Features

New Year Dawns with more stories of Sri Lanka

Published

6 months ago

2026/01/4

The Ceylon Journal Volume 2 Number 2

In 2024, I helped launch the maiden issue of The Ceylon Journal [TCJ] to a full house at the elegant, near-patrician environs of the Sri Lanka Medical Association Auditorium. My encomium to the editor Avishka Mario Senewiratne for a well-wrought first issue was accompanied by a cautionary tale about the perils of editing. During my 16-year stint as editor of The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities [SLJH], I had observed how editorships sometimes become vanity projects which last only as long as the individual who does the job for a substantial period of time, retains interest; consequently, there was a need to plan for the TCJ’s long term future even as its first issue was drawing praise.

Less than a year later, I must necessarily rebuke myself with the biblical reprimand, “O ye of little faith”! Senewiratne has forged ahead and published two further issues of sustained quality with a fourth, the subject of this review, which will appear in early 2026. His energy does not show any sign of flagging.

The fourth issue begins with an interesting editorial-cum article by the editor “English Periodicals of Old Ceylon and the other The Ceylon Journal.” The pursuit through research to find a previous TCJ has inspired an expansive article that included journals and newspapers of the 19^th century. In rummaging through a scrapbook belonging to Edmund Blazé, Senewiratne had found “a fragile pamphlet announcing the forthcoming publication of a periodical titled The Ceylon Journal, dated 1894,” a journal that never got off the ground.

Avishka Mario Senewiratne

Compiling an article about journals of a particular historical period can become a monotonous exercise with titles being listed as a disk jockey would, say, announce songs on a radio show. But Senewiratne’s article is dynamic. I was fascinated to learn that the governor Sir Robert Wilmot Horton who founded the Colombo Journal had expressed views that were so anti-establishment that the Home Office had it suppressed. The role played by missionary societies in sustaining journals and newspapers until “the focus began to move from proselytization to cultural and intellectual engagement” is set down with evidence. Equally well rendered is the way Ceylonese gradually took over editorships once (presumably) the effects of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms that led to English being taught extensively in Sri Lanka resulted in locals with the required competency to undertake these tasks.

When I approached Ian Goonetileke to submit an article for the last issue of SLJH to be published in the twentieth century, he produced “Robert Knox in the Kandyan Kingdom 1660-1679: A Bio-Bibliographical Commentary 1975 (Addendum 1998),” his last published work. In acceding to my request, he asked if his friend Merlin Peris in turn would write another piece on his passion for “pachyderms,” a teasing reference to Peris’s “Knox on Elephants” which had appeared in a previous issue. Ironically, it was in Peris’s home that I last met CR de Silva, the author of “Elephants in Sri Lanka.” De Silva’s is more generalized than Peris’s research since it covers three centuries—the 16^th to the 18^th.

According to popular wisdom, elephants are categorized as Indian and African. De Silva adds a twist to this by identifying a subdivision because the Sri Lankan elephant was considered superior to the Indian from antiquity. He quotes Megasthenes in the third Century BC who declares that “Sri Lankan elephants were more powerful, larger and more intelligent than the mainland (Indian) elephants,” This is a view that is shared by other elephants, apparently! He cites Ribiero’s 17^th century narrative: “Ten or twelve (elephants) from various parts were employed in dragging logs at the docks in Goa, but when one of the Ceilao animals was sent to work at the dock where all the others were, as soon as ever he entered, the others made him an obeisance with great humility.”

In this work of outstanding scholarship, de Silva explores how elephants were used over three centuries for multifarious tasks. He dwells at length on the way elephants were hunted, tamed and sold overseas and the conflicts between humans and elephants which exist to date. In conclusion, he points out areas that future researchers should take up.

Nimal D. Rathnayake concentrates on “the Rock Painting and Engraving Sites (RPES) that have come to our attention in the period since the late 19^th century” with reference to “Gehenu dennage galge,” found at Buddama in the Uva Province. In an absorbing piece, he introduces readers to the various theories surrounding the images of humans, animals and birds found therein and what they say about the social interactions of the time. Although these engravings are largely undamaged by nature or human intervention right now, he insists that they be dated and safeguarded from potential threats.

