Features

The Eastern Region and the 13th Amendment To The Sri Lankan Constitution

Published

3 years ago

2023/05/28

Thilina Walpola

by K.Locana Gunaratna, PhD

Introduction

There is a claim made by some ethnic-based political groups in Sri Lanka about the areas of the Northern and Eastern regions of our country. Their claim is that the particular area are an integral part of a historic “Tamil Homeland”. Old Dutch maps are often used to substantiate their claim. Consequently, a demand has been strident among those particular political groups that these areas should be merged, have more political powers devolved to them by the Government and for this merged entity to have the right to maintain their own Police Force. During the late 1980s, an Indian military unit – the ‘Indian Peace-keeping Force’ (IPKF) – was deployed and active for a short while with intent to help the Sri Lankan government to curb the LTTE’s violence in the North and the East. At that very tense period, under strong pressure from the Indian government, a very rushed ‘accord’ was entered into between the two governments.

It required the so-called ‘temporary’ merger between the North and the East of Sri Lanka as one Province with devolved powers from the Central Government. This resulted in a hurriedly drafted 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution being enacted in November 1987. It provided for substantial devolved powers from the Central Government not only to the North and the East but also to all other former provinces of Sri Lanka, nine in all. These provinces had been delineated during the British Colonial past for purely their administrative purposes. Thus, elected Provincial Councils became a reality along with a merged North and East. The latter merger was was subsequently disallowed by our Supreme Court. The promised referendum in the East to decide whether the people of that province wished to remain with the North was never held.

The policing rights have also not materialized. The N&E merger still continues to be demands among those particular ethnic-based political groups. It is important to recognize that by 1974, Provincial administration as a left-over from the colonial past had already been abandoned in favour of a more effective decentralization process. This process had already progressed to the devolution of political authority well beyond the former nine provincial boundaries to each of the 24 defined Districts. The government that came to power in 1977 consolidated the devolution process by establishing District Ministers, one for each of these Districts. Thus, decentralization and democratic devolution of centralized powers were by 1987 very well under way.

There clearly was no real necessity to revert back to the colonially derived Provinces and create new political potentates and administrations in the provinces in addition to the already existing 24 Districts Ministries. This overlap of functions has resulted in substantial and unnecessary annually recurrent costs. This is the confused and wasteful context we are in right now and needs to be put right without delay.

The Eastern Region

As most Sri Lankans are aware, there were three distinct European colonial periods in our history: chronologically, the Portuguese, the Dutch and finally the British period. The Portuguese and the Dutch had initially gained control only over some of our coastal territories. They had no control over our central hill-country which in those years was firmly under the King of Kandy. What is most relevant to the specific discussion here on the Eastern region is the Dutch period. Dutch rule in Sri Lanka was not directly by their government but by the United Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Nederlandsche Oost Indische Compagnie) popularly known as the ‘VOC’. It was the resulting when, in the 17th Century, the Dutch government had successfully directed the of several rival Dutch trading companies.

Some important historical facts of the period relating to the Dutch occupation of Sri Lanka are to be found in the writings of a Dutch Priest Rev. Phillipus Baldeus. He was himself present here in the island during the time of his writings which were later published in 1672. These publications were translated in relatively recent times from the original Dutch into English by Pieter Brohier, a Sri Lankan scholar of Dutch origin. That English version entitled “A TRUE AND EXACT DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT ISLAND OF CEYLON” was itself first published here in the “Ceylon Historical Journal” (Volume VIII July 1958-April 1959 nos. 1-4). It was also published later as a book printed in September 1960 (Saman Press, Maharagama, Sri Lanka).

According to Rev. Baldeus, during the late period of Portuguese occupation, the VOC had wanted to get in touch with the King of Kandy. They thus sent Admiral Joris Van Spilbergen with two ships to Sri Lanka. He and his men arrived on May 31, 1602 on the East Coast in Batticaloa. They went to that location because it was not occupied by the Portuguese and was known to be an integral part of the Kingdom of Kandy. He and some of his men then proceeded from Batticaloa to Kandy by foot with absolutely no hindrance from any, including the Portuguese.

His mission (p33) was to convey greetings from Prince Mauritius de Nassau of the Netherlands to the King of Kandy, establish cordial relations and also to conspire against the Portuguese who were then in control of Sri Lanka’s Western and Northern seaboards. Seven years later, on October 5, 1609, Prince Mauritius de Nassau addressed a letter to the King of Kandy. The letter was delivered by one Marcellus Boschhouwer (p 47) who also arrived on the East Coast of Sri Lanka and proceeded to Kandy.

