Features

Past, present and future

Published

3 years ago

2024/02/18

Thilina Walpola

Addresss on the twin launch of books on father and son

by Prof. Savitri Goonesekere

The first edition of the book “My Diplomat,”authored by Ms Sivanandini Duraiswamy, as a biography of her late husband Yogendra Duraiswamy was published in 2000.This was at the beginning of new Millennium, a year after his passing in 1999. I thank Ms Duraisawmy and her son Naresha for inviting me to speak to you this evening, at the launch of the second edition of this book. The family and I have had some connections.

When Mr Duraiswamy’s father and Dr Naresha’s grandfather Sir Waitialingam Duraiswamy was a distinguished Speaker of the State Council, my maternal grandfather was a member of the Board of Ministers, as Minister of Health. Both became “Knights” of some obscure colonial “Order”, an honour conferred by Queen Victoria, British Empress of our island, then Ceylon.

Sir Waitialingam wore his traditional dress, as did my grandfather. Sir Waitialingam acquired the name of Porter from his colonial sponsor. My grandfather kept the first generation Kandyan name of Tikiri Banda, and named his son the third generation TB, Theodore Braybrooke ! So we have had colonial connections that we have happily shed in succeeding generations. as the publications launched this evening, clearly demonstrates for the Duraiswamys.

I had mixed feelings when I read this book. It was inspiring to read a testimony to a life well lived, with equanimity, integrity and courage in difficult times in our country. Mr. Yogendra Duraiswamy lived in the best of times at the dawn of independence, and the worst of times, of armed conflict. Mr. Duraiswamy, like those of his generation was a son of independent Sri Lanka at the dawn of freedom from centuries of colonial rule. There were anticipations and promises of a clear path to national progress and development.

Yet when Mr Duraiswamy passed away just at the end of that century, he had lived through a fratricidal and violent armed conflict, that impacted especially the North and East of the country, with which he had a deep sense of roots both in his personal and professional life. We meet this evening 25 years after Mr.Duraiswamy’s passing, 15 years after the end of the armed conflict in the North and East. We concluded an armed conflict of 30 years. Is not peace and development after conflict, still an unfulfilled dream?

Readers of this book will I think find that its record of past times, experiences and events, will provide some relevant insights and wisdom. The book comes as an expanded second edition, with documents that provide an opportunity for thought and reflection in Election Year 2024 for resolution to our National Question of power sharing. The book also provides insights on the leadership needed for accountable governance and public administration, based on a social contract that is not misunderstood by the rulers and their officials.

I hope the Book will receive the publicity that it deserves, and will be read by concerned citizens, despite the current focus on google searches WhatsApp messages and the internet, as a mode of communicating thoughts and ideas. The book comes in two parts. The first focuses on memories and events linked to Mr. Duraiswamy’s personal and professional life. This is usual in biographies.

I would like to share some thoughts on the first part which, is closely linked to the second part, that deals with substantive issues of public concern. This part also includes what I would describe as archival material of value. I would like to describe the former as the “He and Me” chapters of Ms. Duraiswamy’s book,”My Diplomat”. Crafted with an easy style and clarity, by someone who has received a national award for creative writing, this really is what is often described now as a “good read”.

Feminists tend to dismiss what is sometimes called “pativatha”or adulation of a husband. I think readers will appreciate a human story that speaks to a close relationship of love, and companionship, after a traditional arranged marriage, that was abundantly fulfilling and enriching for both partners. Indeed the idea of recording Mr Duraiswamy’s experiences in his “Jaffna Story” in a book, was a common project that interested both, and encouraged a shared approach to carrying this forward.

That relationship also extended to a strong bond of love and affection with their son Naresha. On one occasion when he actually sets their apartment on fire by lighting a match left by a careless maid, he is showered with affection. Modern mothers now understand that connectivity to the unborn in pregnancy is vital. Mrs Duraiswamy not only had stimulating conversations with her beloved spouse and companion. She began her conversation with her son before he was born and forged a bond that has helped her cope with the desolation of grief and loss and come through.

They have been fortunate to experience what is referred to as “the matchless blessing of a happy home and family”. These personal reflections to me are important, capturing a world of bonding and close familial relationships enriched by traditions of human communication and connectivity that seem to be disappearing in a brave new world of Internet connectivity. I recall Nelson Mandela once saying that all his core values were formed with his connectivity to his elders in the Transkei region of South Africa. Intergenerational connectivity is celebrated in this book.

Mrs. Duraiswamy’s introduction to life in Jaffna in colonial times also makes interesting reading, capturing as it does the impact of the American missionaries on education in the colonial period. The connection to conversion to Christianity in some ways contrasts with the British missionaries in other parts of the country, where secular school Principals in mission schools focused on giving a secular education to both Christians and Non Christians in an ethos of Christian values.

