Midweek Review

Solving the Human-Elephant Conflict

Published

5 years ago

2020/10/7

By Rajitha Ratwatte

I am told that our new President is going to make another attempt to handle the burning issue of the human-elephant conflict (HEC). I have nothing but good wishes for his attempts and to those well qualified academics who have been appointed to a committee to handle the task. Engaging the groves of academe in the task is well and good, but please remember that practical experience in handling elephants is essential.

The following are extracts from my book; they deal with HEC as I see it and the hard problem of how we are going to reduce the wild elephant population of our country. It is undisputable that the Pearl has too many wild elephants and since reducing humans is not really possible; the elephant numbers have to come down.

Fortunately, we have a proven method, that needs some improvement for sure but is a real alternative to culling entire herds which is the method followed in the African countries. Happy reading dear readers!

“The human-elephant conflict in a country with a growing population and a level of politically patronized corruption that does not allow the implementation of conservation laws. A Chena cultivator stakes his future and the future of his entire family on a crop that gets raided by a marauding elephant a few days before harvest. The entire crop is ruined, and the farmer faces destitution. Can the farmer be blamed for trying his best to keep the elephants out? This leads to horrendous wounds on both sides and slow lingering death from gangrene or poison, for the elephants.

“The fact that the cultivation is inside a buffer zone of a national park or in some cases actually inside the demarcated zone for a national park can be blamed on local vote grabbing political patronage …. but what else is new!

In such a situation we have a real alternative to culling. We in this land that has been thrice blessed, have an ancient art that has been passed down for thousands of years. We know how to domesticate elephants and these elephants can support up to two families each. The people who look after elephants learn a trade, they are not unskilled workers and they have a life of dignity. If they take any pride in their craft the elephant too lives free of gunshot wounds, semi starvation and trauma and lack of sleep.

“Why are the politicians and the greenies blocking this? It can’t be lack of knowledge. Some of the leading politicians of this country come from families that have had elephants. Surely, even though their skills and aptitudes turned them towards one of the more questionable professions in this world, they have some memories? Anyone who has had the privilege of earning the trust of an elephant will never ever forget that. If they have never experienced it how can they speak with authority and make decisions if they don’t know the subject?”

Next is an extract from some actual trapping of elephants that I was privileged to watch and participate in:

“This herd lived in a tiny pocket of jungle surrounded by rice fields. The land had been cleared without getting the elephants out and therefore the animals had to compete with humans for food and water. The only way the elephants could live was to raid the cultivation and during the rice harvesting season it was an absolute nightmare. First, we went to the area and set up camp. There was no sleep in the night! All you heard was the shouting of men, the exploding of firecrackers and gunshots and the screams of angry elephants. It was like the soundtrack for Dante’s description of hell. Everyday there were reports of human and elephant casualties and some of the methods used by farmers to defend their crops were unbelievable. May I hasten to add that when one saw the conditions under which those farmers lived and realised that one raid from a herd of elephants meant the total loss of a crop for that season, a farmer was perfectly justified in defending his corp. My opinion is that it should have been the politicians’ who settled farmers on those lands in order to garner votes that should have been poisoned and shot!

“Poisoned fruit, trap guns that maimed horribly, pouring acid and boiling oil onto the backs of elephants from watch huts on top of trees and using six-inch nails driven into planks that when lodged in an elephant’s foot caused gangrene, were only some of the methods used. All this because the elephant was a “protected” animal and most of the guns that belonged to farmers had been confiscated by the authorities with the advent of war. To any sane man it was obvious that actually culling those elephants would have been much more merciful that subjecting them to what was and is still happening. We, in our country actually had an alternative. We knew how to trap, and train elephants and these elephants would provide a vocation and a means of livelihood for two families per elephant but there was politics and the “greenies” to consider. This was the only occasion that something would be considered on these lines and since it had a rather sticky ending, I fear those elephants are condemned to die slowly. It still pains me to think of what was done to us and how the project ended but I will not bore the reader with another anecdote of politics from the third world. This is supposed to be a book dedicated with love to elephants and I will describe the methods used by the traditional elephant trappers of Ceylon.

