Features

Seeing It from the Outside:GALLE DISTRICT (1974 -1976)

Published

9 months ago

2025/04/6

Exile III

Around the middle of 1974, while enjoying the serenity of Batticaloa and its distance from Colombo, which kept official visitations at bay, I was asked one day by Neale de Alwis, the deputy minister of home affairs, whether I would like to come to Galle to succeed Victor Unantenne. This was the second time I was going to succeed Victor who was a very firm administrator and who held strong views which in turn caused a fair amount of turbulence within the institutions he controlled.

My immediate response was to say ‘yes’ because although Batticaloa was extremely pleasant with its collection of highly-civilized people to deal with at a social and political level, the fact that my son had two years of his education in the Sinhala stream at St Michael’s College was causing a concern. I knew that Galle was going to be difficult because it has a very vibrant political life with many highly skilled and demanding people.

The political scene was studded with such stars as Neale de Alwis himself from the LSSP; L C de Silva of the LSSP from Ambalangoda; M G Mendis of the CP from Ratgama; Prins Gunasekera, Independent Left from Hambaraduwa; Dahanayake from Galle and two other members from the governing party of the SLFP.

Neale was the deputy minister home affairs and also district political authority (DPA) for Galle district and it was an absolute pleasure to work with this perfect gentleman. Although a Marxist by persuasion, he displayed a most elite quality which bespoke his long and respected lineage. He never made improper requests during my two years in Galle and every proposal I made to him was instantaneously approved.

Understanding Galle through its history

My first impression of the town of Galle in 1974 was that, once upon a time, it must have been a place buzzing with activity. Now, as I took over as its new government agent, it seemed to have lost its dynamism and looked like a medieval town caught in a time warp. The large Dutch Fort, perched on the promontory overlooking the harbour with its forbidding grey ramparts and half filled-up moat symbolized the illusion of unreality. Inside the fort, the narrow houses with their deep rooms and high ceilings, their inner courtyards opening to the sky, the old church and the underground prison cells all added to the sense of one being in another place and age.

The decadence around the fort was matched by the sprawling and unkempt esplanade which at one time, must have been, like the Galle Face green in Colombo, the fashionable walk-about where the elite of the city took the air each evening. The business quarter, with the bus-stand and tea boutiques, bright lights at night time and the uninterrupted, loud radio music presented a distracting contrast to the sombreness of the fort and the images it conjured of the past.

Until 1867 when the Port of Colombo was opened for shipping with the construction of the breakwaters, the wide bay of Galle was the premier harbour of the island. First, with sailing ships and then with the steamships, Galle had flourished as the only safe anchorage in the country. The few mercantile houses which remained bore testimony to the importance of the sea and Galle’s position on the main East-West sea route. It had always had an immense strategic value to the Portuguese, Dutch and British in turn, as the fort and its regular exchange from one conqueror to another testified.

When the steamship replaced sail, Galle continued to be important until the steamers got so large that they encountered difficulties in entering the harbour guarded at its entrance by a reef of low concealed rocks. With the rapid increase of shipping which called at Galle, this became a major problem with several steamers, notably the ‘Malabar’ which carried the mail and passengers, being wrecked on the reef in the 1860s.

However the use of the Port continued well into present times and after an inner harbour was constructed in the 1950s to make berthside docking possible for small vessels carrying bulk food cargoes and clinker for the cement plant, it began to fill a niche as one of the smaller ports of the country appropriate for coastal shipping.

In my time, along with grand plans for expansion into a major port which was the politician’s dream for the renaissance of Galle, we worked on a much less ambitious project of making Galle a regular port of call for the exclusive sailing yachts which the global rich were increasingly using for their round-the-world voyages of high adventure and recreation.

One of the financial attractions of an appointment in Galle for a GA was that there was a wholly undeserved allowance attached for being a deputy collector of customs. In addition, if so inclined, there was always the opportunity of a free dinner with the captain of the ship that had called in that day and any amount of free booze.