TCJ has averaged about an article per issue on a female notable or on women’s concerns. Kanchanakesi Warnapala’s “Vanitha Viththi: A Pioneering Newspaper for Women” fulfils that role in the current number. After apprising readers of newspapers like Kulangana Handa which foreshadowed it, she proceeds to chart meticulously the evolution of this journal which initially championed women’s causes while not trying to offend men, through the time it became almost feminist in orientation until “film-related content and celebrity interviews began to dominate, producing a more stereotyped and fashionable model of womanhood.”

Vanitha Viththi

existed from 1957 to 1985. Through this beautifully illustrated article, we recognise that this newspaper existed during momentous changes in the island–the social upheaval of the 1950s, Sri Lanka producing the first the world’s first woman prime minister in the 1960s, the insurgency of 1971, the left-wing policies that shaped the island from 1970 to 1977 and the Open Economy that was created thereafter. It does not need any prompting from the author for the informed reader to conclude that the demise of the journal coincided with the Open Economy.

“[T]he leading critic, novelist, and litterateur of 20^th century Sri Lanka” is the subject of Uditha Devapriya’s contribution. What he finds unique in Martin Wickramasinghe is that he was of rural stock, unlike the modernist and other intellectuals whom he counted as his contemporaries, but not hidebound by tradition and custom. It is his independence of thought that enabled him to support the indigenous cultural revival while repudiating the binary stances of Christians vs Buddhists as espoused by Piyadasa Sirisena.

Devapriya can but skim through Wickramasinghe’s many achievements given the constraints of space. For instance, beyond stating that his “trilogy charts the descent of the southern Sinhalese feudal aristocracy and the rise of the colonial bourgeoisie,” he does not examine Wickramasinghe’s fiction at any great length. But the author should be credited for introducing the readership to Wickramasinghe’s multifaceted career as a novelist, journalist, essayist, and philosopher, a man who truly shaped 20^th century Sri Lanka in several ways.

Chryshane Mendis’s “The Archaeology of Lanka’s Early Urban Centres Part 2” is a follow up to his article which appeared in TCJ 2.1. Here, he focusses on how Tissamaharama and Kantarodai developed as urban centres.

Senewiratne’s second essay “An Analysis of Population Statistics in Sri Lanka from Ancient Times to the Portuguese Period” highlights the “creative” and patently inaccurate manner of gauging population size in the island’s ancient chronicles and by some colonial writers in discussing the same period. He then enunciates how “the drafting of “tombus” (registers of lands and revenue)” and other measures, such as baptismal registrations, led to more scientific methods being adopted in Portuguese times. Major inaccuracies (both willed and fortuitous) remained. The tendency of the Portuguese to exaggerate the number of “enemy” soldiers lost in battle being one such example.

A telling response to Michiel Baas’s “What’s ‘Dutch’ About the Dutch Burghers of Sri Lanka?” comes towards the end: “That the Netherlands was not even remotely considered a destination [on leaving the island in the 1940s and 50s] underlines that what it meant to be “Dutch” Burgher was all about being ‘like’ the British.” The essay traces the rise and fall of the status of those who came to the island from Holland—their involvements with the Kandyan kingdom, the Portuguese, and the British. While the community endeavoured to keep itself distinct from others by founding the Dutch Burgher Union and other protocols, ultimately these actions were carried out to assure the British rulers that they were on a par with them, actions that were rarely successful.

Until email began to make its presence in the 1980s, many Sri Lankans would correspond with friends, relatives and businesses abroad via airmail. The exquisitely illustrated “Birth of Air Mail in Ceylon: The Indian Influence” by Srilal Fernando charts the history of the service from its hazardous beginnings to later times when it became the norm for international communication.