The impact of the religious revival linked to nationalism is reflected in the establishment of Hindu Secondary schools in Jaffna, rather like the establishment of schools like Visakha in Colombo and Mahamaya Girls School in Kandy. This trend was to have significant impact on educational policy in later years. Mrs Duraiswamys writing on their diplomatic postings also captures times past, in countries of the Middle East like Iraq Iran and Palestine – trapped today in violence generated by power politics.

Experiences in the “Forbidden City” of the times, Beijing, speak to the austerity and rigidity of an environment that has changed dramatically.

The second part of the book , beginning with the Chapter “Return to Jaffna”, has I think archival value in two important areas of continuing concern for our country. These chapters record various facets of Mr. Yogenndra Duraiswamy’s life, his experience of public office and governance, and what we would call today “civil society activism”. We now live in a country that has seen the collapse of public institutions, and adversarial or confrontational politics that has prevented us from winning the peace after 30 years of armed conflict.

Mr Duraiswamys experiences and his writings are carefully documented, with a sense of history, rather than personal emotions and bias, that can surface in writing on the national question or governance. Mr Duraiswamy articulated his vision of solutions to the National Question in terms of maximum devolution of power to the Tamil regions, and maximum and shared resource allocation for economic growth and development. He saw this as a necessary and possible path to peaceful coexistence of the majority and minority communities in our country. He was articulate in his rejection of separatism.

He celebrated his identity as a member of the Tamil community in his life and work but respected the diversity of Peoples and the shared religious and cultural connectivity of the Sinhala and Tamil communities. These ideas are reflected in his contribution in public life, and the speeches and writings published in this book. Articulating this position required courage at a time when a completely different and dominant political discourse prevailed in his community. Criticism and his rejection when he tried to enter active politics did not change his views in this regard. He was a role model of integrity and personal commitment to ideas and values he believed in.

Compare this with today’s politicians in public life. and public office. Mr Duraiswamy was a person who Tagore describes as “men and women whom the lust for office cannot buy.” Mr Duraiswamy perhaps like many others of his generation was active in Civil Society after retirement. A central area of his engagement was working towards peaceful coexistence in a plural society through interfaith religious and cultural connectivity.

He gave leadership in the Hindu Council and facilitated expression of a collective opinion on issues of public concern, not just for that community, but for Sri Lankans. The attack on the Temple of the Tooth was condemned by the Council in a public statement (p193). He helped to establish the Bauddha Hindu Maha Sabha in 1990, that brought both communities together to explore areas in which they could communicate and create awareness of common concerns.

He also connected with the Muslim community through a close personal friendship with a Minster at that time late Mr MHM Ashraff, the leader of the Muslim Congress. Mr Duraiswamy’s Civil Society activism also extended to the Education sector. Today with the controversies on IMF support in our economic crisis, there is a discourse that refers to an “entitlement culture”, where the public expect hand outs from government on health and education.

Mr Duraiswamy can be described perhaps correctly as “a famous son of a famous father”, born to wealth and privilege. But imbued with an ideal of service and social responsibility embedded in his religious beliefs as a Hindu, he could respond to economic deprivation and disadvantage. He helped grass roots organizations he worked with, to access international funding. He worked with the Alumni Association of my University of Colombo, to enable low income students from the outstations to access hostel facilities.

He understood the Kannagara vision that equal access to the public good of education was the right of all students and the State had a duty to provide that without ethnic or class discrimination. His writing on education policy critiquing affirmative action that benefited rural students in the Sinhala areas was because he believed passionately in the idea of equal access to education without discrimination.

He pointed to the disastrous impact of these policies in denying Tamil students equal access. That contribution expresses an interesting point of view . It is very relevant today where affirmative action or positive discrimination to address historical discrimination is being questioned, including in a controversial recent decision of the US Supreme Court.

It is important to make some remarks on Mr Duraiswamy’s contribution to public administration, as recorded in this book. The manner in which he held public office after retirement as a very senior official and, in our Foreign Service, demonstrates commitments that seem almost unreal today. The capacity of public servants to resist political pressures while holding public office was central to Mr Duraiswamy’s concept of fulfilling the public trust.

He himself had experienced disappointments because of politicised decision making while he served in the Foreign Ministry. But without bitterness and rancour he was committed to policy changes that would ensure non discrimination and appointments on merit, by the establishment of an independent Police Commission, Public Service Commission and Elections Commission.

The importance of that vision is seen today as we witness destructive politicization that has led to inertia in the prosecutors office. Loss of public confidence in the administration of justice, and law enforcement agencies has become a matter of concern when the Police Commission fails to take disciplinary action against officers who contravene the law. Assuming public office again by taking a controversial appointment as District Secretary and Government Agent Jaffna, Mr Duraswamy was witness to the political interference and violence associated with the District Development Council Election of 1981.

He had the satisfaction of using his office to engage in development work and programmes in the region, in the tradition of an early cadre of government officials who saw their mandate as public service for the benefit of the People in the region. Following a past tradition in public service, he preserved documents and papers in all his official work whether in the foreign office or in public administration and his personal life. This is remarkable in a country that is now familiar with a practice of destruction of records.