The P&O Lines were the main ships that called at Galle in earlier times and the company was responsible, along with the government, for many of the improvements made at the time. They were mainly cargo steamers carrying mail and goods from Europe to the Far East and using Galle as a re-fuelling point. The earlier steamers needed great quantities of coal for a voyage from Aden to Galle and then onwards to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Galle served as a very convenient midway storage point with thousands of tons of coal being made available for the many steamers that called. I read that at one time opium, which was a favoured article of trade, was being carried from Bombay to Hong Kong and that some of the opium was being re-packed for onward shipment from Galle. This gave me the clue to the conundrum as to how and why there had been a `Cheena Kotuwa’ or China Town in a part of the city.

A large group of Chinese labourers had been brought in from mainland China and they had helped in the handling and loading of the bags of opium which had arrived from Bombay on to the steamers which carried them on to China. So, perhaps Galle too had some old and indirect association with the opium wars in China.

Search among the tombstones for a Vice-Consul

My journey back in time, while I was in Galle, received an impetus in a curious way. In 1976, the American ambassador in Colombo, Christopher Van Hollen, was searching for the origins of the American connection with the Island to include in the piece he was writing to honour the bi-centenary of American independence which had taken place in 1778.

I had met Chris on my now more frequent visits to Colombo and he put me the question one day as to whether I could trace the story of a certain John Black who was said to be the first Vice-Consul of the United States on the island. Black had apparently been posted as Vice-Consul to Galle because that was the main port and customs station at the time.

John Black, I found, was not an American but of Scottish ancestry. However, the US government had chosen him as their man for the Vice-Consulship since he had been obviously well known in the area and had held a high position in the commercial field. The search for John Black led me on a fascinating journey. I first checked the Births and Deaths Registry in the Galle Kachcheri. I found that there indeed was a reference to one John Black who had died at the age of 44 in 1845.

The entry as to the cause of death was cryptic. It said very shortly that John Black `died of a liver complaint’. I had the feeling that Black, bored until the arrival of the next vessel, was not averse to ‘hitting the bottle’! The death register gave no clue as to the life he had led and his family and for this I turned to Nora Roberts, the famed librarian of the Galle Public Library.

Nora was the unmarried daughter of the Roberts family her father was a distinguished Civil Servant of West Indian origin and her mother was a Dutch Burgher from Galle. The family was well-known and well-loved in Galle. Nora was also hard of hearing and this made her job as librarian somewhat problematic. One often had to raise one’s voice quite a lot for Nora to hear and her reply too would be quite loud. All of this loud conversation would take place under a large sign which said `silence .please’.

Finally, Nora put me on to a wonderful book Inscriptions on Tombstones in the Graveyards of Ceylon by J P Lewis. I checked the index of Tombstones which has the names of virtually every person of the Christian faith who had died and been buried on the island. I was elated when I quite easily found the reference to John Black. He was buried, the book said, in 1845 in the graveyard of St Peter’s Church in the Fort of Galle. I was now hot on the trail of John Black.

In the church, yet very visible in 1975, was a large stained glass window which had been gifted to the church by the Black family. The inscription on the stained glass window bore references not only to John but to the extended Black family as well. My search for John Black’s tombstone in the premises of St Peter’s however proved futile.

I continued in my questioning of the older townsfolk until I was told that sometime during the second world war, in about the 1940s, all the graves and tombstone’s inside the Fort had been taken up and put down somewhere else in the town. It did not take me long to find out where. My long search ended one Saturday afternoon when I climbed over a locked, old and shaky gate and actually stood by the very tombstone under which the remains ofJohn Black lay.

I quickly telephoned Chris Van Hollen and he and his wife Elisa, also a career diplomat on her own, came down to Galle in a day or two to have a look and end the search. Soon we had the treasured photograph of John Black’s deeply engraved tombstone in hand with Chris and myself standing proudly on both sides. It made for a story good enough to make an article by Chris in the next Foreign Officer’s Journal and earned a small part in the history of the bi-centenary report. For this effort, which Chris called ‘far beyond the call of duty’, I was duly conferred the title of Honorary Founder Member of the John Black Society. To this day Chris and I remain the only two members of this very exclusive society!