“The trappers arrived (not in loincloths) with their trusty ropes and we accompanied them on their initial recce of the territory. We were fortunate enough to encounter the herd of elephants resting in a small forest area and immediately the Pannikyars’ were transformed. “Civilised” attire vanished and loincloths appeared like magic. The oldest among them a gnarled veteran of indiscriminate age, said he would go in among the herd and come back to us with a report of how many animals were there and if there were any animals that were suitable for capture. We had permission to capture a few cow elephants to form the nucleus of a team of Monitor elephants that would be used in future plans to translocate pocketed animals. We needed half grown cows around 4-5-foot-tall as these were the best for training. The old man disappeared, and we sat in the shade, in the growing heat, waiting for a report. We all had one ear cocked for an elephantine scream, followed by a nasty thud and the resulting mayhem. Just as we were beginning to get worried the old man materialised, seemingly from the foot of the tree and he had good news, there were suitable animals and we could set our traps.

“We had a further advantage because this herd of wild elephants was actually trapped inside this pocket of forest because (can you believe it!) There was a musical concert going on in the adjoining village and the elephants’ only exit route was blocked by a noisy screaming bunch of music fans.

“The trap itself is basically a noose made of specially cured Sambhar hide. One end of which is tied securely to a stout tree and the noose end is connected to a weighted pulley which hangs from a branch of the same tree and buried in a shallow trench the size of the foot of the animal you wish to capture; remember the formula is 2xcircumferance of the fore-foot gives you the height at the shoulder). All this is then cleverly camouflaged and covered with thin twigs and earth. This ensures that when the elephant’s foot goes in the twigs give way, this then releases a crude spring mechanism that lifts the noose up the leg of the animal and tightens the noose. The elephant is then effectively tied to the tree and unable to free itself. The rope is so strong that even though elephants are known to have knelt down and bitten it with their immensely powerful jaws, it has held up.

“I followed the old man because I knew that he was the master. Everyone used the elephant paths to locate their traps in because when a herd is moving the majority of animals use the well-beaten path and consequently your chances of success increase. While assisting the old man, we got talking and he told me, “There is a lovely young princess (a high caste calf) and she even has tushes (very rare among female elephants in our country) shall we set a trap for her?” I couldn’t believe my ears. To get a female with tushes from whom it was possible to breed that most valuable of animals a tusker, was a fantastic bonus and I said, “Let’s do it,” thinking to myself that I would somehow arrange for permission because it was vital to save those genes from the terrible fate they were destined to. I was also a little skeptical as to how this man was going to set a trap for a specific animal although I didn’t dare ask.

“The old man selected a stout teak tree that grew in the middle of the elephant path. It had a fairly low branch about four feet of the ground on one side and no low branches on the other side. The path went around this tree and there was thick thorn bush on either side of the path at this point. Sulaiman selected a point under the low branch and began to set his trap. I couldn’t contain my curiosity anymore and was about to ask him why he had selected that spot when he began to explain. I think he was reasoning out to himself more than telling me. I was just a fortunate bystander. “The mother leads the herd and she will come first”. “The calf (or the child as he called it) will be close at heel and the adult will pick the easy path and not go under the low branch. The calf trying to keep at heel and getting jostled by the rest of the herd will take the route under the short branch as it is no obstruction to her and then she will be ours.” This is how this now dead master of his art put it. That is exactly how “Kiri” came into our lives!

“Rani and Khadira (two tame elephants) had been brought to the camp to assist in moving the captured animals as we still did not accept the use of tranquilizers. It was the age-old belief that a couple of good monitor elephants did the job with the least trauma to the new captives. Rani adopted Kiri immediately and although she didn’t have a calf at the time she actually came into milk and was feeding Kiri with mother’s milk (not really necessary at Kiri’s age) during her training and initiation into our lives.”