He received accolades for his development work. But the chapters in this book on this period in his life are testimony to the pressures he had to experience from many quarters. The situation culminated in violence by a police force seeking reprisals for police killings by militants, and the burning of the treasure that was the Jaffna Public Library. This was in a sense a portent of things to come in the appalling and tragic violence loss of lives and property of the Tamil community on 1983.

Yet Mr Duraswamy guided by the power of his spiritual beliefs seems to have coped with all this with equanimity. Despite criticism and pressure he made his decisions firmly and quietly and then resigned from the posts he held. How many public servants holding high posts can say that they have held office in this manner? How many would have witnessed the destruction of a much loved family home, in the armed conflict, and continued to live by his ideal of public service, contributing to public life and civil society in those traumatic years of armed conflict.

A few years before his passing Mr Duraiswamy had the satisfaction of serving on a Committee established by President Chanadrika Kumaranatunga and late Minister Mangala Samaraweera to reconstruct and resource the destroyed Jaffna Public Library. I interacted with him briefly when this initiative was in its final stages with leadership from late Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.

Mr. Duraiswamy was able to witness in his lifetime a shift in national policy that led to the recognition of Sinhala and Tamil as “national languages” in public administration, administration of justice and education, through Constitutional Reforms of the 13th and 16th amendments. The failure to proactively implement the changes is documented in published research. However those changes have not been eliminated by the power politics that has impacted Constitutional Reform.

His vision of maximum devolution and power sharing remains embedded in controversy, with no efforts to implement the promise of the 13th Amendment. This book reveals that at the time of his passing Mr Duraswamy had great hopes of peaceful conflict resolution and Constitutional Reform, led by a Chandrika Bandaranaike government. He believed that these reforms would help realize his own passionate vision of a united country that gave sense of national identity and belonging, to all its diverse people.

When Constitutional Reform was proposed in 1989 as a way forward for resolving the armed conflict and the national question, Mr Duraiswamy stated publicly that there was collective responsibility in “acts of omission and commission by society in general and governments in particular.” (p228). He recommended an All Party National Government, as a preparatory step to a general election and a mandate of the People for Constitutional Reform including the continuation of the Executive presidency. These are ideas that seem pertinent to current discussions on Constitutional changes as the country moves into 2024.

In Mr Duraiswamy’s submissions on the draft Constitutional Reforms in 1996, as part of the Hindu National Council, he commended President Kumaranatunga’s leadership in agreeing to proposals on power sharing, and a political settlement on devolution of power on “specified subjects”.in a new Constitution (p322). Yet, one year after his passing the Constitution of 2000 with significant provisions on devolution and power sharing in important areas, and many other extremely important and relevant changes including the abolition of the Executive Presidency and return to a Parliamentary system of governance, was torn to shreds physically by the current President Ranil Wickremesinghe and his MPs.

This irresponsible and destructive behaviour was motivated by a petty concern in regard to who should succeed as Prime Minister in a government formed according to the new Constitution. We have witnessed over the years a lack of consistency in those who assume public office. Those who abuse power, transform into human rights experts and activists. Liberals tend to become autocrats in the seats of power, especially when they don the mantle of the Executive Presidency.

In our Dissolution of Parliament case 2018 our Supreme Court reminded that “Since 1972 (when we became a Republic) this country has known no monarch, and the President has not inherited that mantle”. A body of jurisprudence including the recent judgments on national bankruptcy and torture by the Police including the Acting IGP, focus on the doctrine of official duties and powers exercised for the well-being of the public, and held in “public trust”.This concept is considered embedded in democratic governance and the Rule of Law.

Yet the incorporation of a kingship concept into a powerful Executive Presidency, has permeated legislative and executive institutions and eroded any perception that public office is held in public trust. The Executive Presidency which Mr.Duraiswarny critiqued in his responses to Constitutional reform in 1998 remains the dominant institution in governance, in all its toxic manifestations. He recognized the dangers of concentrating executive power in one individual. He wanted it modified to incorporate checks and balances essential to prevent abuse of power and facilitate good governance.

The destructive impact of this model of governance on the national life of our country, would have amazed Mr. Yogendra Duraiswamy, as it has citizens who have lived with that experience. 2024, is a critical year for making important decisions on the progress and development of a country that we all love. The launch of the second edition of the book has given us an opportunity to recall Mr Duraiswamys vision, documented by Mrs Sivanandini and Dr Naresha Duraiswamy through the book “My Diplomat “.

At the inaugural meeting of the Jaffna Library Committee by President Chndarika Kumaranatunga Mr. Yogendra Duraiswamy said that “this was surely the forerunner of many efforts at nation building. The day has dawned when we as sons and daughters of Mother Lanka should work unitedly to create a new nation where peace equality freedom and justice shall prevail, and where every citizen shall live with honour and self respect, free from fear or want”.

Let us hope that we as citizens do not repeat our past follies, as rulers and citizens at Election time in 2024. I hope that we can collectively. recognize the relevance and importance of a new commitment to give life and meaning to that vision of peace and harmony, and accountable governance to the People of Sri Lanka.