The District Political Authority politicization of the bureaucracy becomes legal

There were some innovations in the provincial administration which were introduced at the time I was in Galle. The process began with the institution of the ‘District Political Authority’ which legitimized the influence exerted by the political authority over the executive arm of the administration. This had been coming for some time but its institution made political control open, accountable and valid.

Tied to this, and in fact supplementing the authority of the District Political Authority was the concept of the ‘decentralized budget’ which was meant to cater to the needs of members of parliament who liked to have under their control a block of funds which could be used by them at their discretion. It was my good fortune to be caught up in the evolution of procedures and rules which would ensure fairness and equity in the way the new institutions and the new system of resource allocation would take root. Neale de Alwis was exceptional in adhering to the spirit of the law as well as in dealing with its form.

1974 land reform

The second wave of land reforms took place in 1974. The first was in 1972 in which large, private land holdings were affected. The maximum extent of land which could be owned by an individual was set at 50 acres. The second dealt with the Company Estates and took place soon after my arrival in Galle. The government agent had a key role to play in the process. My job was to moderate, as far as humanely possible, the exuberance of the supporters of the mainly left members of parliament who wanted to take over everything possible from the plantation owners.

In the Galle district there were a few foreign companies operating and most of the large tea and rubber estates were owned by the locals. Many long-standing families like the Amarasuriyas famous for their wealth, their benevolence and their right-wing politics were seriously affected. It was sad to have some of the older and more feeble members of these elite clans climb slowly up to my office on the second floor of the kachcheri to plead their case for protection of an old home or estate bungalow.

The case of the George Winter’ family from England, who had settled in Baddegama a 100 years earlier, and the efforts of the younger generation to keep the ownership of their beautiful Pilagoda Valley home was particularly poignant.

The government’s land reform programme really broke the power structure of the southern proprietor planters, politically, economically, and socially. No family who could be termed rich, owned land and were influential remained unaffected. They were mostly supporters of the UNP and this party’s base was virtually cut away through land reform.

I too felt the euphoria which was sweeping over the country at the time. On several weekends, accompanying the members of parliament and their supporters as they marched in procession into the exclusive estates which had earlier been strictly private property, to the accompaniment of drums and song, one could not but be taken up by the exhilaration sensed by the workers and villagers who were overnight suddenly made to feel themselves owners of the lands and buildings they had been looking at for generations from outside.

There was an unmistakable sense of victory for the `have-nots’ in the air, which lasted for some months. Sadly, this enthusiasm evaporated when the villagers soon realized that their particular need for land and employment and the substantial change in their lifestyles, was not going to be met in the way they had expected. Some crumbs dropped from the new tables of the public corporations with political appointees and boards who began to take the place of the earlier plantation owners; but actual repossession of land by the poor was tardy and infrequent.

The young Chandrika Bandaranaike, daughter of the prime minister, freshly returned from the Sorbonne where she had spent some years doing post-graduate research and then worked at the Land Reform Commission, was a welcome change to the usual crop of official visitors. My residence was the last on the hill, high on Dickson Road with a majestic view over the fort and the harbour in the distance.

Chandrika symbolized the spirit of the age as she rode into my home one morning, sharing the front seat with the driver and cleaner in an ancient lorry transporting some needed equipment for the cooperatives, from Colombo. She was totally involved in the on-going transformation of the old social order.

Annual flooding of the Gin Ganga and the Chinese bund

The flooding of the Gin ganga which runs through Galle from the Sinharaja mountains in the north to Gintota in the south, gravely affected the lives of the thousands of people living on its banks. Each year around August, the floods would occur and requests for assistance from persons marooned by the rising flood waters and by farmers whose fields were inundated for weeks would pour into the kachcheri.

During my first year at Galle, work on the construction of flood bunds on both sides of the Gin ganga river was being started with assistance from the People’s Republic of China. Dealing with the ambassador, his staff and the many technical officers who came in from China, was an interesting and pleasant experience.