Below is an account of the training:

“We picked a coconut estate that belonged to my uncle, in a fairly remote area with good access to a river and plenty of room for stabling elephants to introduce Kiri to living with humans. We found Kiri in a terrible state. She was riddled with ticks and full of internal parasites. This little elephant calf had also been shot at and there was buckshot all over her body. She was so weak that when she lay down, she needed help to get up again and when she got any food, she ate so fast that it was obvious that she had been brought up on a diet of food snatched from angry cultivators. Kiri would probably have died if she had remained in the wild under those conditions. Even though we had Kiri forcibly removed from us by the politicians of the day, it was nice to know that we had rescued even one of that ill-fated herd of elephants.

“The first thing to do was to simply sit with Kiri and talk to her some of the “pannikayar” sang to her and get her to realise that all humans didn’t hate her. Of course, we also fed her with all kinds of tasty morsels, the treacle from the “kithul” flower and the “juggery”, which is the solidified form of this same product, were the most popular. Having Rani was also very helpful because she was able to communicate, and no doubt explain a few things to Kiri once her initial terror wore off. Rani, as mentioned earlier, was imminently sensible and although all elephants long for the wild—it is so obvious when working with elephants in the vicinity of wild herds—they do form a very good relationship with humans and more often than not adapt and settle down very well. The way I look at it is how we humans (originally hunter gatherers) have adapted to the “rat race”. It is essential to have good (sensible) monitor elephants when training wild ones as this makes a huge difference to the end product. I feel that ‘sensible’ monitor elephants explain the situation to their charges in the correct way and shape a correct attitude by the trainee. Rani however went silly over her charge. She, practical, sensible, down to earth Rani started lactating and decided that the calf was hers. Kiri was quick to realise that she could manipulate Rani and took advantage of every opportunity.

“Kiri hated bath time. Very strange in elephants because they usually relish bathing. This could only have been attributed to the fact that the pocketed herd that Kiri was part of, had to share their water source with humans and bathing was always fraught with danger. Usually, if you let an elephant off in a river it would “dive” straight in and lie down and roll around and it would be very difficult to get the elephant out again. With Kiri it was different. She would stand in the water petrified and try to find a way of getting out as soon as possible. However, to keep an elephant fit and healthy it is necessary to have them lie in water and we also used to give them a good scrub when they did lie down. This was the way to keep parasites off their bodies. Kiri wouldn’t lie down, and we had to make her do it. What ensued was the equivalent of a rugby union ruck, followed by a rolling maul and a total collapse. We had to physically tackle Kiri and get her down on her side, of course she resisted strongly and would accompany her struggles with loud bellows and Rani in spite of all her good sense would get up and come running to help with loud cries of her own.

Bath time would attract the whole village and we even had a request from the local school principal to have bath time after 1.30 PM as this was the time his school sessions were over for the day and he was having terrible trouble with truancy during the last period … Rani was so well trained and we were so sure of her that in spite of the noise and her physical presence she never actually intervened and, therefore, she was no threat. However, Khadira had to be used for the actual training because there was little room for sentimentality when training a good working elephant.

“Initially, Kiri was tied to Khadira by a rope attached to both elephant’ shoulders. This meant that Kiri was compelled to do everything Khadira did and she also learned to associate the commands that Khadira obeyed with the relevant action. They would go off on long walks in the countryside and Kiri did try her charms on her venerable teacher but the “old man” would have none of it. She tried everything, wriggling under the bull’s stomach and trying to entangle the guide rope on his legs and maybe trip him up. Kiri soon learnt that it was a waste of time to try to go the other way when Khadira was obeying an order and standing still really meant STANDING STILL. If the bull wanted to, he could easily have jerked the little calf off her feet and some have been known to strike them with their trunks and even kill them. Khadira was the best of the best. Wonderfully patient and so obedient! He just stood there with just the correct resistance on the rope and his trunk tucked into his mouth so that even if he was tempted… he could resist. Soon this attitude filtered down to the trainee and all unnecessary activities ceased and we had an obedient controlled young elephant so much so that after only a week or two we had Kiri walking all over the town and holding her own on the roads with buses horning at her and of course people falling in love with her. Kiri must have been fed by one in two people who saw her, and they would have little offerings of bananas and other fruit waiting for her when she went on her walks. The hill country villages of Ceylon love their elephants and some even worships them as elephants are associated with the Hindu god Ganesh.

