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President Rajapaksa and his 13A dilemmas

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5 years ago

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by Rajan Philips

It was said of Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike that “it was a grim irony that he should be called upon, at the moment of his greatest political triumph, to articulate the strong opposition of the Sinhalese to any attempt to establish a federal constitution.” Sixty-five years later, it could be said in reverse that it is a grimmer irony for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to be unfairlyput on the spot by his most ardent supporters and their insistent calls for abolishing the Provincial Council system, in total disregard of the realities of political and geopolitical consequences of such abolishing, not to mention the extraordinary Covid-19 challenges that he has to deal with now. The irony is to be noted because Mr. Rajapaksa was among the first to raise the call for abolishing the PCs as far back as 10 years ago, when even the mere thought of becoming Sri Lanka’s president may not have crossed his mind as an American citizen.

The PCs are not the only dilemma that President Rajapaksa has to wrestle with. He is grappling with quite a few of them. While almost all other presidential dilemmas are connected to Covid-19, the dilemma over 13A and the Provincial Councils is antecedent to Covid-19, but like everything else in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, is complicated by it. Hence the lingering question, why bother with a new constitution now? And especially for this President, whose credentials are totally those of a practical doer, and not at all the characteristics of a constitutional visionary? The answer might be that it is the ‘constitutional cabal’ that is running the constitutional show, like every other cabal running every other government show.

 

‘Sapatha’ and Overreach

The immediate cause for the abolishment calls is the apparent decision of the government, or the Prime Minister, to go ahead with the long postponed (by the Wickremesinghe-TNA-JVP threesome) elections to the currently defunct Provincial Councils, which were established under the 13th Amendment. The sources of these calls are also a classic case of multiple political tails trying to wag the country’s presidential executive and his brother prime minister. A government minister, indeed, the Minister for Public Security and the State Minister for Provincial Councils, has, in ancient Mahabharata “sapatha kara kiyanawa” style, made a solemn pledge to the members of the Civil Defence Force that he would put an end to the system of Provincial Councils. The Experts Committee tasked with preparing a draft for the new Rajapaksa constitution, is also reported to have expressed concern over holding PC elections before their draft is done and a new constitution is in place.

It is not clear if there is unanimity in the committee over this concern, or if some committee members are speaking publicly for the whole committee. There was an earlier news report that the Experts Committee took an internal vote and decided by majority on a matter that is apparently fundamental to preparing the draft constitution. That an expert committee on the constitution would take an internal vote to decide on a fundamental question without referring it to its political masters in the government (with the parliament helplessly sidelined in the whole exercise) is an extraordinary overreach. If this is any indication, even the draft constitution that the committee would likely produce (presumably by a majority vote) may turnout to be extraordinary and tendentious.

Does the matter that the committee had to vote on have anything to do the 13th Amendment? We do not know. But we know that the more powerful members of the committee are not amused by the government’s apparent decision to go ahead with PC elections. And that is some gall for a committee appointed by the country’s Head of State to publicly tell the government if or when it should conduct elections to any elected body. For now, there is more than Expert Committee amusement or gall that has been put on display. Real midweek fury against the Provincial Councils has been unleashed by Prof. GH Peiris, who is also a prominent member of the Experts Committee.

 

Facts and Fabrications

Anyone looking to get refreshed on the materially relevant historical background to the constitutional voids that were unnecessarily created in 1972 and in 1978 – and their partial filling by the 13th Amendment (in 1987) and the Provincial Councils it created, could re-read Chapter 36 in KM de Silva’s (1981) “A History of Sri Lanka.” Even its first few pages will do. My opening quote on SWRD Bandaranaike in today’s article is from page 513 of de Silva’s book, in Chapter 36: “The Triumph of Linguistic Nationalism”. The quote might suggest that the historian was having his academic tongue in his political cheek, but it reads far superior to anything that a geographer seems to be able to politically offer 40 years later. And this is not because Sri Lanka has too much history and too little geography.