The philosophy behind the project which all affected welcomed, was part of the Chinese history of flood protection which China was very familiar with in its work on the Hwang-ho and Yang-si-kiang rivers in the middle of China which periodically burst their banks and caused great damage. I was reminded of the interesting sayings of the Chinese philosophers who had said, as retold by our Geography teacher at St Thomas’,

“Dig deep the bars

keep low the bunds.”

The work we were doing on the Gin ganga was very reminiscent of what the ancient Chinese had been telling their peasants. The Gin ganga had been the lifeline of the Galle district before the road system was laid. Towns such as Nagoda, Baddegama and Hiniduma up in the hills, had become important settlements as a result of the commerce and transport up and down the Gin ganga.

The older families, whom I met on circuit in the countryside would talk about the days of the padda boats which were towed up the river along the tow paths on its western bank. I was surprised to find the old established Christian Churches at Baddegama and Hiniduma where there was even a replica of the Stations of the Cross, the religious markers of the Christian faith, in an essentially Buddhist district.

The temples too were as old if not older, and the resident monks Ganegama Sarankara Thero of Baddegama, Neluwe Gunananda Thero of Hiniduma and Akuratiya Amarawansa of Nagoda, erudite and scholarly. Although a district where Buddhists were greatly the majority, the followers of the two religions had over time made a remarkable accommodation to each others needs and religious harmony generally prevailed.

Further up from Hiniduma was Nelluwa and Lankagama which were virtually part of the Sinharaja reserve. On a visit there, the home of the finest kitul-treacle and jaggery in the country, some difficult terrain had to be negotiated. There were at least nine rather long edandas to cross. It was nerve wracking attempting to walk across this in single file with only a shaky railing to hold on to and keep you from falling, perhaps 25 feet down, into the little streams which gurgled merrily below.

In Lankagama I was confronted by the need for an access road at least if only to bring down the sick and the injured. Accidents were frequent with the fall of the kitul tappers and one young man I met had been rendered immobile for months having fallen from a tree while tapping trees in the jungle. The kitul trees were collectively owned by an elaborate system of usage which had been developed by the villagers themselves over time.

Sirimavo came for the opening of the Chinese Gin ganga project on completion in July 1974. I had given notice of my final retirement at that time and one of the reasons had been ostensibly my inability to work in the Sinhala language. I had, however, to give the vote of thanks in Sinhala at the celebrity opening. I made reference to a folk song current in the area which spoke of the havoc that had been caused to the people of Gangodapattu by the wilful antics of the Gin ganga in spate. The Sinhala verse went as follows:-

Gintota nandage duwaru hinda

Gangodapattuwa wana sen ne

(The entirety of Gangodapattuwe is being destroyed

By the wilful antics of the daughters of the aunt of Gintota)

Sirimavo was impressed enough by my vote of thanks to say to some of her members of parliament present at the opening that she couldn’t understand why my appeal to retire, on grounds of my inability to work in the official language, had been approved by the authorities.

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Features

Disaster-proofing paradise: Sri Lanka’s new path to global resilience

Published

18 hours ago

2026/01/2

Thilina Walpola

iyadasa Advisor to the Ministry of Science & Technology and a Board of Directors of Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Regulatory Council A value chain management consultant to www.vivonta.lk

As climate shocks multiply worldwide from unseasonal droughts and flash floods to cyclones that now carry unpredictable fury Sri Lanka, long known for its lush biodiversity and heritage, stands at a crossroads. We can either remain locked in a reactive cycle of warnings and recovery, or boldly transform into the world’s first disaster-proof tropical nation — a secure haven for citizens and a trusted destination for global travelers.

The Presidential declaration to transition within one year from a limited, rainfall-and-cyclone-dependent warning system to a full-spectrum, science-enabled resilience model is not only historic — it’s urgent. This policy shift marks the beginning of a new era: one where nature, technology, ancient wisdom, and community preparedness work in harmony to protect every Sri Lankan village and every visiting tourist.