“Kiri and Khadira got so used to each other that on the first occasion that Kiri was taken to have a look at what working was all about she went hitched to Khadira in the usual way and at the place of work she was unhitched and Khadira wheeled off to the right to get to work. The little trainee didn’t realise that she had been unhitched, for it was Khadira’s end of the rope that had been removed and she wheeled in perfect time keeping an even pressure on the guide rope! Of course, we all fell about laughing and Kiri looked rather hurt.

Politics intervened, and our project was deemed another elitist venture and we were accused of murdering some elephants in a cruel manner. One day the long arm of the law came to our estate and ordered us to load Kiri onto a lorry for transport to a life of drudgery in an “elephant orphanage”. Kiri wouldn’t go, and it was I, with a breaking heart and Rani, who had to guide her onto the lorry and she bellowed and cried as the lorry was driving away. Rani’s cries that day were so terrible, and I never want to hear an elephant cry like that ever again. There was nothing I could do, so I hugged her trunk and I wept unashamedly until I found Rani comforting me with the gentle rumbling call that a cow elephant makes to her calf to tell it that “things will be alright because mother knows best”. It took the wisdom of this matriarch of elephants to point out to a humble human that life is cruel and sometimes we have no control of what is to happen to us”.

fromoutsidethepearl@gmail.com

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Midweek Review

Year ends with the NPP govt. on the back foot

Published

4 days ago

2025/12/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Dissanayake addresses Parliament as PM Dr. Harini Amarasuriya looks on. Dissanayake is the leader of both the JVP and NPP

The failure on the part of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) government to fulfil a plethora of promises given in the run up to the last presidential election, in September, 2024, and a series of incidents, including cases of corruption, and embarrassing failure to act on a specific weather alert, ahead of Cyclone Ditwah, had undermined the administration beyond measure.

Ditwah dealt a knockout blow to the arrogant and cocky NPP. If the ruling party consented to the Opposition proposal for a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to probe the events leading to the November 27 cyclone, the disclosure would be catastrophic, even for the all-powerful Executive President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, as responsible government bodies, like the Disaster Management Centre that horribly failed in its duty, and the Met Department that alerted about the developing storm, but the government did not heed its timely warnings, directly come under his purview.

The NPP is on the back foot and struggling to cope up with the rapidly developing situation. In spite of having both executive presidency and an overwhelming 2/3 majority in Parliament, the government seems to be weak and in total disarray.

The regular appearance of President Dissanayake in Parliament, who usually respond deftly to criticism, thereby defending his parliamentary group, obviously failed to make an impression. Overall, the top NPP leadership appeared to have caused irreparable damage to the NPP and taken the shine out of two glorious electoral victories at the last presidential and parliamentary polls held in September and November 2024 respectively.

The NPP has deteriorated, both in and out of Parliament. The performance of the 159-member NPP parliamentary group, led by Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, doesn’t reflect the actual situation on the ground or the developing political environment.

Having repeatedly boasted of its commitment to bring about good governance and accountability, the current dispensation proved in style that it is definitely not different from the previous lots or even worse. (The recent arrest of a policeman who claimed of being assaulted by a gang, led by an NPP MP, emphasised that so-called system change is nothing but a farce) In the run-up to the November, 2024, parliamentary polls, President Dissanayake, who is the leader of both the JVP and NPP, declared that the House should be filled with only NPPers as other political parties were corrupt. Dissanayake cited the Parliament defeating the no-confidence motions filed against Ravi Karunanayake (2016/over Treasury Bond scams) and Keheliya Rambukwella (2023/against health sector corruption) to promote his argument. However, recently the ongoing controversy over patient deaths, allegedly blamed on the administration of Ondansetron injections, exposed the government.