Yet, no one can do worse than CA Chandraprema’s attempt to rewrite history, as he did in his hagiographic monograph, “Gota’s War.” We can anticipate versions of it to be undiplomatically broadcast from Geneva from March onward. The one thing about the history of Sri Lanka’s national question or conflict is that it is a well studied (even “over studied”, as AJ Wilson used to say) subject, and almost everyone who is of consequence either in Sri Lanka or abroad is well versed, in it and knows to discern between facts and fabrications. More than historical writings, Sri Lanka’s stubborn facts always give the fabricator’s, if not the government’s, game away. Just as it is impossible to hide a whole pumpkin in a plate of rice. Peremptorily abolishing the Provincial Council system will be one more stubborn fact that will fetch no credit for Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankans who have lived through and politically experienced the tumults and wars after 1977 need no lesson from old history, colonial, or pre-colonial. Some of us–Burghers, Muslims, Sinhalese, and Tamils rising above our ethnic strictures, happened to be involved in efforts to respond to these events within the framework of the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE).1983 is now considered a watershed moment in Sri Lanka’s modern history, one that is totally negative and even calamitous, and quite different from 1956 which bore both positive and negative fruits. However, 1983 had its annual forerunners. Riots broke out in 1977, after a twenty-year hiatus and within months of the UNP’s bigger than landslide election victory. For the first time, plantation Tamils were targeted in communal rioting. In 1978, the UNP used its massive majority in parliament to elevate one of its MPs, Prime Minister JR Jayewardene, as the country’s first executive president. 1979 was the year of the Emergency in Jaffna, when President Jayewardene ordered Brigadier (Bull) Weeratunga (not DIG/IGP Rudra Rajasingham) to “eliminate the menace of terrorism in all its forms from the island and more specially from the Jaffna District.” Two years later, in 1981, tea plantation districts were targeted again in the south, while off-duty policemen burnt down the Public Library in Jaffna. In 1982, President Jayewardene upended parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka through the chicanery of a referendum. One year later, what was catastrophic became calamitous, as the Palestinians are known to say.

1983 implicated Sri Lanka not only geopolitically with India, but also internationally with practically every western country where Tamils leaving Sri Lanka found a foothold. The Sixth Amendment that was passed during the dark and difficult days of August 1983, erased the elected TULF off the political map and handed over the keys to Tamil politics to armed militants. Sarath Silva said as much in his 2005 ruling as Chief Justice, in the course of denying President Kumaratunga’s plea to stay in office a year longer.

The commonplace argument is that 13A and the Provincial Councils were foisted on Sri Lanka by India’s machinations taking advantage of an old, weak, and beleaguered President Jayewardene. While this argument might be politically potent, it is bereft of any analytical insight or credibility, and it flies in the face of events and the alignments of political forces within Sri Lanka before and after 1983. The notion that India’s role in Sri Lanka was triggered by the fury of Indira Gandhi after she was apparently scorned by JR Jayewardene is cheap table talk and should not be a serious political consideration. And in 2020 it is utterly inappropriate to speak of any woman, let alone a woman political leader and Prime Minister, being scorned, leaving aside the not uncommon misattribution to Shakespeare of the line (“Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”) that was satirically written by William Congreve (1670-1729) in his play, The Mourning Bride.

 