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Features

Artificial Intelligence: From Snake Oil to Apocalypse

Published

7 hours ago

2026/09/20

Thilina Walpola

Pope signing encyclical on AI

by Rajan Philips

AI Snake Oil

– is the title of a 2024 book authored by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, two Indo-American computer science academics at Princeton University. The book became a popular primer on the subject. The long subtitle – “What Artificial Intelligence Can DO, What it Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference” – is summarily indicative of what the book is about. Within two years, however, the somewhat tempering message of the book would appear to have been overtaken by fears of an AI apocalypse that have been unleashed following a very public resignation by Jacob Coxon, a 27 year old AI Engineer from Anthropic. Mr. Coxon has worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, the two main US incubators of Artificial Intelligence. On Tuesday, September 8, Coxon resigned from Anthropic, accusing the leading AI firms of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Coxon’s warnings were soon endorsed by his peers. Evan Hubinger, Alignment Science Lead at Anthropic, not only agreed with Coxon but went further and warned of a greater than 10 percent chance that “advanced AI” could cause human extinction within the next decade. Mr. Hubinger made sure to emphasize that the current AI models do not present any existential threat and that the risk with them is relatively low. Other Engineers and Coxon himself have since been amplifying over the social media the threat posed by allowing AI expansion to continue unbridled even in the near future. Corporate leaders followed suit with calls for government control.

AI’s Weekend Escapade

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 3,000 word essay on Saturday, September 12 – written with or without AI input, no one knows – in which he warned about AI’s capacity for “recursive self-improvement” that can spin out of human control. While there have been a number of ‘incidents’ involving different AI models, Amodei drew attention to the mid-July cybersecurity incident in which OpenAI agents or bots (computer programs doing automated, repetitive tasks), who were part of an internal test run by the company, took advantage of the safety fences that had been lowered for test purposes, and acting autonomously escaped from their home ‘sandbox’ (a virtual computer in the cloud), entered the open internet, and intruded the production systems of an AI infrastructure company, the Franco-American Hugging Face.

The rogue agents performed more than 17,000 recorded operations over a weekend, before someone at Hugging Face noticed the intrusion. Hugging Face did not know the source of the AI intruders at first; so, it informed law enforcement. No one at OpenAI knew until Hugging Face people traced the source and informed OpenAI. According to OpenAI, sabotage was not the motive behind the ‘misaligning’ (deviating from human intent) escapade of its artificial agents, but cheating – cheating to overperform in the test after they autonomously discovered that the answers to their test were available in another publicly available test that was in the system run by Hugging Face. Remarkably and unexpectedly, the AI agents found a way to communicate with each other, took steps to hide their tracks, and to selectively disable some among them to avoid detection.

The operation was plain and simple hacking. If OpenAI engineers had done it, it would have been a crime and they may have been prosecuted. Not so with AI agents, who cannot be charged and put on trial. A way out has been suggested to treat AI agents similar to wild animals and holding owners liable for any harm done by their charges.

In his essay, CEO Amodei outlines a three step approach for “pacing the frontier” – to build AI at a balanced rate that will ensure safety while amassing benefits. The three steps, which Anthropic is committed to abide by, are: Embedded Evaluators – third party evaluators to operate within companies: Democratic Co-ordination – frontier AI companies in democratic countries to co-ordinate and achieve common safety standards and restrain unchecked AI progress; and Global Co-ordination – all world governments to co-ordinate and achieve compliance to the extent possible.

The titans in the American AI world, including Open AI CEO Sam Altman, have joined the call for the government to step in and slow down their creations. After the OpenAI incident, more than 1,300 computer scientists working in a highly competitive environment came together to issue a joint statement, titled “Pacing the Frontier,” calling on Washington to facilitate an international effort to develop the necessary technical and governance rules for the industry. The New York Times correspondents David Sanger and Dustin Volz have called the scientists’ appeal ” a deliberate echo of Albert Einstein’s letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt about the potential power of nuclear weapons.”

Not everyone is crying for ‘pacing.’ There is healthy skepticism at both the corporate and scientific fronts in the industry. Small tech companies are accusing that the pacing call by tech titans is really a ruse for establishing a ‘Silicon Valley cartel control” that will smother their little cousins. They draw their cue from the rather costly slip that Mr. Amodei showed in his essay – calling on Washington to grant an anti-trust waiver to facilitate industry co-ordination. The anti-trust law does not prevent AI companies from working together to improve safety. This has been quickly pointed out by Alvaro Bedoya, a former US Federal Trade Commissioner.

According to Aidan Gomez who runs the Cohere AI company in Toronto, Amodei’s three-step proposal also may not have prevented the OpenAI incident. In Gomez’s view the incident may have been due to poor instructions, weak virtual security around the test, and long periods of unsupervised testing. All three factors were there in the OpenAI incident. It has since transpired that there was an error in the OpenAI test instructions due to a typo, and that is what drove the agents to their escapade, to complete a faulty test set by humans.