Mounting concerns over drug safety and regulatory oversight triggered strong calls from medical professionals, and trade unions, for the resignation of senior officials at the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) and the State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC).

Medical and civil rights groups declared that the incident exposed deep systemic failures in Sri Lanka’s drug regulatory framework, with critics warning that the collapse of quality assurance mechanisms is placing patients’ lives at grave risk.

The Medical and Civil Rights Professional Association of Doctors (MCRPA), and allied trade unions, accused health authorities of gross negligence and demanded the immediate resignation of senior NMRA and SPC officials.

MCRPA President Dr. Chamal Sanjeewa is on record as having said that the Health Ministry, NMRA and SPC had collectively failed to ensure patient safety, citing, what he described as, a failed drug regulatory system.

The controversy has taken an unexpected turn with some alleging that the NPP government, on behalf of Sri Lanka and India, in April this year, entered into an agreement whereby the former agreed to lower quality/standards of medicine imports.

Trouble begins with Ranwala’s resignation

The NPP suffered a humiliating setback when its National List MP Asoka Ranwala had to resign from the post of Speaker on 13 December, 2024, following intense controversy over his educational qualification. The petroleum sector trade union leader served as the Speaker for a period of three weeks and his resignation shook the party. Ranwala, first time entrant to Parliament was one of the 18 NPP National List appointees out of a total of 29. The Parliament consists of 196 elected and 29 appointed members. Since the introduction of the National List, in 1989, there had never been an occasion where one party secured 18 slots.

The JVP/NPP made an initial bid to defend Ranwala but quickly gave it up and got him to resign amidst media furor. Ranwala dominated the social media as political rivals exploited the controversy over his claimed doctorate from the Waseda University of Japan, which he has failed to prove to this day. But, the JVP/NPP had to suffer a second time as a result of Ranwala’s antics when he caused injuries to three persons, including a child, on 11 December, in the Sapugaskanda police area.

The NPP made a pathetic, UNP and SLFP style effort to save the parliamentarian by blaming the Sapugaskanda police for not promptly subjecting him for a drunk driving test. The declaration made by the Government Analyst Department that the parliamentarian hadn’t been drunk at the time of the accident, several days after the accident, does not make any difference. Having experienced the wrongdoing of successive previous governments, the public, regardless of what various interested parties propagated on social media, realise that the government is making a disgraceful bid to cover-up.

No less a person than President Dissanayake is on record as having said that their members do not consume liquor. Let us wait for the outcome of the internal investigation into the lapses on the part of the Sapugaskanda police with regard to the accident that happened near Denimulla Junction, in Sapugaskanda.

JVP/NPP bigwigs obviously hadn’t learnt from the Weligama W 15 hotel attack in December, 2023, that ruined President Ranil Wickremeinghe’s administration. That incident exposed the direct nexus between the government and the police in carrying out Mafia-style operations. Although the two incidents cannot be compared as the circumstances differ, there is a similarity. Initially, police headquarters represented the interests of the wrongdoers, while President Wickremesinghe bent over backwards to retain the man who dispatched the CCD (Colombo Crime Division) team to Weligama, as the IGP. The UNP leader went to the extent of speaking to Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya, PC, and Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to push his agenda. There is no dispute the then Public Security Minister Tiran Alles wanted Deshabandu Tennakoon as IGP, regardless of a spate of accusations against him, in addition to him being faulted by the Supreme Court in a high-profile fundamental rights application.

The JVP/NPP must have realised that though the Opposition remained disorganised and ineffective, thanks to the media, particularly social media, a case of transgression, if not addressed swiftly and properly, can develop into a crisis. Action taken by the government to protect Ranwala is a case in point. Government leaders must have heaved a sigh of relief as Ranwala is no longer the Speaker when he drove a jeep recklessly and collided with a motorcycle and a car.