Indian Involvement and Sri Lanka’s Failure

I make no suggestion that India’s involvement, or interference, in Sri Lanka was entirely, or even primarily, motivated by neighbourly altruism. There were of course machinations, but they were mostly of the raw bureaucratic kind, thanks to the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s wannabe CIA. And whether it was Indian involvement or interference, it did not arise out of nothing and would not have transpired the way it did and to the extent it did, without compelling circumstances in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan political circumstances after 1977, and more so after 1983, provided both the pretext and the context for India to get involved in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs. And no one, not even India, could have anticipated that things would get ugly and totally out of control as they did over several years. It is still the sorest point among many Sinhalese that India peremptorily prevented the Sri Lankan military onslaught on the LTTE in June 1987 with its controversial air drop of food supplies in Jaffna. The contention is that were it not for this highhanded intervention, the war would have been over by and large in 1987 itself. This is debatable because the LTTE was then primarily a guerrilla organization and may have survived the onslaught to live and fight another day. It was only years later that the LTTE would build up its so called conventional fighting force and convert itself from being a fighting-fit guerrilla force to a flabby national army, and getting drunk in the process with its own myth of invincibility. And in this saga of ironies, India that initially aided and armed Tamil militant groups on the beaches of Tamil Nadu, would later preside over the disarming of every militant group bar the LTTE, engage its army in an unfinished and unsuccessful fight against the LTTE, and finally – 22 years after the infamous ‘parippu drop’ – end up aiding and assisting the government of Sri Lanka to vanquish the LTTE once and for all. It was not only the Central Government in Delhi that went through these about-turns, but also the state and government leaders in Tamil Nadu who were complicit at every step along the way. And there is no shortage among Sri Lankan Tamils who believe that the Tamils were shortchanged in the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the 13th Amendment, and especially by the provisions of the Provincial Councils Act that the two gave rise to.

 

As for JR Jayewardene, although his detractors among the Sinhalese may never concede this, he must have felt entitled to a little last laugh in getting India to clean up the militant mess which in his mind was mostly of India’s making. To his justifiable credit, however, he conceded in the end that India was the only external agency, and not any western country or international agency, that would help him put his Sri Lankan house in order after national politics has unravelled beyond restoration by any domestic initiative alone. This very point was well articulated in a public statement, at the time of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, by more than a score of left and liberal Sinhalese intellectuals, activists, and academics. I do not have the statement at hand, but suffice it to say that the anti-13A lobby is not entitled to claim exclusive monopoly over Sinhalese political thinking, then or now.

As well, the 13th Amendment is not the only controversial initiative, constitutionally or otherwise, that JR Jayewardene implemented and presided over aided by his tyrannical majority in parliament. His entire 1978 constitutional project has been controversial from the time of its inauguration. In fact, the 13th Amendment has had greater support among non-UNP Sinhalese, than the 1978 Constitution ever did. Abolishing the executive presidency has been the winning battle cry in every election from 1994, until 2019. At none of these elections, including, I believe, the 2019 and 2020 elections, did any of the main contenders for power promised to abolish the Provincial Council system.

On the contrary, Chandrika Kumaratunga and her People’s Alliance movement used Provincial Council elections to launch their campaign against and eventually oust the UNP from power after its seventeen year rule. Mahinda Rajapaksa cleverly and consistently used PC elections to consolidate his electoral fiefdom. Again, as political indicators go, the 2014 PC election in Uva signalled the people’s regime fatigue after 10 years of Rajapaksa rule and 20 years of SLFP-dominated governments. Lacking Chandrika Kumaratunga’s charisma and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s cleverness, the beleaguered yahapalanaya folk shuttered up the Provincial Councils and postponed their elections indefinitely. Their dillydallying has created the current dilemma for President Rajapaksa.

There is no dispute that the implementation of the Provincial Councils system has not turned out to be an appealing success. But this is not due to any systemic or structural shortcomings, but entirely due to the failure of political leadership. The blame for the worst leadership failure should fall squarely on the shoulders of Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe in general, and particularly on the TNA and CV Wigneswaran for what they have done and what they failed to do with the Northern Provincial Council after its first and only election in 2013.

There is no question that the PC system needs changes and reforms, regardless of when the next elections are held. And unlike any other institution in Sri Lanka, the PC system has a handbook of reform recommendations in the comprehensive symposium complied, in 2010, by the late Ranjith Amarasinghe, Asoka Gunawardena, Jayampathy Wickramaratne, and AM Navaratna-Bandara. There have been plenty of other suggestions, most recently by Austin Fernando and Nirmala Chandrahasan.

In his December 25 article in The Island, Fernando recounts that the current government includes many past champions of the PC system, including former Provincial Chief Ministers and Governors. Will they speak out now, or stay silent as the current abolishment clamour grows? The current voices of abolition have been around from the time the PCs were introduced in 1987-88. But for over 30 years they have not gotten anywhere close to influencing, or dictating to, the policy of any Sri Lankan government on the 13th Amendment and the Provincial Councils. Until now. And that is President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s main dilemma.