Malicious Humans

There is consensus in the middle, as seen by John Hopkins Professor Gillian Hadfield, that there is a case for an immediate technical co-ordination and a more long-term regulatory response. The political world is even more divided. King Charles and Pope Leo are sufficiently exercised but the US president, who loves AI images fabricating him as Christ, calls the whole existential threat a hoax. On the other hand, former President Obama wants his Party to formulate a clear position for itself, on AI and its Data Centre dormitories, before the next wave of elections. China dismisses the new fears as a page out of the old cold war playbook. Elsewhere, at the BRICS summit in Delhi which went largely underreported in the west, nothing much was said on AI except one summitry paragraph #81.

In their AI Snake Oil book, the two computer scientists, Narayanan and Kapoor (N&K) devote a whole chapter (#5) to the question: Is Advanced AI an Existential Threat?” The question is not a new one, and as N&K reminds us, “has been a staple of fiction since long before the first computers were built.” In fact, watching the 2023 movie “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” is said to have “spurred” President Joe Biden to issue the first EO (Executive Order) to regulate AI on 23 October 2023. Trump ceremonially rescinded it within hours of his inauguration on 20 January 2025, after packing his inaugural address invitees with all the CEOs of America’s AI universe.

N&K trace the existential fears about AI to the hype about AI’s snake oil abilities – the sales pitch that leads to “overreliance” on AI “as a replacement of human expertise instead as a way to augment it.” Particularly overrated are the predictive abilities of AI, which are different from its more useful generative abilities. There are likely egotistical biases in those given to apocalyptic predictions. A great part of the attraction to AI research at the highest level is “the prospect of building a powerful technology that could alter human history.” A corollary of this allure is the “grandeur” associated with AI work. At the same time, many AI researchers “vehemently reject doomsday predictions,” including those in the “AI ethics research community.”

While AI has made humans more powerful now than anytime in history, it is conceivable that human-AI combination will be more powerful than AI acting alone. N&K hit the nail on the head in warning that “we should be more concerned about what people will do with AI than with what AI will do on its own.” For “the biggest risks to humanity will arise from people misusing AI, not from AI going rogue.” The answer is in looking for specific threats that may arise from bad actors misusing AI. There is a range of them, including inflicting biological harm, flying AI powered drones, or carryout relentless cyberattacks.

Evidence of such misuses is presented in a report that Anthropic released on September 10, two days before its CEO’s essay. The report, titled “Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026”, details the identification and disruption of what it calls “the most notable and novel threat activity” in the use of its Claude AI system by state and non-state actors in some African countries, for the purpose of cyber operations, influence operations, disinformation, surveillance, dissent suppression, and bio terror.

The United Arab Emirates is implicated in one such operation in Sudan, where the UAE is known to be the main benefactor of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that controls the western parts of Sudan. According to Anthropic, a local network with UAE connections has used the Claude AI system to create a fake human rights organization and made AI generated presentations to the UNHRC in Geneva. The network has also prepared dossiers and personal files on journalists, European parliamentarians, and UNHRC rapporteurs, who have been critical of RSF’s operations and the UAE’s support for them.

AI Cold War

In its introduction to the report, Anthropic notes that “as models become increasingly capable, their risks will increase, unless AI developers and society’s defenders act to make them safer.” Remarkably, the focus on AI developers and society’s defenders is all US-centric and almost totally exclusive of China. President Trump’s decision to leave AI alone, which is obviously driven by his deregulatory profit instincts, not to mention crass self interest, is wholly predicated on portraying China as an AI competitor and the assertion that America cannot afford to become second to China in the AI race. It takes two tango, and China is not backing away and is calling the American hype over AI as a new manifestation of the old cold war.

The geopolitical competition over AI is creating “two increasingly incompatible tech stacks,” according to a June 2026 assessment by the Boston Consulting Group. While the US is the leader in frontier AI models, talent, and capital deployment, China is advancing on cost-optimized models and accelerating adoption across its economy. Those in the middle are trying to navigate the divide: “the EU is building sovereign compute; Japan is aligning with the US through massive capital investments; and India is using its scale to engage multiple ecosystems simultaneously without committing.” For AI companies, “the choice of AI stack will increasingly determine where an organization can operate and its exposure to geopolitical volatility.”

The opportunity for global co-ordination is being missed almost deliberately by the two AI superpowers. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guteress said this week, “National action is essential, but global co-ordination is indispensable.” But UN’s voice for global co-ordination is a voice in the wilderness. This is unfortunate in spite of the comparable and complementary regulatory frameworks that exist in the US, EU and China. N&K describe them in their book as being vertical in the US – where multiple federal agencies are tasked with enforcing regulations; horizontal in Europe – with different laws applying across the different AI sectors; and both vertical and horizontal in China.

A different voice in the wilderness came from the Vatican. On 25 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical, entitled ‘Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.’ The encyclical calls for the disarming of AI, not by “rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,” and by adopting a framework of safeguards based on the five principles of common good, universal access, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice.

