Midweek Review

THE POWER OF POETIC METER

Published

5 years ago

2021/03/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Ven. Tirikunamale Ananda Mahanayaka Thera, the author of the book, and Prof. Dissanayake.

By Prof. Wimal Dissanayake

The Venerable Tirikiunamale Ananda Maha Nayaka Thera has written a reverential commemorative poem, titled Guru Dev Samara, celebrating the life and times of his teacher the Reverend Ampitiye Rahula Maha Thera. It is a poem that deserves the critical attention of discerning readers primarily because of the dexterity with which the author has handled his chosen poetic meter and commanded it to perform a number of functions related to the vitality of the poetic text

Guru Dev Samara consists of 130 stanzas written in conformity to the drutha vilambitha meter. As I will explain later, the choice of this meter is indeed a happy one. It serves to enhance the willed intensity of the poetic text. Guru Dev Samara in clearly modelled on Munidasa Cumaratinga’s celebrated poem the Piya Samara. The title of the Reverend Ananda’s poem is reminiscent of Munidasa Cumaratunga’s poem the Piya Samara. Moreover, both poems can be termed biographical poems. The Reverend Ananda Thera has stated that he regards Munidasa Cumaratunga’s poem as an inspirational model for his own work.

Guru Dev Samara is both a lyrical poem and a narrative poem. It consists of 130 stanzas that are more or less independent, and therefore work as lyrics. On the other hand, the various incidents of the Reverend Ampitiye Rahula’s life that the author has selected for poetic representation are connected by a faint narrative outline. However, it is as a lyric poem that I value it more and hence that will be the focus of my short article.

The lyric is an expansive and inclusionary concept that shelters a number of sub-genres such as sonnets, elegies and ballads. Originally, this term signified songs performed to the accompaniment of the lyre. the music generated by sonic means and the music of ideas are vital to the ambitions of the lyric. Moreover, we can identify several other features associated with the lyric genre. The unmistakable presence of the subjectivity of the poet, the intensity of the produced emotion, the frequent deployment of apostrophe as a privileged rhetorical stratagem, the idea of performativity and the poetic articulations inhabiting a constantly unfolding present are chief among them. While these features are common across cultures, it is also important to bear in mind the fact that there are different cultural emphases and inflections as well. Reverend Ananda Thera’s Guru Devi Samara, contains many of these features linked to the lyric genre.

Throughout the poem, the author has deployed the drutha vilambitha meter with remarkable skill. It is not currently a popular meter among modern Sinhala poets; it gained wide circulation during the Matara period. It is indeed a highly demanding meter that all but the most self-assured of poets venture to harness. Gunadasa Amarasekera claims that this meter exudes an intimacy and sonic allure that is perfectly consonant with the aims of Reverend Ananda. I find this meter highly appropriate to the intentions of this poetic text. The dualism of absence and presence that courses though the poem is incarnated in the metrical movement. The Reverend Rahula, the protagonist of the poem, is dead, but he is also vitally present through the evocations of memory. As deconstructionists would find interesting, this duality is upended by generating a semiotic immortality. The movement of the drutha vilambitha meter with its interplay of speediness (drutha) and measuredness (vilambitha) aids in this effort. The focus on Time and the reflexive transcending of Time are suggested through the sonic collocation of the meter.

Few modern Sinhala poets would be able to handle this meter with the dexterity that Reverend Ananda has. It needs a great power of discipline and mastery over language. Guru Devi Samara is an exemplification of poetic discipline at its best. This is important in that the authority of discipline indexes the inordinate self-discipline that the hero pf the poem, the Reverend Ampitiye Rahula displayed in his life. Here the form enacts the theme. Gunadasa Amarasekera asserts that this poem stands out from the general run of modern Sinhala poetry. One reason for this is the extreme competence with which the poet has handled the drutha vilambitha meter in the way that Munidasa Cumaratunga had a few decades ago in his Piya Samara.

Jonathan Culler, who is one of the most consequential theorists of the lyric, has demonstrated how meter, rhythm, alliteration, assonance and other sonic effects are central to the power of the lyric. I wish to quote a passage from his book Theory of the Lyric which points this out. ‘there seems widespread agreement among poets and theorists about the centrality of rhythm to lyrics. Valery, like other poet, evokes rhythm as the key element in the genesis of a poem. It was born like most of my poems, from the unexpected presence in my mind of a certain rhythm. T S Eliot concurs, observing that a poem may tend to realize itself first as a particular rhythm before it reaches expression in words, and that this rhythm may bring to life the ides of an image. We know poetry is rhythm writes Yeats, distinguishing the rhythms that pick up and spectrally convey a tradition from the mechanistic cadences of music hall verse it is the rhythm of a poem that is the principal part of art. Statements about the fundamental character of rhythm, such as Nicolas Abraham’s claim that rhythm produces in the reader the fundamental effect of the entire poem, come from poets, critics, and historians of all stripes’. The Venerable Ananda Thera is fully aware of this fact as evidenced in the texture of his poem.