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Features

We banned phone; we kept surveillance; teenagers noticed

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8 hours ago

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2026/04/1

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THE GREAT DIGITAL RETHINK : PART III OF V

The Teenage Battleground

Secondary school has always been a battlefield of sorts, competing loyalties, volatile friendships, the daily theatre of adolescent identity. But in the past decade it acquired a new and uniquely modern dimension: the smartphone in the pocket, the social media feed refreshing every few minutes, the group chat that never sleeps.

The numbers, when they arrived, were not subtle. PISA 2022 data, drawn from students in over 80 countries, found that around 65 percent of students reported being distracted by their own digital devices in mathematics lessons, and 59 percent said a classmate’s device had pulled their attention away. Students who reported being distracted by peers’ phones scored, on average, 15 points lower in mathematics than those who said it never happened. Fifteen points is not a rounding error. It is a meaningful, measurable, recurring gap that appears consistently across countries with very different education systems.

Governments took notice of the situation. In a pattern that will be familiar to readers of this series, a number of them reached for the most visible, most politically satisfying tool available – the ban in Finland, Sweden, Australia, and France. The UK, in a characteristically chaotic way, involving years of guidance, and pilots, eventually legalised. One by one, secondary schools across the wealthy world have begun confiscating phones at the gate, storing them in pouches, locking them up in boxes, and discovering, somewhat to their own surprise, that this works.

When the Ban Actually Works

A 2025 survey of nearly a thousand principals in New South Wales found that 87 percent reported students were less distracted after the ban was introduced, and 81 percent said learning had improved. South Australia recorded a 63 percent decline in critical incidents involving social media and a 54 percent reduction in behavioural issues. These are striking figures, and they align with what common sense would predict: if you remove the distraction, concentration improves.

What is also emerging from Australian, Finnish and Swedish schools is something less expected and more interesting: the character of break times has changed. Teachers and principals report that when phones disappear from pockets, something older reappears in their place. Students talk to each other. They play. They argue, resolve disputes, make and lose friendships in the ancient, messy, face-to-face way that adolescence has always demanded but that the smartphone had been quietly crowding out. The playground, it turns out, was not broken. It was just occupied.

Sweden’s nationwide policy, coming into effect in autumn 2026, will require schools to collect phones for the full day, not just during lessons. This is the more ambitious intervention, and the one that addresses what the Australian experience has already demonstrated: that the damage done by constant connectivity is not confined to the classroom. It happens at lunch. It happens between periods. It happens in the 10 minutes before the bell when a group of 14-year-olds are supposedly in the building but are actually, in every meaningful sense, somewhere else entirely.

87% of Australian principals said students were less distracted after the ban. The other 13% presumably hadn’t tried it yet.

But Here Is What Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here is the part that the ministers’ press releases do not mention. While the smartphone, the device the student owns, controls and carries, has been banned from the secondary classroom, the institution’s own digital apparatus has been expanding at an impressive pace throughout the same period. Learning management systems now mediate most of secondary school life in high-income countries. Assignments are distributed digitally. Work is submitted digitally. Attendance is recorded digitally. Grades are published on portals that students, parents and administrators can access in real time. The school that bans your personal phone may simultaneously be recording precisely how long you spent on each page of the online reading assignment last Tuesday.

Learning analytics, the practice of harvesting data from student interactions with digital platforms to inform teaching and school management, has moved from a niche research curiosity to a mainstream tool. PISA 2022 data show that virtually all 15-year-olds in OECD countries attend schools with some form of digital infrastructure. Behind that infrastructure sits a layer of data collection that most students and many parents are only dimly aware of: log-in times, click patterns, quiz scores, time-on-task measures, platform engagement metrics. These are assembled into dashboards, fed into algorithms, and used, with genuinely good intentions, in most cases, to identify struggling students early.