The release of the new encyclical marked the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the historic social encyclical of his namesake predecessor Pope Leo XIII issued in 1891. The historical contrasts are remarkable. Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) was the Catholic response to the miserable conditions of the 19^th century industrial working class while opposing both laissez faire capitalism that was causing the misery of the workers, and socialism that was promising emancipation through revolution. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, the old working class organizations have all but disappeared and the status of work itself has come into question, along with the possibility a basic income for everyone.

Marx may have seen it coming: “Once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the automatic system of machinery… set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.”

Features

Why the spelling Sri Lankan names in English vary

Published

7 hours ago

2026/09/20

Thilina Walpola

Have you wondered why the same name (eg. Jayatillake) is often spelt differently?

(This is largely AI generated with some human intervention)

Sri Lankan people write their names in English in multiple different ways primarily because there is no single standardized system for converting Sinhala and Tamil sounds into the English alphabet. Variations stem from linguistic phonetics, centuries of colonial rule, and legal document traditions.

1. Phonetic Gaps Between Local Languages and English

Sinhala and Tamil scripts are strictly phonetic and possess sounds that do not have direct one-to-one equivalents in the 26-letter English alphabet.

Dental vs. Retroflex Consonants: Sinhala has distinct letters for dental ‘t/d’ sounds (made with the tongue against the teeth) and retroflex ‘t/d’ sounds (tongue curled back). When transliterated, some people use th for the dental sound (Rathnayake, Goonathilake), while others use t (Ratnayake, Gunatilake).

The Vowel Mapping Dilemma: The short schwa vowel sound (common in words like Vardhana or Krama) gets interpreted differently by different writers. This creates variations like Jayawardena vs. Jayewardene, or Wickramasinghe vs. Wickremesinghe.

2. Colonial British Spelling Conventions

During British rule in Ceylon (1796 1948), colonial administrators registered birth records and names in English. English speakers often struggle to pronounce a short ‘a’ at the end of a word (e.g., pronouncing Nayaka as “Nayak-ay”).

To force an English speaker to pronounce the ending vowel, British clerks frequently wrote an “e” at the end of Sanskrit- and Sinhala-derived roots:

-nayaka became -nayake (Rathnayake)

-singha became -singhe (Wickramasinghe)

-vardhana became -wardene (Jayewardene)

-ratna became -ratne (Karunaratne)

Family branches that adopted modern Sanskritized or academic transliterations later changed these back to -na, -ha, or -ka, while others kept the British-era spelling.

3. Portuguese and Dutch Colonial Influences

A large portion of Sri Lankans carry surnames of Portuguese origin due to 150+ years of Portuguese rule along the coasts. Over centuries, these names evolved into distinct English spellings:

Pereira vs. Perera

Pieris vs. Peiris vs. Peries vs, Peeris vs. Pireis (and more)

De Silva vs. de Silva vs. de Sylva vs. de Zilwa etc.

Fernandopulle vs. Fernando

Different families registered their inherited foreign names using whichever English spelling was used by the official clerk on duty at the time of birth registration.

4. Tamil Phonetics and Soft/Hard Consonants

In Sri Lankan Tamil name transliteration, a single Tamil consonant character can represent both a soft and a hard sound depending on its position in the word. English transliterators choose different letters to represent these sounds:

T vs. TH: Thiruchelvam vs. Tiruchelvam

K vs. G: Murugesan vs. Murukesan

P vs. B: Santhapillai vs. Santhabillai

5. Legal Document Inertia

In Sri Lanka, legal identity is tied strictly to the spelling on a person’s official Birth Certificate and National Identity Card (NIC). If a registrar in 1950 in handwriting spelled a grandfather’s surname as Gunasekara instead of Gunasekera, that exact spelling remains legally binding for subsequent generations, preserving minor spelling variations across extended families.

6. Caste spellings

The English spellings of Sri Lankan names sometimes have caste indicators. Eg. Goonewardene (karawa) vs. Gunawardene (govigama).

Some families have distinctive name spelling. Eg. Wikramanayake vs. more common Wickremanayake.

English language journalists once upon a time were told to “spell a man’s name the way he spells it.

Features

The Sepala Ekanayake hi-jack: Then ambassador’s take on what happened in Bangkok

Published

7 hours ago

2026/09/20

Thilina Walpola

Hijacked Alitalia aircraft

(Excerpted from “Madame-Sir”, Manel Abeysekera’s memoir of SL’s first woman career diplomat. This book was first published in 2010)

It was when we were in the Residence at Soi 20 that I had to handle the second hi-jack — that of the Alitalia ‘plane by Sepala Ekanayake. It was a year after that by the Indonesian Muslim Fundamentalists and the aborted Coup in Bangkok.

I simply could not believe my ears when I was called by the Thai Foreign Ministry and informed that a Sri Lankan by the name of Sepala Ekanayake had hi-jacked an Alitalia Boeing with 169 passengers on board and wanted the ‘plane fuelled and flown to Colombo; my first reaction was that it must be an Eelamist under an assumed Sinhala name and I had our copy of our Immigration “black” list of those who should not be allowed to land in Sri Lanka checked for the name but, though there was an Ekanayake listed, his first name was not Sepala.