“The Lost Temple: Tenavaram and the Hindu Heritage of Southern Sri Lanka” explores the way several faiths intertwined in ancient times and how vestiges of Hindu worship are still found in Buddhist temples. The essay is also a “reimagining” of the fabulous temple Tenavaram situated where Devinuwara exists now. The Portuguese looted the temple for its gold and other wealth and built a church atop it. A Buddhist temple is now located therein. Hasini Haputhanthri, the author, concludes: “Tenavaram, along with many Hindu temples of the south, never regained its former stature. Its fading from the mainstream historical imagination reflects not only colonial destruction but also post-colonial marginalisation.”

It is saddening to read an article on the building of railway tracks during colonial times after the cyclone in December destroyed many of the iconic railway lines built by the British. But Indrani Munasinghe’s “The Construction History of the Uda-Pussellawa Railway in Sri Lanka” takes us through the challenges the authorities faced in the process—the need to persuade the British government that the narrow gauge line was essential for the tea industry and the tough negotiations with various groups such as the military who demanded high compensation for the land they would lose being just two such issues.

Much space in “Buddhism in Candlelight” by Asoka Mendis de Zoysa is devoted to Herman Hesse’s visit to the Sri Dalada Maligawa under candlelight. The Nobel prize winner’s reaction to Kandy is not too different from that of another famous literary visitor, DH Lawrence, ten years later: “The relic’s casket failed to impress Hesse,” the necessity to give numerous tips irritated him, and his interactions with priests, as rendered in his own words, were “an inadequate dream and delirious state.” The positive contributions of other Germans to Buddhism in Sri Lanka are noted with respect. While apparently sharing Hesse’s view that Buddhism has become commodified in the celebrated temples, de Zoysa identifies other spaces that encourage the more contemplative side of Buddhism.

Anslem de Silva’s “Laki, Me, and the Floral Unicorn,” which is the last essay, is a somewhat whimsical piece in which de Silva details how he became friends with Laki Senanayake, a man who supported many in the fields of art, sculpture and architecture, and interacted with him vis their common interests.

I suggest that the editorial team casts it net wide and find new authors to submit articles. The presence of familiar names in consecutive issues guarantees top drawer research but could give the impression that TCJ is too dependent on a charmed circle. That said, kudos to Senewiratne and others for bringing out yet another exceptional volume.

(The reviewer is Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Peradeniya)

*Copies of this valuable periodical can be purchased by contacting 072 583 0728

Review by Senath Walter Perera

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Features

Trump’s tariffs, AKD’s gazette and Sri Lanka’s diplomatic slumber

Published

2 hours ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

“We are rather respectable in Colombo. We go to bed fairly early, and we remain there till morning. “

According to Sri Lanka’s diplomatic folklore, the late S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike uttered these words while explaining the reasons for Sri Lanka’s abstention on the UN resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Apparently, SWRD’s foreign ministry officials were asleep at home when the diplomatic cable seeking instructions was received from New York. In those days, there were no cell phones, Internet, or even fax or telex machines. The diplomatic cables were sent through post offices. Decoding them was a slow and time-consuming process. Thus, the government could not provide appropriate instructions to our mission in New York in time, and the Sri Lankan delegation abstained on that sensitive UN vote.

Sri Lanka’s Absence from Section 301 Consultations

But then, how does one explain Sri Lanka’s absence from the crucial bilateral consultation held in Washington by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) during March-April on “Forced Labour” under the Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974? Didn’t our foreign and trade ministries send appropriate instructions to Washington in time? Even if the instructions from the foreign ministry were transmitted to our embassy in Washington by pigeon carriers, there was enough time for Sri Lanka to participate in those meetings.

In March, the USTR initiated these 301 investigations on 60 trading partners, and invited all of them for confidential consultations. Out of the 60, 46 participated in these consultations. Sri Lanka was not one of them. Other countries that didn’t participate in these consultations included China, Russia, and Venezuela! In addition to that, the Section 301 Committee conducted a public hearing with interested parties on April 28 and 29. Washington-based diplomats, representatives from few trade ministries as well as representatives from many foreign trade associations and chambers participated in these hearings. Sri Lanka was once again conspicuously absent.