The genuinely good intentions do not resolve the underlying problem. Research on learning analytics raises serious concerns about privacy, about the opacity of algorithmic decision-making, and about what happens when a teenager is quietly flagged as ‘at risk’ by a system they never knew was watching. The irony of secondary de-digitalisation is not lost on those paying attention: we have removed the device the student controls, while expanding the systems that observe and score them.

The AI Proctor in the Room

During the pandemic, when exams moved online, a number of education authorities adopted software that monitored students through their webcams, flagging unusual eye movements, background sounds, or the presence of other people in the room as potential signs of cheating. The systems were sold as efficient, scalable and objective. They were, in practice, frequently absurd.

The software flagged students who looked away from the screen to think. It penalised students whose rooms were small, shared or noisy, disproportionately those from less privileged backgrounds. It struggled with students of colour, whose features were less well-represented in the training data. It was contested, appealed, gamed, and eventually abandoned by a significant number of institutions that had initially adopted it with enthusiasm. By 2024 and 2025, the rollback was visible. Universities and some school systems were returning, with minimal fanfare, to supervised in-person examinations, handwritten, on paper, in a room with a human invigilator, partly to solve the AI cheating problem, partly to solve the AI proctoring problem. The wheel had, somewhat dizzingly, turned full circle.

We banned the student’s phone. We kept the webcam that monitors their eye movements during exams. Progress.

The Equity Problem That Bans Cannot Solve

Beneath the headline politics of phone bans lies a more uncomfortable question about who, exactly, benefits from secondary school de-digitalisation, and who pays a cost that is rarely acknowledged. The argument for phone bans on equity grounds is real: unrestricted phone use in schools amplifies social hierarchies. The student with the latest device, the most followers, the most compelling social media presence occupies a different social universe from the student without. Removing phones during the school day levels that particular playing field.

But the equity argument runs the other way, too, once you look beyond school hours. Secondary schools in high-income systems have steadily increased their dependence on digital platforms for homework, assessment preparation and communication. If a school bans phones during the day and then sends students home to complete digitally-mediated assignments, the burden of that homework falls unequally.

There is also the growing phenomenon of what researchers are beginning to call ‘shadow digital education’: the private online tutoring platforms, AI-powered study tools and exam preparation services that affluent families use to supplement and extend what school provides. While secondary schools debate whether students should be allowed to use AI for essay drafts, some of those students’ wealthier peers are already using it, skillfully, privately and with considerable academic advantage. The phone ban, whatever its merits in the classroom, does not touch this market. It may even quietly accelerate it.

Two Worlds, Still Diverging

In Finland, Sweden and Australia, the policy conversation is about how to manage the excesses of a generation that grew up digitally saturated, how to restore concentration, how to protect wellbeing, how to ensure that institutional platforms serve learning rather than merely monitor it.

Elsewhere, across much of Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and parts of the Middle East, the secondary school conversation remains anchored to a different set of concerns: how to get enough devices into enough classrooms, how to train enough teachers to use them, how to ensure that the smartboard contract does not expire before the teachers learn to turn it on. Vendors are present, helpful and commercially motivated. Development banks are funding rollouts. Government ministers are visiting showrooms. The playbook being followed is the one that Finland and Sweden wrote in 2010 and are now revising.

SERIES ROADMAP:

Part I: From Ed-Tech Enthusiasm to De-Digitalisation | Part II: Phones, Pens & Early Literacy | Part III: Attention, Algorithms & Adolescents (this article) | Part IV: Universities, AI & the Handwritten Exam | Part V: A Critical Theory of Educational De-Digitalisation

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A Buddhist perspective on ageing and decay

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2026/04/1

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Buddhism is renowned for its profound insights into ageing and decay, known as jara in Pali. Through its teachings and practices, Buddhism cultivates the wisdom and mental clarity necessary to accept and prepare for the inevitability of ageing. The formula jati paccayaā jaraāmaranaṃ translates to “dependent on birth arise ageing and death,” clearly illustrating that birth inevitably leads to ageing and death, accompanied by sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. Without birth, there would be no ageing and death. Therefore, ageing is a fundamental aspect of suffering as outlined in the Four Noble Truths.

