappeared. Venezuela shares the same warning signs: destroyed infrastructure, unclear property rights, volatile security, and deep social divisions.

China’s Venezuela Problem

Here’s where the story gets geopolitically explosive. China has loaned Venezuela over $60 billion, since 2007, making Venezuela China’s biggest debtor in Latin America. How was Venezuela supposed to pay this back? With oil. About 80% of Venezuelan oil exports were going to China, often at discounted rates, to service this debt.

Now Trump controls those oil flows. Venezuelan oil will now go “through legitimate and authorised channels consistent with US law.” Translation: China’s oil supply just got cut off, and good luck getting repaid on those $60 billion in loans.

This isn’t just about one country’s debt. It’s a demonstration of American power that China cannot match. Despite decades of economic investment and diplomatic support, China couldn’t prevent the United States from taking over. For other countries considering Chinese loans and partnerships, the lesson is clear: when push comes to shove, Beijing can’t protect you from Washington.

But there’s a darker flip side. Every time the United States weaponizes the dollar system, using control over oil sales, bank transactions, and trade flows as a weapon, it gives countries like China more reason to build alternatives. China has been developing its own international payment system for years. Each American strong-arm tactic makes that project look smarter to countries that fear they might be next.

The Rules Are for Little People

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this episode isn’t economic, it’s legal and political. The United States launched a military operation, captured a President, and announced it would “run” that country indefinitely. There was no United Nations authorisation. No congressional vote. No meaningful consultation with allies.

The UK’s Prime Minister emphasised “international law” while waiting for details. European leaders expressed discomfort. Latin American countries split along ideological lines, with Colombia’s President comparing Trump to Hitler. But nobody actually did anything. Russia and China condemned the action as illegal but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help. The UN Security Council didn’t even meet, because everyone knows the US would just veto any resolution.

This is what scholars call the erosion of the “rules-based international order.” For decades after World War II, there was at least a pretense that international law mattered, that sovereignty meant something. Powerful nations bent those rules when convenient, but they tried to maintain appearances.

Trump isn’t even pretending. And that creates a problem: if the United States doesn’t follow international law, why should Russia in Ukraine? Why should China regarding Taiwan? Why should anyone?

What About the Venezuelan People?

Lost in all the analysis are the actual people of Venezuela. They’ve suffered immensely. Inflation is 682%, the highest in the world. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled. Those who remain often work multiple jobs just to survive, and their cupboards are still bare. The monthly minimum wage is literally 40 cents.

Many Venezuelans welcomed Maduro’s removal. He was a brutal dictator whose catastrophic policies destroyed the country. But they’re deeply uncertain about what comes next. As one Caracas resident put it: “What we don’t know is whether the change is for better or for worse. We’re in a state of uncertainty.”

Trump’s explicit focus on oil control, his decision to work with Maduro’s own Vice President, rather than democratic opposition leaders, and his promise that American companies will “spend billions”, all of this raises uncomfortable questions. Is this about helping Venezuelans, or helping American oil companies?

The Bigger Picture

Financial markets reacted calmly because the immediate economic impacts are limited. Venezuela’s oil production is already tiny. The country’s bonds were already in default. The direct market effects are manageable. But markets might miss the forest for the trees.

This intervention represents something bigger: a fundamental shift in how powerful nations behave. The post-Cold War era, with its optimistic talk of international cooperation and rules-based order, was definitively over. We’re entering a new age of imperial power politics.

In this new world, military force is back on the table. Economic leverage will be used more aggressively. Alliance relationships will become more transactional. Countries will increasingly have to choose sides between competing power blocs, because the middle ground is disappearing.

The United States might win in the short term, seizing control of Venezuela’s oil, demonstrating military reach, showing China the limits of its influence. But the long-term consequences remain uncertain. Every country watching is drawing conclusions about what it means for them. Some will decide they need to align more closely with Washington to stay safe. Others will conclude they need to build alternatives to American-dominated systems to stay independent.

History will judge whether Trump’s Venezuela gambit was brilliant strategy or reckless overreach. What we can say now is that the comfortable assumptions of the past three decades, that might not be right, that international law matters, that economic interdependence prevents conflict, no longer hold.

Financial markets may have yawned at Venezuela. But they might want to wake up. The world just changed, and the bill for that change hasn’t come due yet. When it does, it won’t be measured in oil barrels or bond prices. It will be measured in the kind of world we all have to live in, and whether it’s more stable and prosperous, or more dangerous and divided.

That’s a question worth losing sleep over.

(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT, Malabe. The views and opinions expressed in this article are personal.)