As a result, when the USTR published the proposed forced labour tariffs on June 2nd, Sri Lanka ended up with a 12.5% duty. Pakistani and Indonesian diplomats participated in these consultations and took appropriate follow-up measures, and managed to enter the 10% duty category. As even a threat of a modest tariff hike could disrupt supply chains and reduce competitiveness, particularly in an industry such as garments, I discussed this issue on 15 June and underscored the importance of Sri Lanka’s participation at the next hearing, which was scheduled to be held from July 7th .

Awakening from Diplomatic Slumber and AKD’s Gazette

Fortunately, Sri Lanka finally awoke from weeks of diplomatic slumber, and Ambassador Mahinda Samarasinghe participated in the public hearing on 9 July, and promised, “…. · We have agreed to the text in our negotiations with the USTR on forced labour, …. The gazette as we speak is being printed and I’m getting the gazette tomorrow morning, and the gazette will be shared with USTR as I get it“.

As promised, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued a gazette on 10 July banning the imports of goods produced by forced labour. These new regulations are very similar to what Pakistan and Indonesia enacted in April, after their consultations with USTR in March. Why couldn’t we do it in April? Why did we wait till the very last minute?

Challenges ahead

“War is too important to be left to generals alone,” is a famous saying attributed to former French Premier Georges Clemenceau. Similarly, monitoring our main markets is too important to be left to diplomats alone. The United States is the largest single-country market for Sri Lanka. Therefore, Sri Lankan trade chambers and associations should become more proactive in these markets and participate in these events. For example, the chairman of the Pakistani apparel exporters association participated in the April hearings. Similarly, representatives from the Indian Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and Reliance Industries also participated in July hearings. At an event where each speaker is given only five minutes (strictly enforced), having a number of speakers from a country is an advantage. The presence of industry representatives in these kinds of events also help them understand the market dynamics and the future challenges. This is important, particularly because there will be many more challenges with Trump’s tariffs.

With the gazette issued on 10 July, Sri Lanka has imposed a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour. Now, the challenge will be to effectively enforce the prohibition. And what are the goods produced with forced labour? The USTR list only focuses on aluminum, cotton, electronics, lithium-ion batteries, rice, and tobacco. However, according to the U.S. Department of Labour, the list is much longer. Hence, this list may change continuously during the next two years and tariffs may fluctuate once again.

So, this is definitely not the time to slumber.

(The writer, a retired public servant, can be reached at senadhiragomi@gmail.com)

by Gomi Senadhira ✍️

Features

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 10 Casino for Sale

Published

2 hours ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

After the overwhelming grotesquerie of J K Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike novel (written, I should have noted, as the others were, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith), I thought I should return to the world of fun, and also a much shorter description since this thriller moves quickly without the layers of detail that Rowling engages in.

I then move to the second comic thriller by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon. This, their second story to feature Vladimir Stroganoff and Adam Quill, was Casino for Sale, as lunatic a romp as the first, though without the emphasis on the ballet that characterized A Bullet in the Ballet.

This one begins with the impresario Stroganoff buying a casino cheap from Baron Sam de Rabinovich, only to find that it was a rundown place, not the grand casino of La Bazouche, a resort on the Frenc+h Riviera, as he had initially thought. The grand one belonged to Lord Buttonhooke, and Stroganoff could not compete, until he thought of bringing the Ballet Stroganoff to the casino – which of course leads to Buttonhooke deciding to have ballet performances in his Casino too.

Stroganoff invites Quill to visit him, which Quill decides to do since he has left Scotland Yard, having come into a legacy. No one believes this, and he has to face questions as to what he did to have been sacked, with sympathy for having been found out.