Two decades later in 1622, according to Rev. Baldeus, the Portuguese having by then come to the East, destroyed a “pagoda” in what is now Trincomalee, used the salvaged stone to build a military fort there (pp 84, 85). Five years later, the Portuguese took 13 companies of their soldiers to Batticaloa and erected another fortification there (p 87). Rev. Baldeus states that in both instances the King of Kandy sent troops to prevent this construction work from taking place within his territory, but those troops were repulsed by the Portuguese.

Rev. Baldeus continues to say that Adam Westerwold, Commander in Chief of the Dutch Fleet based in India, having routed the Portuguese in Goa, arrived on the east coast of Sri Lanka in 1638. They together with an army from Kandy captured the fortress in Batticaloa from the Portuguese. King Rajasingha of Kandy himself had made his appearance there as it was within his territory. The Dutch Admiral acting on behalf of the Prince of Orange then entered into a contract with the King of Kandy. Brohier’s translation (in footnote 1 on page 123) states that the Dutch also captured the Portuguese fort at Trincomalee on May 2, 1639 and that it was handed over to King Rajasingha of Kandy in the following year. That fort was thereafter dismantled. However, Batticaloa was not returned to the King of Kandy.

Rev. Baldeus goes on to convey that subsequently, Galle, Kalutara and eventually Colombo, all being in the Island’s Southwest coast, were also taken by the Dutch from the Portuguese with some military support from the King of Kandy. However, the relations between them became very strained. That was because the strategic coastal areas taken from the Portuguese including Batticaloa and Colombo were all not returned to the King of Kandy. The king therefore refused to reimburse the Dutch any of their expenses. Thus, much of the island excluding the Kandyan hill country but also including the Eastern region came under Dutch control as shown in maps drawn thereafter by the Dutch. Later, the same areas came under British control when the Dutch capitulated to the British.

Conclusions

There are no reasons to doubt the veracity of the learned Dutch Priest Rev. Baldeus and his “True and Exact Description…” of what took place between the VOC, the King of Kandy, the Portuguese, and also the VOC’s activities in the Eastern region of Sri Lanka. It is thus clear that Sri Lanka’s Eastern region at the time of the Portuguese presence was an integral part of the Kingdom of Kandy. It provided for the Kingdom’s legitimate and ready access to the ocean at that time. That access was denied by the Dutch and later by the British, making the Kandyan Kingdom land-locked. The respective colonial maps were drawn accordingly.

It also becomes quite clear that the Eastern Region of Sri Lanka was not part of the currently claimed historical “Traditional Tamil Homeland”, neither in the 17thCentury nor before. There may well have been some Tamil villages existing harmoniously in the East among the majority Sinhalese under rule from Kandy. These Tamil families could well have been of a different caste than the dominant castes in the North.

There are several prominent ancient Buddhist sites of religious and archaeological merit in several districts of the East. Their original monuments would have taken a great many decades to construct. Thus, they clearly evidence the predominant earlier prolonged presence of Sinhalese settlements in the Eastern region. Even just before the outbreak of the 30-year war with the LTTE, the Eastern region was home not only to Tamils but also to many Muslims and Sinhalese who together outnumbered the Tamils.. It was one of the geographic contexts in which the LTTE’s many well-recorded brutal efforts at ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ were committed through mass massacres of Muslims and Sinhalese. Just two examples of such massacres were those committed respectively at Kattankudi and at Aranthalaawa.

(The writer is Fellow and Past President, National Academy of Sciences Sri Lanka, Past General President, Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and Past President, Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka, Fellow and Past President, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects, Vice President Sri Lanka Economic Association.)

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

18 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wasting wars: Some war-displaced people in Lebanon. BBC

It may be some time before the full impact of food inflation is felt in the West. Until such time the world would continue to keep itself in suspense over whether the Trump administration is in earnest when it seeks to convey the impression that it is backing a negotiated solution in West Asia.

As is usually the case, consumer stress would be one of the final determinants of political change. To the degree to which the average US consumer somehow ‘muddles through’ and puts the food on the table, to the same extent would the Republican sections of the US public in particular be tolerant of the Trump administration’s inconsistent handling of the West Asian war and the main issues stemming from it. That is, there would be no grave popular disaffection and a demand for political change in the short term.

However, the indications are that the Trump administration’s support base is suffering some erosion in the wake of the current economic crisis. While reports indicate that Democratic sections are firming-up their opposition to the political centre, Republican support for Trump is also showing signs of waning, we are given to understand.