Features

Living among psychopaths

Published

8 hours ago

2026/01/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

Bob (not his real name) who worked in a large business organisation was full of new ideas. He went out of his way to help his colleagues in difficulties. His work attracted the attention of his superiors and they gave him a free hand to do his work. After some time, Bob started harassing his female colleagues. He used to knock against them in order to kick up a row. Soon he became a nuisance to the entire staff. When the female colleagues made a complaint to the management a disciplinary inquiry was conducted. Bob put up a weak defence saying that he had no intention to cause any harm to the females on the staff. However, he was found guilty of harassing the female colleagues. Accordingly his services were terminated.

Those who conducted the disciplinary inquiry concluded that Bob was a psychopath. According to psychologists, a psychopath is a person who has a serious and permanent mental illness that makes him behave in a violent or criminal way. Psychologists believe that one per cent of the people are psychopaths who have no conscience. You may have come across such people in films and novels. The film The Silence of the Lambs portrayed a serial killer who enjoyed tormenting his innocent victims. Apart from such fictional characters, there are many psychopaths in big and small organisations and in society as well. In a reported case Dr Ahmad Suradji admitted to killing more than 40 innocent women and girls. There is something fascinating and also chilling about such people.

People without a conscience are not a new breed. Even ancient Greek philosophers spoke of ‘men without moral reason.’ Later medical professionals said people without conscience were suffering from moral insanity. However, all serial killers and rapists are not psychopaths. Sometimes a man would kill another person under grave and sudden provocation. If you see your wife sleeping with another man, you will kill one or both of them. A world-renowned psychopathy authority Dr Robert Hare says, “Psychopaths can be found everywhere in society.” He developed a method to define and diagnose psychopathy. Today it is used as the international gold standard for the assessment of psychopathy.

No conscience

According to modern research, even normal people are likely to commit murder or rape in certain circumstances. However, unlike normal people, psychopaths have no conscience when they commit serious crimes. In fact, they tend to enjoy such brutal activities. There is no general consensus whether there are degrees of psychopathy. According to Harvard University Professor Martha Stout, conscience is like a left arm, either you have one or you don’t. Anyway psychopathy may exist in degrees varying from very mild to severe. If you feel remorse after committing a crime, you are not a psychopath. Generally psychopaths are indifferent to, or even enjoy, the torment they cause to others.

In modern society it is very difficult to identify psychopaths because most of them are good workers. They also show signs of empathy and know how to win friends and influence people. The sheen may rub off at any given moment. They know how to get away with what they do. What they are really doing is sizing up their prey. Sometimes a person may become a psychopath when he does not get parental love. Those who live alone are also likely to end up as psychopaths.

Recent studies show that genetics matters in producing a psychopath. Adele Forth, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Canada, says callousness is at least partly inherited. Some psychopaths torture innocent people for the thrill of doing so. Even cruelty to animals is an act indulged in by psychopaths. You have to be aware of the fact that there are people without conscience in society. Sometimes, with patience, you might be able to change their behaviour. But on most occasions they tend to stay that way forever.

Charming people

We still do not know whether science has developed an antidote to psychopathy. Therefore remember that you might meet a psychopath at some point in your life. For now, beware of charming people who seem to be more interesting than others. Sometimes they look charismatic and sexy. Be wary of people who flatter you excessively. The more you get to know a psychopath, the more you will understand their motives. They are capable of telling you white lies about their age, education, profession or wealth. Psychopaths enjoy dramatic lying for its own sake. If your alarm bells ring, keep away from them.

According to the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual, the behaviour of a psychopath is termed as antisocial personality disorder. Today it is also known as sociopath. No matter the name, its hallmarks are deceit and a reckless disregard for others. A psychopath’s consistent irresponsibility begets no remorse – only indifference to the emotional pain others may suffer. For a psychopath other people are always ‘things’ to be duped, used and discarded.

Psychopathy, the incapacity to feel empathy or compassion of any sort or the least twinge of conscience, is one of the more perplexing of emotional defects. The heart of the psychopath’s coldness seems to lie in their inability to make anything more than the shallowest of emotional connections.

Absence of empathy is found in husbands who beat up their wives or threaten them with violence. Such men are far more likely to be violent outside the marriage as well. They get into bar fights and battling with co-workers. The danger is that psychopaths lack concern about future punishment for what they do. As they themselves do not feel fear, they have no empathy or compassion for the fear and pain of their victims.

karunaratners@gmail.com

By R.S. Karunaratne

Features

Rebuilding the country requires consultation

Published

1 day ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

A positive feature of the government that is emerging is its responsiveness to public opinion. The manner in which it has been responding to the furore over the Grade 6 English Reader, in which a weblink to a gay dating site was inserted, has been constructive. Government leaders have taken pains to explain the mishap and reassure everyone concerned that it was not meant to be there and would be removed. They have been meeting religious prelates, educationists and community leaders. In a context where public trust in institutions has been badly eroded over many years, such responsiveness matters. It signals that the government sees itself as accountable to society, including to parents, teachers, and those concerned about the values transmitted through the school system.