Caryl and Simon

The day he arrives in La Bazouche there is a murder, of a vitriolic critic called Citrolo, in Stroganoff’s office. He had been going to write a damning review of the opening night of the ballet and Stroganoff, when he realizes Citrolo cannot be swayed, drugs him and dictates the review himself to the papers. He leaves Citrolo sleeping and finds him shot the next morning, whereupon he decides to muddy the waters and leave a suicide note and lots of other murder weapons. So much overkill, as it were, of course ensures that he is arrested.

But the excitable French detective who makes the arrest follows up his suggestion that Buttonhooke was also involved, and so the two casino owners find themselves in cells next door to each other, with the detective Gustave quite happy to provide creature comforts for a fee.

Quill decides he must investigate, and finds Gustave most cooperative, since he has a laid back attitude to work. So it is Quill that finds a notebook which makes it clear Citrolo is an accomplished blackmailer, and that there are lots of possible murderers, including Stroganoff’s croupier, who was crooked, Rabinovich, who was now working for Buttonhooke, a confidence trickster called Kurt Kukumber, whose prospectus for a dud gold mine was found in the office and Prince Alexis Artishok who was engaged in a deal to buy diamonds from the ballerina Dyra Dyrakova.

Stroganoff had been trying to get Dyrakova to dance for him, but having done so previously she had refused. But then to Stroganoff’s chagrin she agreed to dance for Buttonhooke. The clearly crooked Artishok had told Buttonhooke’s mistress Sadie Souse, who was not very bright, that Dyrakova possessed diamonds she was willing to sell cheap, and Sadie was determined to have them.

Quill meanwhile finds out that there was a secret passage to Stroganoff’s office, the obvious solution to what had begun as a locked room mystery, and that this was known by almost everyone apart from Stroganoff himself. And then Rabinovich is murdered, just after Gustave had released his two original suspects, leading him to blame Quill for having insisted on that and thus allowing them to kill again.

Soon afterwards Dyrakova arrives, and the town is full of posters announcing that she will appear in the casinos, elaborate posters for either one, since Stroganoff is determined that she will dance for him, and if she does not come willingly, he has devised a scheme to make her do so unwillingly. So, though Buttonhooke has her taken off to his yacht immediately she arrives at the station, Quill along with Arenskaya gets her into a launch and to Stroganoff’s casino, where she performs to tumultuous applause, not knowing for whom she is dancing.

When Quill asked her about the diamonds, she said she had sold them long ago, and that gave Quill the solution to the mystery. Rabinovich had known about this, and Artishok had killed him to prevent Sadie learning it from him, he had killed Citrolo who had recognized him for an accomplished card sharper, not a Russian prince at all. But before he is arrested, he gets away in a boat, and the police launch that pursues him is on the point of catching him up when it runs out of petrol.

Again, lots of excitement, and entertaining references – Gustave grows marrows – and if not quite as brilliant as its predecessor, Casino was certainly a delightful read.

Features

The challenge of being positive about SAARC

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

The RCSS forum addressed by SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar in progress. (Pic courtesy RCSS)

It was a few years back that a former President of Sri Lanka took it on himself to pronounce SAARC ‘dead’. Since then there have been other sections of Sri Lankan opinion that have joined the critics of SAARC and taken the solemn stance that SAARC has indeed died what may be called a natural death.

Their fatalism is understandable. SAARC has failed to meet at heads of government or state level for the past several years to take the SAARC process notably forward. Regional cooperation has more or less been only an appealing idea. No substantive concrete projects have taken off to make the idea a hard reality. ‘Inner paralysis’ seems to be SAARC’s lot. Hence the fatalism in these circles.

However, being one of the worst cash-strapped regions of the world and a teemingly populated one with people virtually left to their devices, what choices do the ‘SAARC Eight’ have other than to try their best to band together and continue with their cooperation efforts, however small they may be?

There is no escaping the mounting debt trap for many of these countries and bankrupt Sri Lanka is a glaring example, but ‘throwing in the towel’ and abandoning themselves entirely to the diktats of the strongest economies and their agencies will prove a ‘living death’ for many countries in the SAARC fold.