The Current System’s Fatal Gaps

Today, Sri Lanka’s disaster management system is dangerously underpowered for the accelerating climate era. Our primary reliance is on monsoon rainfall tracking and cyclone alerts — helpful, but inadequate in the face of multi-hazard threats such as flash floods, landslides, droughts, lightning storms, and urban inundation.

Institutions are fragmented; responsibilities crisscross between agencies, often with unclear mandates and slow decision cycles. Community-level preparedness is minimal — nearly half of households lack basic knowledge on what to do when a disaster strikes. Infrastructure in key regions is outdated, with urban drains, tank sluices, and bunds built for rainfall patterns of the 1960s, not today’s intense cloudbursts or sea-level rise.

Critically, Sri Lanka is not yet integrated with global planetary systems — solar winds, El Niño cycles, Indian Ocean Dipole shifts — despite clear evidence that these invisible climate forces shape our rainfall, storm intensity, and drought rhythms. Worse, we have lost touch with our ancestral systems of environmental management — from tank cascades to forest sanctuaries — that sustained this island for over two millennia.

This system, in short, is outdated, siloed, and reactive. And it must change.

A New Vision for Disaster-Proof Sri Lanka

Under the new policy shift, Sri Lanka will adopt a complete resilience architecture that transforms climate disaster prevention into a national development strategy. This system rests on five interlinked pillars:

Science and Predictive Intelligence

We will move beyond surface-level forecasting. A new national climate intelligence platform will integrate:

AI-driven pattern recognition of rainfall and flood events

Global data from solar activity, ocean oscillations (ENSO, MJO, IOD)

High-resolution digital twins of floodplains and cities

Real-time satellite feeds on cyclone trajectory and ocean heat

The adverse impacts of global warming—such as sea-level rise, the proliferation of pests and diseases affecting human health and food production, and the change of functionality of chlorophyll—must be systematically captured, rigorously analysed, and addressed through proactive, advance decision-making.

This fusion of local and global data will allow days to weeks of anticipatory action, rather than hours of late alerts.

Advanced Technology and Early Warning Infrastructure

Cell-broadcast alerts in all three national languages, expanded weather radar, flood-sensing drones, and tsunami-resilient siren networks will be deployed. Community-level sensors in key river basins and tanks will monitor and report in real-time. Infrastructure projects will now embed climate-risk metrics — from cyclone-proof buildings to sea-level-ready roads.

Governance Overhaul

A new centralised authority — Sri Lanka Climate & Earth Systems Resilience Authority — will consolidate environmental, meteorological, Geological, hydrological, and disaster functions. It will report directly to the Cabinet with a real-time national dashboard. District Disaster Units will be upgraded with GN-level digital coordination. Climate literacy will be declared a national priority.

People Power and Community Preparedness

We will train 25,000 village-level disaster wardens and first responders. Schools will run annual drills for floods, cyclones, tsunamis and landslides. Every community will map its local hazard zones and co-create its own resilience plan. A national climate citizenship programme will reward youth and civil organisations contributing to early warning systems, reforestation (riverbank, slopy land and catchment areas) , or tech solutions.

Reviving Ancient Ecological Wisdom

Sri Lanka’s ancestors engineered tank cascades that regulated floods, stored water, and cooled microclimates. Forest belts protected valleys; sacred groves were biodiversity reservoirs. This policy revives those systems:

Restoring 10,000 hectares of tank ecosystems

Conserving coastal mangroves and reintroducing stone spillways

Integrating traditional seasonal calendars with AI forecasts

Recognising Vedda knowledge of climate shifts as part of national risk strategy

Our past and future must align, or both will be lost.

A Global Destination for Resilient Tourism

Climate-conscious travelers increasingly seek safe, secure, and sustainable destinations. Under this policy, Sri Lanka will position itself as the world’s first “climate-safe sanctuary island” — a place where:

Resorts are cyclone- and tsunami-resilient

Tourists receive live hazard updates via mobile apps

World Heritage Sites are protected by environmental buffers

Visitors can witness tank restoration, ancient climate engineering, and modern AI in action

Sri Lanka will invite scientists, startups, and resilience investors to join our innovation ecosystem — building eco-tourism that’s disaster-proof by design.