The above developments are probably why Trump is on record as having given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘dressing down’ recently on his seeming intransigence on the question of giving negotiations a chance in West Asia. The show of displeasure could be really aimed by Trump at containing the impatience of the American public.

However, the current ground situation in the Middle East, particularly the uncontained bloodshed, is likely to impress on the thinking sections of the world that more than temporary political change is needed in West Asia and the US.

A well thought out political solution that addresses all the contentious issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict is what enlightened opinion would demand, and very rightly. Right now, the ‘peace efforts’ initiated by the Trump administration give the impression of being piecemeal solutions at best.

There have been, of course, numerous initiatives in the past aimed at bringing permanent peace to the Middle East. These failed mainly because they did not address in full the root causes of the conflict.

At bottom the Middle East conflict is mainly about race and religious hate bred by socio-economic and material inequalities. For instance, if the Palestinian people were not displaced and deprived of land occupied by them at the time of the founding of the Israeli state, ethnic enmities would not have grown to the current unmanageable proportions.

When addressing the above questions, though, it must be remembered that the Israelis too were a displaced people who were entitled to land and a state of their own in the Middle East. Basically, out of these seemingly irreconcilable and conflicting demands have grown the Middle East imbroglio.

Middle East peace is considerably about reconciling these demands and arriving at a solution that would ensure the creation of two states that would opt for peaceful co-existence thereafter.

As long as the US does not see the need for a non-partisan solution that addresses the needs of both ethnicities and religions and goes all-out, as it were, to have it implemented, the Middle East would continue to bleed.

However, staunching the blood flow through the creation of two states would be only half the job done, though a very important part of it. More pernicious, pervasive and difficult to remedy are the inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatreds that have been unleashed over the decades.

However, if substantial, long-lasting peace is to be fostered in the region the latter ‘demons’ would need to be exorcised from the hearts and minds of the communities concerned. No doubt an uphill task but one that must be undertaken by those who wish the region well.

The UN would need to put its ‘best foot forward’ in such undertakings but it is time that it dawned on the international community and other caring quarters that Middle East peace, and all other such uphill challenges, require proactive peacemaking on the part of all civilized sections for their effective management. That is, public involvement in peacemaking too is a must.

Since hatreds are harboured in the human consciousness the enmities embedded in the latter need to be managed and defused judiciously alongside other undertakings in a peace process. In the case of West Asia, such enmities could be even spread globe-wide besides being multi-dimensional. For instance, it ought to be thought-provoking that Iran is insistent on a peace initiative that would also include Lebanon.

Besides security considerations it is also ethnic and religious affiliations that account for Iran making this demand. For instance, the Shias are a numerically important religious community in Lebanon and they provide a significant number of Hizbollah fighters, who are in a vital sense carrying out a ‘proxy war’ for Iran. It also needs to be factored in that Iran is a Shia-majority country.

Thus trans-border religious affiliations could add to the complexities and enormity of ethno-religious conflicts. However, the task of managing centuries-long enmities needs to be launched and prodded on with by peacemakers since a downing of arms alone would not guarantee substantive peace.

It is not realized sufficiently that the process of ending hatreds begins with mutual apologies by antagonists to a conflict for the harm inflicted on each other. This would be anathema in some ears but there is no getting away from the requirement. It is the vital first step to permanent peace anywhere.

In fact there could be no reconciliation worth speaking of without such mutual apologies. It is a point worth re-iterating in these times when even the government of Sri Lanka is voicing the need for national reconciliation. Well, without the words, ‘I am sorry’, there could be no permanent end to enmities – they would do well to remember.

The above requirements may not go down very well with governments, but they resonate in the hearts and minds of most people, since they are inheritors of religious traditions of some kind.

This is a principal reason why peacemaking works well when publics too are involved in them. The effectiveness of such campaigns increases several fold when they have a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jawaharlal Nehru at their helm. A strong proactive involvement by the public in peace could lead to the emergence of such leaders at some point in these campaigns.

Features

Dialog Brings Sri Lanka’s Largest Digital Vesak Experience to Matara

Published

18 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

From left to right: Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, and Lasantha Theverapperuma experience the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered VR tours.

Official Digital Partner of the 2026 ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone

Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka’s #1 connectivity provider, collaborated with the Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs to bring one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most technologically advanced Vesak experiences to the ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone. The three-day celebration, in Matara attracted more than hundred thousand visitors, who engaged with a series of innovative digital activities powered by Dialog 5G Ultra, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, digital pandols and a Data Dansala. The opening ceremony was attended by Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development and Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Minister of Women and Child Affairs, along with distinguished guests and Dialog’s senior management.