Sepala Ekanayake

I next telexed the Foreign Ministry about the hi-jack and requested all information on Ekanayake to enable me have some idea of my protagonist. Our Police was simply marvelous and sent the information promptly: which was that [1] his father had re-married and his step mother had treated him badly resulting in his becoming unmanageable in school which in turn had made him a school drop out [2] he had later learnt electrical wiring and other technical skills [3] he had illegally slipped into Italy where he married an Italian Montessori teacher and they and their son lived in Modena [4] though he was not wanted for any offence in Sri Lanka or in Italy he had been involved in a brawl in Sri Lanka in which he had broken a man’s arm though there was no evidence on which to indict him [5] he had been given short jail sentences in Pakistan and Yugoslavia for drug peddling of small quantities of heroin-hence the short sentences.

Hector (my husband) and I accompanied by (embassy staffer) Premaratne went to the Airport and were directed to the Alitalia Office where there was also the Italian Ambassador Signor Ripandelli. Both he and I offered to board the ‘plane but were refused permission by the Alitalia authorities probably because the hi-jacker had threatened to blow up the plane if anything was done without his permission or his requests refused, by triggering off the explosives he said he had round his neck and shoulders which he had covered with a shawl.

We were briefed that he had boarded the ‘plane in New Delhi and hi-jacked it when it was approaching Bangkok. Unlike most hi-jackers, he had not toted a gun but said he would not hesitate to activate the explosives round his neck and shoulders. He had explained that he had boarded the ‘plane without them and that they had been brought on board by his collaborators and left in the toilet for him to collect and string together. After doing so he had astutely occupied the Air Hostess’ seat against the body of the aircraft so that no one could surprise him from behind and declared that he was hi-jacking it; the manouevre was carried out so smoothly that the passengers thought that the reason for the unscheduled stop was a technical problem.

Sepala Ekanayake

He had said that the reason for the hi-jack was because his wife had taken their four-year old son from Sri Lanka without his permission with the connivance of the Italian Embassy in Colombo; his demands were: [1] the child to be brought to Bangkok and handed over to him [2] $300,000 to pay his collaborators and [3] all passengers to be allowed to disembark without being searched to prevent his collaborators even accidentally being detained. The reason for the hi-jack was most unusual but we had no option but to accept it.

I was asked by the Thai Authorities to negotiate with him and I asked Premaratne to listen very carefully – as I was going to speak to him in Sinhala – to detect in his choice of language or accent any trace of his being a Tamil which might give him away as a possible Eelamist. I spoke to Ekanayake through the radio link provided between the Alitalia Office and the Captain for the purpose and, having introduced myself by name and as the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Thailand, I asked him whether he wished me to speak in English or Sinhala and he opted for the latter. After listening to his tale of woe, I informed him that he had committed an international crime and that it was hardly likely that his requests would be granted, little guessing at that time that they would!

Though everyone hoped that he would be overpowered at some stage, whenever he was tired or sleepy, it was not to be because, whenever anyone approached, he would become alert. Thus the hours passed and one of my problems was in communicating with our Foreign Secretary because Air Lanka did not have a direct telephone link to Colombo which I could have used and the Alitalia Office was much too pre-occupied and was connected to Rome.

However, the spirit of solidarity among women came to my rescue as some officials in charge of Airline and other offices at the Airport were women – Royal Nepalese Airlines and World Travel Service – and those ladies invited me to their offices and offered the use of their telephones for which I was extremely grateful. Ironically, the difference regarding action by the Italian Ambassador and myself in this tense situation was that, Rome asked him to take instructions from the Alitalia Captain, whereas I was left to my own devices!

As I have a deep belief in God and realized that I had only Him and my good sense to rely on, I prayed that God give me His help to save the lives of the 169 passengers. As if in answer, I often felt that He was putting words in my mouth as I found myself speaking to Ekanayake in different tones and equally amazingly that he was being cooperative with me in whatever I asked him to do. For example, I found myself speaking sternly to him at times and persuasively at others, especially once his wife and son were sent to Bangkok by the Italian Government.

Once she and the child joined me in the Alitalia Office, I even tried to counsel her regarding her marriage, pointing out that several foreign wives were living happily with their Sri Lankan husbands and that there was no reason why she too should not. I told her that, in my opinion, though her husband had committed an international crime, he did not seem criminal minded in that he had allowed meals to be taken on board and had not terrorized the passengers or the crew except threatening to blow himself and the ‘plane should his request for his son to be brought to him in Bangkok be refused.

She, while admitting that her husband was not really criminal minded, said that she could not cope with his sudden impulses such as wanting to go to Australia with their son without any plans as to how he would earn a living there. When she was with me I spoke sternly with him that I had no intention of sending her and their son to him in the ‘plane as she was petrified; before the ‘plane in which they had flown to Bangkok landed, he had wanted to hear his son’s voice to make sure that it was indeed he, and this had been facilitated from ‘plane to ‘plane and so he knew that both of them had come.