Major cases, key developments

Instead of addressing public concerns, the government sought to suppress the truth by manipulating and exploiting developments

* The release of 323 containers from the Colombo Port, in January 2025, is a case in point. The issue at hand is whether the powers that be took advantage of the port congestion to clear ‘red-flagged’ containers.

Although the Customs repeatedly declared that they did nothing wrong and such releases were resorted even during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s presidency (July 2022 to September 2024), the public won’t buy that. Container issue remains a mystery. That controversy eroded public confidence in the NPP that vowed 100 percent transparency in all its dealings. But the way the current dispensation handled the Port congestion proved that transparency must be the last thing in the minds of the JVPers/NPPers holding office.

* The JVP/NPP’s much touted all-out anti-corruption stand suffered a debilitating blow over their failure to finalise the appointment of a new Auditor General. In spite of the Opposition, the civil society, and the media, vigorously taking up this issue, the government continued to hold up the appointment by irresponsibly pushing for an appointment acceptable to President Dissanayake. The JVP/NPP is certainly pursuing a strategy contrary to what it preached while in the Opposition and found fault with successive governments for trying to manipulate the AG. It would be pertinent to mention that President Dissanayake should accept the responsibility for the inordinate delay in proposing a suitable person to that position. The government failed to get the approval of the Constitutional Council more than once to install a favourite of theirs in it, thanks to the forthright position taken by its civil society representatives.

The government should be ashamed of its disgraceful effort to bring the Office of the Auditor General under its thumb:

* The JVP/NPP government’s hotly disputed decision to procure 1,775 brand-new double cab pickup trucks, at a staggering cost exceeding Rs. 12,500 mn, under controversial circumstances, exposed the duplicity of that party that painted all other political parties black. Would the government rethink the double cab deal, especially in the wake of economic ruination caused by Cyclone Ditwah? The top leadership seems to be determined to proceed with their original plans, regardless of immeasurable losses caused by Cyclone Ditwah. Post-cyclone efforts still remain at a nascent stage with the government putting on a brave face. The top leadership has turned a blind eye to the overwhelming challenge in getting the country back on track especially against the backdrop of its agreement with the IMF.

Post-Cyclone Ditwah recovery process is going to be slow and extremely painful. Unfortunately, both the government and the Opposition are hell-bent on exploiting the miserable conditions experienced by its hapless victims. The government is yet to acknowledge that it could have faced the crisis much better if it acted on the warning issued by Met Department Chief Athula Karunanayake on 12 November, two weeks before the cyclone struck.

Foreign policy dilemma

Sri Lanka moved further closer to India and the US this year as President Dissanayake entered into several new agreements with them. In spite of criticism, seven Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), including one on defence, remains confidential. What are they hiding?

Within weeks after signing of the seven MoUs, India bought the controlling interests in the Colombo Dockyard Limited for USD 52 mn.

Although some Opposition members, representing the SJB, raised the issue, their leader Sajith Premadasa, during a subsequent visit to New Delhi, indicated he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, raise such a contentious issue.

Premadasa went a step further. The SJB leader assured his unwavering commitment to the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that was forced on Sri Lanka during President JRJ’s administration, under the highly questionable Indo-Lanka Accord of July, 1987, after the infamous parippu drop by Indian military aircraft over Jaffna, their version of the old gunboat diplomacy practiced by the West.

Both India and the US consolidated their position here further in the post-Aragalaya period. Those who felt that the JVP would be in a collision course with them must have been quite surprised by the turn of events and the way post-Aragalaya Sri Lanka leaned towards the US-India combine with not a hum from our carboard revolutionaries now installed in power. They certainly know which side of the bread is buttered. Sri Lanka’s economic deterioration, and the 2023 agreement with the IMF, had tied up the country with the US-led bloc.

In spite of India still procuring large quantities of Russian crude oil and its refusal to condemn Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, New Delhi has obviously reached consensus with the US on a long-term partnership to meet the formidable Chinese challenge. Both countries feel each other’s support is incalculably vital and indispensable.