Resilience as a National Identity

This shift is not just about floods or cyclones. It is about redefining our identity. To be Sri Lankan must mean to live in harmony with nature and to be ready for its changes. Our ancestors did it. The science now supports it. The time has come.

Let us turn Sri Lanka into the world’s first climate-resilient heritage island — where ancient wisdom meets cutting-edge science, and every citizen stands protected under one shield: a disaster-proof nation.

Features

The minstrel monk and Rafiki the old mandrill in The Lion King – I

Published

18 hours ago

2026/01/2

Thilina Walpola

Why is national identity so important for a people? AI provides us with an answer worth understanding critically (Caveat: Even AI wisdom should be subjected to the Buddha’s advice to the young Kalamas):

‘A strong sense of identity is crucial for a people as it fosters belonging, builds self-worth, guides behaviour, and provides resilience, allowing individuals to feel connected, make meaningful choices aligned with their values, and maintain mental well-being even amidst societal changes or challenges, acting as a foundation for individual and collective strength. It defines “who we are” culturally and personally, driving shared narratives, pride, political action, and healthier relationships by grounding people in common values, traditions, and a sense of purpose.’

Ethnic Sinhalese who form about 75% of the Sri Lankan population have such a unique identity secured by the binding medium of their Buddhist faith. It is significant that 93% of them still remain Buddhist (according to 2024 statistics/wikipedia), professing Theravada Buddhism, after four and a half centuries of coercive Christianising European occupation that ended in 1948. The Sinhalese are a unique ancient island people with a 2500 year long recorded history, their own language and country, and their deeply evolved Buddhist cultural identity.

Buddhism can be defined, rather paradoxically, as a non-religious religion, an eminently practical ethical-philosophy based on mind cultivation, wisdom and universal compassion. It is an ethico-spiritual value system that prioritises human reason and unaided (i.e., unassisted by any divine or supernatural intervention) escape from suffering through self-realisation. Sri Lanka’s benignly dominant Buddhist socio-cultural background naturally allows unrestricted freedom of religion, belief or non-belief for all its citizens, and makes the country a safe spiritual haven for them. The island’s Buddha Sasana (Dispensation of the Buddha) is the inalienable civilisational treasure that our ancestors of two and a half millennia have bequeathed to us. It is this enduring basis of our identity as a nation which bestows on us the personal and societal benefits of inestimable value mentioned in the AI summary given at the beginning of this essay.

It was this inherent national identity that the Sri Lankan contestant at the 72nd Miss World 2025 pageant held in Hyderabad, India, in May last year, Anudi Gunasekera, proudly showcased before the world, during her initial self-introduction. She started off with a verse from the Dhammapada (a Pali Buddhist text), which she explained as meaning “Refrain from all evil and cultivate good”. She declared, “And I believe that’s my purpose in life”. Anudi also mentioned that Sri Lanka had gone through a lot “from conflicts to natural disasters, pandemics, economic crises….”, adding, “and yet, my people remain hopeful, strong, and resilient….”.

“Ayubowan! I am Anudi Gunasekera from Sri Lanka. It is with immense pride that I represent my Motherland, a nation of resilience, timeless beauty, and a proud history, Sri Lanka.

“I come from Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’s first capital, and UNESCO World Heritage site, with its history and its legacy of sacred monuments and stupas…….”.

The “inspiring words” that Anudi quoted are from the Dhammapada (Verse 183), which runs, in English translation: “To avoid all evil/To cultivate good/and to cleanse one’s mind -/this is the teaching of the Buddhas”. That verse is so significant because it defines the basic ‘teaching of the Buddhas’ (i.e., Buddha Sasana; this is how Walpole Rahula Thera defines Buddha Sasana in his celebrated introduction to Buddhism ‘What the Buddha Taught’ first published in1959).