Buddhism encourages us to confront the realities of ageing, illness, and mortality head-on. Old age is recognised as an unavoidable aspect of dukkha (suffering). Old age is fundamentally and inextricably entwined with the concept of impermanence(annicca), serving as the most visible, undeniable evidence that all conditioned things are in a state of flux and decay. Ageing, illness and death create in us an awareness not only of dukkha but also impermanence. The Buddha taught, “I teach suffering and the way out of suffering.” Here, “suffering” encompasses not only physical pain but also the profound discomfort that arises when our attempts to escape or remedy pain stemming from old age are thwarted. Instead of fearing old age, Buddhists are encouraged to embrace it, release attachments to youth, and cultivate wisdom, gratitude, and inner peace.

Ageing is a complex process shaped by both genetic and environmental factors. From a Buddhist viewpoint, we should perceive the body realistically. Fundamentally, the human body can be seen as a vessel of impurities, subject to old age, disease, decay, and death. The natural process of ageing is gradual, irreversible, and inevitable. Every individual must ultimately come to terms with the reality of growing old, as change is an essential fact of life.

In Buddhism, impermanence (anicca) holds a central position. Everything that exists is unstable and transient; nothing endures forever—including our bodies and all conditioned phenomena. Thus, anicca, dukkha, and anattaā (non-self or selflessness) are the three characteristics common to all conditioned existence. The reality of impermanence can often evoke pain, yet a wise Buddhist fully understands and appreciates this simple yet profound truth.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus encapsulated this notion when he stated, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.” Old age was one of the four sights that prompted Prince Siddhartha Gautama to seek enlightenment, alongside sickness, death, and the wandering ascetic. Coming to terms with these aspects of existence was pivotal in his transformation into the Buddha.

At Sāvatthi, King Pasenadi of Kosala once asked the Buddha, “Venerable sir, is there anyone who is born who is free from old age and death?” The Buddha replied, “Great King, no one who is born is free from ageing and death. Even those affluent khattiyas—rich in wealth and property, with abundant gold and silver—are not exempt from ageing and death simply because they have been born.” This interaction underscores the universal challenge of ageing, transcending societal divisions of wealth or status.

Ageing presents one of the greatest challenges in human experience. Physically, the body begins to deteriorate; socially, we may find ourselves marginalised or discounted, sometimes subtly and sometimes explicitly. Some may encounter dismissal or condescension. Ageism remains one of the most persistent forms of discrimination. The physical and social difficulties associated with ageism can undermine our self-image and sense of self-worth. Common perceptions often portray old age as a stage where the best years are behind us, reducing the remaining years to a form of “bonus years” frequently presented in sentimental or patronising ways.

The suffering associated with ageing can serve as a powerful motivation to engage in practices that directly address this suffering, allowing us to gradually transform it or, at the very least, make it more bearable and manageable. We must recognise that this principle applies equally to our own bodies. The human body undergoes countless subtle changes every moment from the time you are born, never remaining the same even for two consecutive moments, as it is subject to the universal law of impermanence.

Whatever your age. However young-looking you try to remain through external means, the truth is that you are getting older every minute. Every minute, every second, our lives are getting shorter and closer to death. Since you were conceived in your mother’s womb, your life is getting shorter. We see external things going by rapidly, but never reflect on our own lives. No matter what we do, we cannot fully control what happens in our lives or to our bodies. With time, we all develop lines and wrinkles. We become frail, and our skin becomes thinner and drier. We lose teeth. Our physical strength and sometimes our mental faculties decline. In old age, we are subject to multiple diseases.

Many people live under the illusion that the body remains constant and is inherently attractive and desirable. Modern society, in particular, has become increasingly obsessed with the quest for eternal youth and the reversal of the ageing process. Many women feel inadequate about their physical appearance and constantly think about how to look younger and more attractive. Enormous sums of money are spent on cosmetic procedures, skincare, and grooming products to remain presentable and desirable. The global beauty and cosmetics industries thrive on this ideal, often promoting unrealistic standards of beauty and youthfulness. But no amount of products available in the world can truly restore lost youth, as time inevitably leaves its mark.