Sri Lanka, India, and Japan, in May 2019, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) to jointly develop the East Container Terminal (ECT) at the Colombo Port. That was during the tail end of the Yahapalana administration. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration wanted to take that project forward. But trade unions, spearheaded by the JVP/NPP combine, thwarted a tripartite agreement on the basis that they opposed privatisation of the Colombo Port at any level.

But, the Colombo West International Terminal (CWIT) project, that was launched in November, 2022, during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s presidency, became fully operational in April this year. The JVP revolutionary tiger has completely changed its stripes regarding foreign investments and privatisation. If the JVP remained committed to its previous strategies, India taking over CDL or CWIT would have been unrealistic.

The failure on the part of the government to reveal its stand on visits by foreign research vessels to ports here underscored the intensity of US and Indian pressure. Hope our readers remember how US and India compelled the then President Wickremesinghe to announce a one-year moratorium on such visits. In line with that decision Sri Lanka declared research vessels wouldn’t be allowed here during 2024. The NPP that succeeded Wickremesinghe’s administration in September, 2024, is yet to take a decision on foreign research vessels. What a pity?

The NPP ends the year on the back foot, struggling to cope up with daunting challenges, both domestic and external. The recent revelation of direct Indian intervention in the 2022 regime change project here along with the US underscored the gravity of the situation and developing challenges. Post-cyclone period will facilitate further Indian and US interventions for obvious reasons.

****

Perhaps one of the most debated events in 2025 was the opening of ‘City of Dreams Sri Lanka’ that included, what the investors called, a world-class casino. In spite of mega Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s unexpected decision to pull out of the grand opening on 02 August, the investors went ahead with the restricted event. The Chief Guest was President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the Finance Minister, in addition to being the Defence Minister. Among the other notable invitees were Dissanayake’s predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose administration gave critical support to the high-profile project, worth over USD 1.2 bn. John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) and Melco Resorts & Entertainment (Melco) invested in the project that also consist of the luxurious Nüwa hotel and a premium shopping mall. Who would have thought President Dissanayake’s participation, even remotely, possible, against the backdrop of his strong past public opposition to gambling of any kind?

Don’t forget ‘City of Dreams’ received a license to operate for a period of 20 years. Definitely an unprecedented situation. Although that license had been issued by the Wickremesinghe administration, the NPP, or any other political party represented in Parliament, didn’t speak publicly about that matter. Interesting, isn’t it, coming from people, still referred by influential sections of the Western media, as avowed Marxists?

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

The Aesthetics and the Visual Politics of an Artisanal Community

Published

4 days ago

2025/12/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Through the Eyes of the Patua:

Organised by the Colombo Institute for Human Sciences in collaboration with Millennium Art Contemporary, an interesting and unique exhibition got underway in the latter’s gallery in Millennium City, Oruwala on 21 December 2025. The exhibition is titled, ‘Through the Eyes of the Patua: Ramayana Paintings of an Artisanal Community’ and was organized in parallel with the conference that was held on 20 December 2025 under the theme, ‘Move Your Shadow: Rediscovering Ravana, Forms of Resistance and Alternative Universes in the Tellings of the Ramayana.’ The scrolls on display at the gallery are part of the over 100 scrolls in the collection of Colombo Institute’s ‘Roma Chatterji Patua Scroll Collection.’ Prof Chatterji, who taught Sociology at University of Delhi and at present teaches at Shiv Nadar University donated the scrolls to the Colombo Institute in 2024.

The paintings on display are what might be called narrative scrolls that are often over ten feet long. Each scroll narrates a story, with separate panels pictorially depicting one component of a story. The Patuas or the Chitrakars, as they are also known, are traditionally bards. A bard will sing the story that is depicted by each scroll which is simultaneously unfurled. For Sri Lankan viewers for whom the paintings and their contexts of production and use would be unusual and unfamiliar, the best way to understand them is to consider them as a comic strip. In the case of the ongoing exhibition, since the bards or the live songs are not a part of it, the word and voice elements are missing. However, the curators have endeavoured to address this gap by displaying a series of video presentations of the songs, how they are performed and the history of the Patuas as part of the exhibition itself.