This incident also appears to have strengthened unity within the government. The attempt by some opposition politicians and gender misogynists to pin responsibility for this lapse on Prime Minister Dr Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has prompted other senior members of the government to come to her defence. This is contrary to speculation that the powerful JVP component of the government is unhappy with the prime minister. More importantly, it demonstrates an understanding within the government that individual ministers should not be scapegoated for systemic shortcomings. Effective governance depends on collective responsibility and solidarity within the leadership, especially during moments of public controversy.

The continuing important role of the prime minister in the government is evident in her meetings with international dignitaries and also in addressing the general public. Last week she chaired the inaugural meeting of the Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah. The composition of the task force once again reflects the responsiveness of the government to public opinion. Unlike previous mechanisms set up by governments, which were either all male or without ethnic minority representation, this one includes both, and also includes civil society representation. Decision-making bodies in which there is diversity are more likely to command public legitimacy.

Task Force

The Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka overlooks eight committees to manage different aspects of the recovery, each headed by a sector minister. These committees will focus on Needs Assessment, Restoration of Public Infrastructure, Housing, Local Economies and Livelihoods, Social Infrastructure, Finance and Funding, Data and Information Systems, and Public Communication. This structure appears comprehensive and well designed. However, experience from post-disaster reconstruction in countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami suggests that institutional design alone does not guarantee success. What matters equally is how far these committees engage with those on the ground and remain open to feedback that may complicate, slow down, or even challenge initial plans.

An option that the task force might wish to consider is to develop a linkage with civil society groups with expertise in the areas that the task force is expected to work. The CSO Collective for Emergency Relief has set up several committees that could be linked to the committees supervised by the task force. Such linkages would not weaken the government’s authority but strengthen it by grounding policy in lived realities. Recent findings emphasise the idea of “co-production”, where state and society jointly shape solutions in which sustainable outcomes often emerge when communities are treated not as passive beneficiaries but as partners in problem-solving.

Cyclone Ditwah destroyed more than physical infrastructure. It also destroyed communities. Some were swallowed by landslides and floods, while many others will need to be moved from their homes as they live in areas vulnerable to future disasters. The trauma of displacement is not merely material but social and psychological. Moving communities to new locations requires careful planning. It is not simply a matter of providing people with houses. They need to be relocated to locations and in a manner that permits communities to live together and to have livelihoods. This will require consultation with those who are displaced. Post-disaster evaluations have acknowledged that relocation schemes imposed without community consent often fail, leading to abandonment of new settlements or the emergence of new forms of marginalisation. Even today, abandoned tsunami housing is to be seen in various places that were affected by the 2004 tsunami.

Malaiyaha Tamils

The large-scale reconstruction that needs to take place in parts of the country most severely affected by Cyclone Ditwah also brings an opportunity to deal with the special problems of the Malaiyaha Tamil population. These are people of recent Indian origin who were unjustly treated at the time of Independence and denied rights of citizenship such as land ownership and the vote. This has been a festering problem and a blot on the conscience of the country. The need to resettle people living in those parts of the hill country which are vulnerable to landslides is an opportunity to do justice by the Malaiyaha Tamil community. Technocratic solutions such as high-rise apartments or English-style townhouses that have or are being contemplated may be cost-effective, but may also be culturally inappropriate and socially disruptive. The task is not simply to build houses but to rebuild communities.

The resettlement of people who have lost their homes and communities requires consultation with them. In the same manner, the education reform programme, of which the textbook controversy is only a small part, too needs to be discussed with concerned stakeholders including school teachers and university faculty. Opening up for discussion does not mean giving up one’s own position or values. Rather, it means recognising that better solutions emerge when different perspectives are heard and negotiated. Consultation takes time and can be frustrating, particularly in contexts of crisis where pressure for quick results is intense. However, solutions developed with stakeholder participation are more resilient and less costly in the long run.

Rebuilding after Cyclone Ditwah, addressing historical injustices faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community, advancing education reform, changing the electoral system to hold provincial elections without further delay and other challenges facing the government, including national reconciliation, all require dialogue across differences and patience with disagreement. Opening up for discussion is not to give up on one’s own position or values, but to listen, to learn, and to arrive at solutions that have wider acceptance. Consultation needs to be treated as an investment in sustainability and legitimacy and not as an obstacle to rapid decisionmaking. Addressing the problems together, especially engagement with affected parties and those who work with them, offers the best chance of rebuilding not only physical infrastructure but also trust between the government and people in the year ahead.

by Jehan Perera