The gains may be meagre but giving-up on SAARC cooperation in full would prove self-defeating for the organization and South Asia. Right now, the collective intention ought to be to salvage what the region could from the tenuous cooperative efforts. Moreover, such initiatives could go some distance to generate a degree of goodwill among the Eight and help in sustaining a dialogue process.

Given this backdrop it proved ‘a stich in time’ for the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, to recently host the SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar to a round table discussion on the unifying potential of SAARC and its future possibilities, besides other related issue areas.

Held on June 24th and moderated by RCSS Executive Director and former ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, the forum brought together a vibrant, wide ranging audience comprising academicians, diplomats, senior public servants, civil society activists and many others. Following the presentation by Ambassador Golam Sarwar titled, ‘Reigniting SAARC: Achievements, Challenges and the Way Ahead’, a lively Q&A followed.

The above forum could be described as an act of lighting the proverbial ‘candle’ rather than ‘cursing the darkness.’ It surely is a ‘darkness’ that could be seen as daunting considering that the region’s pivotal powers, India and Pakistan, are failing to act in a spirit of accord but are engaged in bitter finger-pointing on a number of questions of vital importance to SAARC.

On the other hand, what is the rest of the region doing to bring the above sides together? It is disappointing that to date the rest of SAARC has failed to launch a major diplomatic drive to bring peace between the feuding regional heavyweights. It needs to act without delay and establish its earnestness and this effort would need to prove SAARC’s staying power in the unfolding months and even years.

In assessing SAARC’s seeming failure local opinion in particular has failed to factor in what could be described as weak leadership. Since Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh, the founding father of SAARC, the region has failed to produce a visionary leader who could advance the SAARC cause with charisma and drive.

Among other reasons, weak leadership accounts considerably for the faltering and stuttering status, as it were, of SAARC. Badly needed are leaders who could go the extra mile, think less of narrow national interests and work diligently towards the collective well being of the region but SAARC’s millions of ordinary people have been made to wait in vain for leaders of such stature. Instead, they have been burdened with politicians who seem to be relishing the apparently moribund state of SAARC.

Looking back, it could be said that it was the dynamic leadership factor that led to the launching of the Non-Aligned Movement and for its sustenance for a few decades. True, it could be seen in some quarters that NAM is no more, but as in the case of SAARC, the former too has been unfortunate to be burdened over the years with politicians who lack the vision and drive to unflaggingly advance the fortunes of the South. NAM and SAARC lack the dynamism and vision of leaders of the stature of Jawaharlal Nehru, for example, to give them the required guidance and intellectual depth.

The reasons are complex for there not being among us currently political leaders with the vision and the steadfast commitment to advance the legitimate interests of the South. However, it could be stated with conviction that the majority of Southern leaders have too easily caved in to the demands of the global North and its financial agencies.

These leaders have failed to see, for instance, that the largely market economy oriented Northern governments would not view with favour a centrist economic model that attaches priority to the interests of the dis-empowered publics of the South. This realization ought to have dawned on the current government in Sri Lanka, for instance, some while ago but it has no choice but to abide by IMF dictates since economic survival at present is unthinkable without the latter’s succour.

Accordingly for SAARC this should be the time for some soul-searching. Priority needs to be attached to ending the feuding between India and Pakistan since at present the material fortunes of the region hinge largely on these regional giants giving peaceful relations among them a try. This is no easy challenge to meet but some daring, visionary diplomacy needs to take hold among the rest of SAARC.

There is some sense in SAARC bringing the peoples of the region together through programs that address their best collective interests. A meeting of minds among SAARC nations could enable SAARC and its agencies to build a region-wide people’s movement for progressive political and economic change that could in turn lead to the region’s political leaders sensitizing themselves more to the neglected needs of their publics.

However, the time is ‘now’ for the initiation of these progressive changes and the voice of SAARC well wishers would need to drown out those of their critics.