The unfamiliarity of the art on display and their histories, necessitates broader explanation. The Patua hail from Medinipur District of West Bengal in India. Essentially, this community of artisans are traditional painters and singers who compose stories based on sacred texts such as the Ramayana or Mahabharata as well as secular events that can vary from the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001 to the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. Even though painted storytelling is done by a number of traditional artisan groups in India, the Patua is the only community where performers and artists belong to the same group. Hence, Professor Chatterji, in her curatorial note for the exhibition calls them “the original multi-media performers in Bengal.”

‘The story of the Patuas’ also is an account of what happens to such artisanal communities in contemporary times in South Asia more broadly even though this specific story is from India. There was a time before the 21st century when such communities were living and working across a large part of eastern India – each group with a claim to their recognizably unique style of painting. However, at the present time, this community and their vocation is limited to areas such as Medinipur, Birbhum, Purulia in West Bengal and Dumka in Jharkhand.

A pertinent question is how the scroll painters from Medinipur have survived the vagaries of time when others have not. Professor Chatterji provides an important clue when she notes that these painters, “unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are also extremely responsive to political events.” As such, “apart from a rich repertoire of stories based on myth and folklore, including the Ramayana and other epics, they have, over many years, also composed on themes that range from events of local or national significance such as boat accidents and communal violence to global events such as the tsunami and the attack on the World Trade Centre.”

There is another interesting aspect that becomes evident when one looks into the socio-cultural background of this community. As Professor Chatterji writes, “one significant feature that gives a distinct flavour to their stories is the fact that a majority of Chitrakars consider themselves to be Muslims but perform stories based largely on Hindu myths.” In this sense, their story complicates the tension-ridden dichotomies between ethno-cultural and religious groups typical of relations between groups in India as well as more broadly in South Asia, including in Sri Lanka. Prof Chatterji suggests this positionality allows the Patua to have “a truly secular voice so vital in the world that we live in today.”

As a result, she notes, contemporary Patuas “have propagated the message of communal harmony in their compositions in the context of the recent riots in India and the Gulf War. Their commentaries couched in the language of myth are profoundly symbolic and draw on a rich oral tradition of storytelling.” What is even more important is their “engagement with contemporary issues also inflects their aesthetics” because many of these painters also “experiment with novel painterly values inspired by recent interaction with new media such as comic books and with folk art forms from other parts of the country.”

From this varied repertoire of the Patuas’ painterly tradition, this exhibition focusses on scrolls portraying different aspects of the Ramayana. In North Indian and the more dominant renditions of the Ramayana, the focus is on Rama while in many alternate renditions this shifts to Ravana as typified by versions popular among the Sinhalas and Tamils in Sri Lanka as well as in some areas in several Indian states. Compared to this, the Patua renditions in the exhibition mostly illustrate the abduction of Sita with a pronounced focus on Sita and not on Ravana, the conventional antagonist or on Rama, the conventional protagonist. As a result, these two traditional male colossuses are distant. Moreover, with the focus on Sita, these folk renditions also bring to the fore other figures directly associated with her such as her sons Luv and Kush in the act of capturing Rama’s victory horse as well as Lakshmana.

Interestingly, almost as a counter narrative, which also serves as a comparison to these Ramayana scrolls, the exhibition also presents three scrolls known as ‘bin-Laden Patas’ depicting different renditions on the attack on New York’s Twin Towers.

While the painted scrolls in this collection have been exhibited thrice in India, this is the first time they are being exhibited in Sri Lanka, and it is quite likely such paintings from any community beyond Sri Lanka’s shores were not available for viewing in the country before this. Organised with no diplomatic or political affiliation and purely as a Sri Lankan cultural effort with broader South Asian interest, it is definitely worth a visit. The exhibition will run until 10 January 2026.