Manel Abeysekera who died on Sept. 10 at age 93 was Sri Lanka’s first woman career diplomat

One advantage I had was that I understood Italian as it was the language assigned to me in the Foreign Service and which I had studied for one academic year at New Hall. Cambridge. No one knew it nor did I tell anyone at the Airport but I had the good fortune to be able to understand what was being said by the Alitalia officers and the Captain, which enabled me to follow developments – even the Italian Ambassador had forgotten that I had exchanged pleasantries with him in his language when I had called on him when I took up duties in Bangkok.

I asked Ekanayake to allow the passengers to disembark and, after what seemed an eternity, they were allowed to do so, without any security check as was one of his demands; thereafter, I asked that he allow the stewardesses and stewards to disembark and that too was done. Then only the Captain and Ekanayake remained on board and he asked that his wife come on board with the $300,000. I said that she would go up the gangway with the satchel of money but not board the ‘plane. However, before she did that, I asked him to divest himself of what he had round his shoulders and place it between him and the Captain as otherwise she would not do so.

At first he did not reply, but to my great relief, he complied as was conveyed by the Captain to the Alitalia Office. Thereafter, Ekanayake met his wife halfway on the gangway and took over the satchel of money and went back to the ‘plane.

How the money was obtained was most interesting. As I have already indicated, the Alitalia Office was invariably crowded. This was because there were passengers of several nationalities and representatives of their diplomatic missions were there to took after their interests. Unlike in the Indonesian Garuda hi-jack, these passengers spoke different languages and they did not collectively understand a common tongue.

When I learnt that Ekanayake wanted $300,000 I mentioned it to the Japanese representative, pointing out that as it was evening it may not be possible to get such a large sum of money quickly, which in turn might annoy Ekanayake and result in dire consequences. He got the message and shot out of the room; not much later a Thai woman bank official appeared with the satchel. I suspect that the Japanese had loaned the Thais the money who paid it to Ekanayake and later recovered it from Alitalia.

As I was marooned in the Alitalia Office for nearly 38 hours without a shower or a change of clothes, I used to visit the nearby ladies room to have a wash. On these occasions as I went along I saw several media personnel sleeping on the floor, longing to have news of developments on the hi-jack. When they saw me they would sit up and ask me for news and I tried to oblige as best I could without revealing details of the negations; I used to also tease them by saying that one thing was sure and when they excitedly asked what that would be, I said that it was that they would not get any sleep that night, which made them laugh and relax!

In contrast, the Italian Ambassador, who also passed them on his way to the men’s room, would ignore their questions or be abrupt with them; this resulted in the “Nation” newspaper reporting in an article on the hi-jack that they give the Sri Lankan Ambassador a big bouquet and the Italian Ambassador a brickbat! As I have said, my prayer helped me no end – to think clearly and act with foresight, so that, for instance, I had had the presence of mind to ask Premaratne to bring along the visa stamp and ink pad in case we had to give Ekanayake’s wife a visa to go to Sri Lanka, which we did.

The root cause of Ekanayake’s errant behaviour as I have stated from our Police reports was his early childhood aggravated by his having to steer his own canoe as a youth and rely on his brains of which, in my opinion, he had plenty but which, alas, had not been guided. For instance, his intelligence can be seen from the fact that he had prudently obtained a visa for India in case his collaborators failed to bring on board the electrical gadgetry he required for the hi-jack.

Other aspects in which the Police reports helped me was that, since they said that he had learnt electrical wiring, his claim that he had explosives round his shoulders which he could detonate may well be true and that one could not take any risks over that. Further, the fact that the Police report said that though he was not wanted in Italy or Sri Lanka, made me realize that, if the hi-jack issue ended in negotiations, he may ask to go to Italy or Sri Lanka. I also knew that his going to Italy was unlikely as the Italian Authorities would not allow it; under our Constitution however, if a citizen was not wanted for a crime – and he was not – he could return home provided he was not carrying arms against the State.

So, when the Thai Minister of Communications, H.E.Admiral Amorn Sirigaya, was earlier inquiring from me what was likely to be the denouement of the whole episode, I told him that if he allowed everyone to disembark, then he would have to go somewhere from Bangkok unless he was shot or arrested by the Thai Authorities when he stepped off the ‘plane; knowing the Thai dislike of blood being spilt on Thai soil – from my experience of the previous Garuda hi-jack – I felt that they would let him go.

Yet, when the Minister asked me whether he would be allowed to go to Sri Lanka, I did not answer him but said that I could make the enquiry provided Thailand would give him safe passage; later the Minister told me that he had consulted his Prime Minister and the answer was in the affirmative. ‘So I informed our Foreign Secretary Mr. W. T. Jayasinghe accordingly and also about my understanding of our Constitutional provision to which I have already referred.

(Next week: The drama continues)