One of the key attractions at the venue was the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered Virtual Reality (VR) experience, which attracted more than 35,000 participants. The activation enabled devotees to virtually visit and pay homage to sacred Buddhist sites, including the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in India and the Atamasthana in Anuradhapura, directly from the Vesak zone in Matara.

Visitors receive complimentary mobile data through Dialog’s QR-powered Data Dansala.

Dialog also conducted an AI Digital Vesak Greeting Card Competition from 21 May to 01 June 2026, attracting numerous entries from across the country. The shortlisted designs were showcased across 20 large LED screens throughout the venue and across Matara City, and were also made available for download via mobile devices. Further, through the use of AI, traditional Jathaka Katha were reimagined in a digital format, demonstrating how technology can be used to preserve and enhance cultural and religious heritage. Together, these initiatives blended traditional Vesak celebrations with emerging technologies, offering visitors a unique and immersive way to engage with Vesak traditions.

Extending the spirit of Vesak through connectivity, Dialog conducted a special Data Dansala powered by its QR Reload platform, enabling visitors to receive complimentary mobile data by scanning QR codes placed across the venue. In addition to the Matara National Vesak Zone, similar Data Dansala activations were also conducted at the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones in Colombo.Visitors also had the opportunity to create personalised Vesak-themed digital photos through an AI Photo Booth, generating AI-enhanced portraits using their own photographs and adding a contemporary digital element to the Vesak celebrations.

Visitors watch AI-generated Jathaka Katha

Commenting on the initiative, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development, said, “The 2026 Dakshina Prabha Vesak Festival marked the first time AI-powered digital innovations were incorporated into a National Vesak Festival in Sri Lanka. Presenting Buddhist stories and teachings through technology created a new and engaging way for visitors to connect with these traditions. We thank Dialog for supporting this initiative and for working closely with us to bring our vision to life. Their contribution played an important role in making this first-of-its-kind event a reality.”

Lasantha Theverapperuma, Group Chief Marketing Officer of Dialog Axiata PLC said, “We thank the Government of Sri Lanka for the opportunity to support the 2026 Dakshina Prabha National Vesak Festival and for embracing technology as part of this year’s celebrations. As the Official Digital Partner, we were privileged to contribute through our Dialog 5G Ultra and AI capabilities, creating new ways for visitors to engage with Vesak traditions while preserving their cultural significance for future generations.”

Beyond supporting the National Vesak Zone in Matara, Dialog also enhanced the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones through a range of digital activations during the Vesak season. The company additionally continued its sustainability initiatives, including the Thirasara Aloka Poojawa, which illuminated rural places of worship through solar-powered lighting solutions.

Features

Beauty, elegance and talent…for women

Published

18 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Universal Woman is an international pageant focused on “beauty, elegance, and talent” for women, positioning itself as a platform to shape global ambassadors. The 2026 edition will be held in Cambodia, and Sri Lanka will be there, as well.

According to reports coming my way, contestants, at the international event, will work with industry trailblazers, under international standards.

Sri Lankan supermodel, runway and pageant trainer Chulpadmendra Kumarapathirana, is the National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026.

With over two decades in the industry, Chula was crowned Miss Sri Lanka 2006, and has since shaped the next generation of titleholders through her Colombo-based Chulpadmendra Catwalk Studio, widely regarded as one of the country’s leading modelling academies.

The team behind Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026

A former host of Derana Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World 2008 and a judge for Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2025, Chula now serves as National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026, leading the franchise’s search for Sri Lanka’s delegate to the international final in Cambodia.

Applications for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 are being taken, via WhatsApp: 077 659 4994, says Chula.

The judging panel for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 includes Senaka De Silva, Pageant Aesthetic Advisor & Chairperson of the Judging Panel, Angela Seneviratne, Caroline Jurie, Rozelle Plunkett, and Suraj Mapa.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 officially began its journey with a first round of auditions, held in Colombo, marking the start of an exciting new chapter in Sri Lanka’s pageant industry.

Launching the first round of auditions

The platform aims to empower women while selecting an intelligent, confident, and inspiring representative to compete at the Universal Woman International Pageant 2026 in Cambodia, this September.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka now moves forward with the vision of creating one of the country’s most prestigious and empowering pageants while preparing to crown a queen who will proudly represent Sri Lanka on the international stage.