Twenty-five year old Anudi Gunasekera is an alumna of the University of Kelaniya, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in International Studies. She is planning to do a Master’s in the same field. Her ambition is to join the foreign service in Sri Lanka. Gen Z’er Anudi is already actively engaged in social service. The Saheli Foundation is her own initiative launched to address period poverty (i.e., lack of access to proper sanitation facilities, hygiene and health education, etc.) especially among women and post-puberty girls of low-income classes in rural and urban Sri Lanka.

Young Anudi is primarily inspired by her patriotic devotion to ‘my Motherland, a nation of resilience, timeless beauty, and a proud history, Sri Lanka’. In post-independence Sri Lanka, thousands of young men and women of her age have constantly dedicated themselves, oftentimes making the supreme sacrifice, motivated by a sense of national identity, by the thought ‘This is our beloved Motherland, these are our beloved people’.

The rescue and recovery of Sri Lanka from the evil aftermath of a decade of subversive ‘Aragalaya’ mayhem is waiting to be achieved, in every sphere of national engagement, including, for example, economics, communications, culture and politics, by the enlightened Anudi Gunasekeras and their male counterparts of the Gen Z, but not by the demented old stragglers lingering in the political arena listening to the unnerving rattle of “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”, nor by the baila blaring monks at propaganda rallies.

Politically active monks (Buddhist bhikkhus) are only a handful out of the Maha Sangha (the general body of Buddhist bhikkhus) in Sri Lanka, who numbered just over 42,000 in 2024. The vast majority of monks spend their time quietly attending to their monastic duties. Buddhism upholds social and emotional virtues such as universal compassion, empathy, tolerance and forgiveness that protect a society from the evils of tribalism, religious bigotry and death-dealing religious piety.

Not all monks who express or promote political opinions should be censured. I choose to condemn only those few monks who abuse the yellow robe as a shield in their narrow partisan politics. I cannot bring myself to disapprove of the many socially active monks, who are articulating the genuine problems that the Buddha Sasana is facing today. The two bhikkhus who are the most despised monks in the commercial media these days are Galaboda-aththe Gnanasara and Ampitiye Sumanaratana Theras. They have a problem with their mood swings. They have long been whistleblowers trying to raise awareness respectively, about spreading religious fundamentalism, especially, violent Islamic Jihadism, in the country and about the vandalising of the Buddhist archaeological heritage sites of the north and east provinces. The two middle-aged monks (Gnanasara and Sumanaratana) belong to this respectable category. Though they are relentlessly attacked in the social media or hardly given any positive coverage of the service they are doing, they do nothing more than try to persuade the rulers to take appropriate action to resolve those problems while not trespassing on the rights of people of other faiths.

These monks have to rely on lay political leaders to do the needful, without themselves taking part in sectarian politics in the manner of ordinary members of the secular society. Their generally demonised social image is due, in my opinion, to three main reasons among others: 1) spreading misinformation and disinformation about them by those who do not like what they are saying and doing, 2) their own lack of verbal restraint, and 3) their being virtually abandoned to the wolves by the temporal and spiritual authorities.

(To be continued)

By Rohana R. Wasala ✍️

Features

US’ drastic aid cut to UN poses moral challenge to world

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

An UN humanitarian mission in the Gaza. [File: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]

‘Adapt, shrink or die’ – thus runs the warning issued by the Trump administration to UN humanitarian agencies with brute insensitivity in the wake of its recent decision to drastically reduce to $2bn its humanitarian aid to the UN system. This is a substantial climb down from the $17bn the US usually provided to the UN for its humanitarian operations.

Considering that the US has hitherto been the UN’s biggest aid provider, it need hardly be said that the US decision would pose a daunting challenge to the UN’s humanitarian operations around the world. This would indeed mean that, among other things, people living in poverty and stifling material hardships, in particularly the Southern hemisphere, could dramatically increase. Coming on top of the US decision to bring to an end USAID operations, the poor of the world could be said to have been left to their devices as a consequence of these morally insensitive policy rethinks of the Trump administration.