Therefore, in Buddhism, mindful reflection on ageing and the human body is considered essential for overall well-being. This contemplation provides insight into impermanence as we navigate life. Reflecting on the nature of the body—its true condition and its delicate, changing state—is a fundamental aspect of the Buddha’s teachings. By understanding the body accurately, we support both wisdom and peace of mind.

Buddhism recognises forty subjects of meditation which can differ according to the temperaments of persons. Contemplation of the human body is one of them. Of all the subjects of meditation, reflection on the human body as a subject is not popular among certain people particularly in the western world as they think such contemplation would lead to a melancholic morbid and pessimistic outlook on life. They regard it as a subject that may be somewhat unpleasant and not conducive to human wellbeing. Normally, people who are infatuated and intoxicated with sensual pleasures develop an aversion towards this subject of meditation. In Buddhism this mode of contemplation is called asuba bhavana or mindfulness of the impurities of the body. It is all about our physiology and individual body parts and organs internal as well as external. This subject of meditation is unique to the Buddhist teachings.

To appreciate the body as it truly is, we must set aside preconceived notions and engage in a calm and honest inquiry: Is this body genuinely attractive or not? What is it composed of? Is it lasting or subject to decay?

In embracing the teachings of Buddhism, we find the wisdom to navigate the journey of ageing with grace, transforming our understanding of this natural process into an opportunity for growth and acceptance.

When our fears centre on ageing, decay, and disease, we cannot overcome them by pretending they do not exist. True relief comes only from facing these realities directly.

Reflecting on the body’s unattractive and impermanent nature can help us gain a realistic perspective. In an age when the mass media constantly bombards people with sensual images, stimulating lust, greed, and attachment, contemplation of the body’s true nature can bring calm and clarity.

All beings that are born must eventually die. Every creature on earth, regardless of status, shares this common fate. After death, the body undergoes a series of biological changes and decomposes, returning to the earth as organic matter. It is part of the earth and ultimately dissolves back into it.

Understanding this, we can meet ageing, decay, and death with greater wisdom, less fear, and a deeper sense of peace.

by Dr. Justice Chandradasa Nanayakkara

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Partnering India without dependence

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1 day ago

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2026/03/31

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President Dissanayake with Indian PM Modi

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again signaled the priority India places on Sri Lanka by swiftly dispatching a shipload of petrol following a telephone conversation with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The Indian Prime Minister’s gesture came at a cost to India, where there have been periodic supply constraints and regional imbalances in fuel distribution, even if not a countrywide shortage. Under Prime Minister Modi, India has demonstrated to Sri Lanka an abundance of goodwill, whether it be the USD 4 billion it extended in assistance to Sri Lanka when it faced international bankruptcy in 2022 or its support in the aftermath of the Ditwah cyclone disaster that affected large parts of the country four months ago. India’s assistance in 2022 was widely acknowledged as critical in stabilising Sri Lanka at a moment of acute crisis.

This record of assistance suggests that India sees Sri Lanka not merely as a neighbour but as a partner whose stability is in its own interest. In contrast to Sri Lanka’s roughly USD 90 billion economy, India’s USD 4,500 billion economy, growing at over 6 percent, underlines the vast asymmetry in economic scale and the importance of Sri Lanka engaging India. A study by the Germany-based Kiel Institute for the World Economy identifies Sri Lanka as the second most vulnerable country in the world to severe food price surges due to its heavy reliance on imported energy and fertilisers. Income per capita remains around the 2018 level after the economic collapse of 2022. The poverty level has risen sharply and includes a quarter of the population. These indicators underline the urgency of sustained economic recovery and the importance of external partnerships, including with India.

It is, however, important for Sri Lanka not to abdicate its own responsibilities for improving the lives of its people or become dependent and take this Indian assistance for granted. A long unresolved issue that Sri Lanka has been content to leave the burden to India concerns the approximately 90,000 Sri Lankan refugees who continue to live in India, many of them for over three decades. Only recently has a government leader, Minister Bimal Rathnayake, publicly acknowledged their existence and called on them to return. This is a reminder that even as Sri Lanka receives support, it must also take ownership of its own unfinished responsibilities.