Earlier, the UN had warned that it would be compelled to reduce its aid programs in the face of ‘the deepest funding cuts ever.’ In fact the UN is on record as requesting the world for $23bn for its 2026 aid operations.

If this UN appeal happens to go unheeded, the possibilities are that the UN would not be in a position to uphold the status it has hitherto held as the world’s foremost humanitarian aid provider. It would not be incorrect to state that a substantial part of the rationale for the UN’s existence could come in for questioning if its humanitarian identity is thus eroded.

Inherent in these developments is a challenge for those sections of the international community that wish to stand up and be counted as humanists and the ‘Conscience of the World.’ A responsibility is cast on them to not only keep the UN system going but to also ensure its increased efficiency as a humanitarian aid provider to particularly the poorest of the poor.

It is unfortunate that the US is increasingly opting for a position of international isolation. Such a policy position was adopted by it in the decades leading to World War Two and the consequences for the world as a result of this policy posture were most disquieting. For instance, it opened the door to the flourishing of dictatorial regimes in the West, such as that led by Adolph Hitler in Germany, which nearly paved the way for the subjugation of a good part of Europe by the Nazis.

If the US had not intervened militarily in the war on the side of the Allies, the West would have faced the distressing prospect of coming under the sway of the Nazis and as a result earned indefinite political and military repression. By entering World War Two the US helped to ward off these bleak outcomes and indeed helped the major democracies of Western Europe to hold their own and thrive against fascism and dictatorial rule.

Republican administrations in the US in particular have not proved the greatest defenders of democratic rule the world over, but by helping to keep the international power balance in favour of democracy and fundamental human rights they could keep under a tight leash fascism and linked anti-democratic forces even in contemporary times. Russia’s invasion and continued occupation of parts of Ukraine reminds us starkly that the democracy versus fascism battle is far from over.

Right now, the US needs to remain on the side of the rest of the West very firmly, lest fascism enjoys another unfettered lease of life through the absence of countervailing and substantial military and political power.

However, by reducing its financial support for the UN and backing away from sustaining its humanitarian programs the world over the US could be laying the ground work for an aggravation of poverty in the South in particular and its accompaniments, such as, political repression, runaway social discontent and anarchy.

What should not go unnoticed by the US is the fact that peace and social stability in the South and the flourishing of the same conditions in the global North are symbiotically linked, although not so apparent at first blush. For instance, if illegal migration from the South to the US is a major problem for the US today, it is because poor countries are not receiving development assistance from the UN system to the required degree. Such deprivation on the part of the South leads to aggravating social discontent in the latter and consequences such as illegal migratory movements from South to North.

Accordingly, it will be in the North’s best interests to ensure that the South is not deprived of sustained development assistance since the latter is an essential condition for social contentment and stable governance, which factors in turn would guard against the emergence of phenomena such as illegal migration.

Meanwhile, democratic sections of the rest of the world in particular need to consider it a matter of conscience to ensure the sustenance and flourishing of the UN system. To be sure, the UN system is considerably flawed but at present it could be called the most equitable and fair among international development organizations and the most far-flung one. Without it world poverty would have proved unmanageable along with the ills that come along with it.

Dehumanizing poverty is an indictment on humanity. It stands to reason that the world community should rally round the UN and ensure its survival lest the abomination which is poverty flourishes. In this undertaking the world needs to stand united. Ambiguities on this score could be self-defeating for the world community.

For example, all groupings of countries that could demonstrate economic muscle need to figure prominently in this initiative. One such grouping is BRICS. Inasmuch as the US and the West should shrug aside Realpolitik considerations in this enterprise, the same goes for organizations such as BRICS.

The arrival at the above international consensus would be greatly facilitated by stepped up dialogue among states on the continued importance of the UN system. Fresh efforts to speed-up UN reform would prove major catalysts in bringing about these positive changes as well. Also requiring to be shunned is the blind pursuit of narrow national interests.