Missing Investment

A missing factor in Sri Lanka’s economic development has long been the paucity of foreign investment. In the past this was due to political instability caused by internal conflict, weaknesses in the rule of law, and high levels of corruption. There are now significant improvements in this regard. There is now a window to attract investment from development partners, including India. In his discussions with President Dissanayake, Prime Minister Modi is reported to have referred to the British era oil storage tanks in Trincomalee. These were originally constructed to service the British naval fleet in the Indian Ocean. In 1987, under the Indo Lanka Peace Accord, Sri Lanka agreed to develop these tanks in partnership with India. A further agreement was signed in 2022 involving the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and the Lanka Indian Oil Corporation to jointly develop the facility.

However, progress has been slow and the project remains only partially implemented. The value of these oil storage tanks has become clearer in the context of global energy uncertainty and tensions in the Middle East. Energy analysts have pointed out that strategic storage facilities can provide countries with greater resilience in times of supply disruption. The Trincomalee tanks could become a significant strategic asset not only for Sri Lanka but also for regional energy security. However, historical baggage continues to stand in the way of Sri Lanka’s deeper economic linkage with India. Both ancient and modern history shape perceptions on both sides.

The asymmetry in size and power between the two countries is a persistent concern within Sri Lanka. India is a regional power, while Sri Lanka is a small country. This imbalance creates both opportunities for partnership and anxieties about overdependence. The present government too has entered into economic and infrastructure agreements with India, but many of these have yet to move beyond initial stages. This has caused frustration to the Indian government, which sees its efforts to support Sri Lanka’s development as not being sufficiently appreciated or effectively utilised. From India’s perspective, delays and hesitation can appear as a lack of commitment. From Sri Lanka’s perspective, caution is often driven by domestic political sensitivities and concerns about sovereignty.

Power Imbalance

At the same time, global developments offer a cautionary lesson. The behaviour of major powers in the contemporary international system shows that states often act in their own interests, sometimes at the expense of smaller partners. What is being seen in the world today is that past friendships and commitments can be abandoned if a bigger and more powerful country can see an opportunity for itself. The plight of Denmark (Greenland) and Canada (51st state) give disturbing messages. Analysts in the field of International Relations frequently point out that power asymmetries shape outcomes in bilateral relations. As one widely cited observation by Lord Parlmeston, a 19th century prime minister of Great Britain is that “nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” While this may be an overly stark formulation, it captures an underlying reality that small states must navigate carefully.

For Sri Lanka, this means maintaining a balance. It needs to clearly acknowledge the partnership that India is offering in the area of economic development, as well as in education, connectivity, and technological advancement. India has extended scholarships, supported digital infrastructure, and promoted cross border links that can contribute to Sri Lanka’s long term growth. These are tangible benefits that should not be undervalued. At the same time, Sri Lanka needs to ensure that it does not become overly dependent on Indian largesse or drift into a position where it functions as an appendage of its much larger neighbour. Economic dependence can translate into political vulnerability if not carefully managed. The appropriate response is not to distance itself from India, but to broaden its partnerships. Engaging with a diverse range of countries and institutions can provide Sri Lanka with greater autonomy and resilience.

A hard headed assessment would recognise that India’s support is both genuine and interest driven. India has a clear stake in ensuring that Sri Lanka remains stable, prosperous, and aligned with its broader regional outlook. Sri Lanka needs to move forward with agreed projects such as the Trincomalee oil tanks, improve implementation capacity, and demonstrate reliability as a partner. This does not preclude it from actively seeking investment and cooperation from other partners in Asia and beyond. The path ahead is therefore one of balanced engagement. Sri Lanka can and should welcome India’s partnership while strengthening its own institutions, fulfilling its domestic responsibilities, and diversifying its external relations. This approach can transform a relationship shaped by asymmetry into one defined by mutual benefit and confidence.

by Jehan Perera

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