A distinguishing feature of the lyric is the frequent use of apostrophe. Jonathan Culler argues that this is a defining feature of the lyric. In poetry, an apostrophe designates a figure of speech in which the poet addresses an individual, mostly absent, an abstract idea or a thing. One of the clearest example is a nursery rhyme that we all learned in our childhood.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the sky so high
Like a diamond in the sky.

There are very powerful lyrics whose power derives from the deployment of apostrophe. This is evident in the following sonnet by John Donne, titled Death, Be Not Proud.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me

Poets in general are lured to this trope, though some like Pablo Neruda find it compellingly attractive. He has written 225 odes, addressing a broad array of subjects ranging from abstract concepts like time, poverty and happiness to mundane things like scissors, a pair of socks and a cake of soap. This is a poem addressing a cake of soap.

That’s what
You are
Soap, pure delight
Fleeting smell
That slips
And sinks like a
Blind fish
In the depths of the bathtub.

As I stated earlier the eminent theorist Jonathan Culler has made the apostrophe a cornerstone of his theory of the lyric. The Reverend Ananda has made in his poem made use of poetic apostrophe with great sensitivity. The object, the hero, of the poem is the Venerable Ampitiye Rahula Thera. He is now dead. However, the poet, throughout the poem addresses him in the unfolding present as ‘oba’ (you) as if he were alive. This plays into theme of presence and absence that animates the poetic text which I identified earlier. Munidasa Cumaratunga, too, displayed a laudable ability to press into service this rhetorical strategy to great effect.

Guru Dev Samara displays a remarkable congruence of form and vison. Although this is a slim volume consisting of 130 strophes, there is a copiousness to it that grows out of the author’s desire to select the dynamism of Buddhist culture as his chosen province. The Nobel prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney once made the following astute observation, ‘Technique, as I would define it, involves not only a poet’s way with words, his management of meter, rhythm and verbal texture; it involves also a definition of his stance towards life…it involves…a dynamic alertness that mediates between the origin of feeling in memory and experience and the formal ploys that express these in a work of art..,it is the whole creative effort.to bring the meaning of experience within the jurisdiction of form.’

Ven. Ananda validates this broad notion of technique and he is very skillful in bringing his experience within the jurisdiction of form. For example, his syntax is supple and persuasive; it negotiates the dictates of meter in a way that the thematic meaning is unobtrusively reinforced. Earlier I alluded to the fact that the temporal structure of this poem serves to enact its theme. The metrical energy of the poem propels the narrative and theme forward reassuringly. So Reverend Ananda is employing the idea poetic technique in the way that Seamus Heaney envisaged and promoted.

As a consequence of the able ways in which the experience and concept of Guru Dev Samara are brought under the jurisdiction of form, we see how Reverend Ananda’s deeper sub-text of affirming Buddhist values though the lived life of his poetic hero is achieved. Jonathan Culler has maintained- quite rightly in my view- that although there is an ostensible person or object that is overtly addressed by the poet, his or her real intention is to address the reader. The reader becomes a part, a character, of the communicative event. In this poem, the real and deeper intention of the poet is to convey to the reader and affirm the importance of Buddhist humanistic values. This desire to address the reader stealthily is regarded by Culler and others as a hallmark of the lyric.

Finally, I wish to touch upon a topic that I had discussed a few weeks ago under the title The Lyric as a Communicative Event in the pages of the Midweek Review. In it I asserted that the quadrangular relationship between the poet, persona, text and reader leads to a dynamic communicative event and that envisioning this is a most productive way of conceptually framing the lyric. Revered Ananda Thera’s poem is illustrative of this fact. The poet has established a vital relationship between the poet, his poetic persona, the text and reader whom he addresses as he persuades him or her to appreciate the relevance of Buddhist humanist values.

The distinguished literary critic Helen Vendler once remarked that that, ‘lyric is not narrative or drama, it is not primarily concerned to relate events, or to reify contesting issues. Rather, its act is to present, adequately and truthfully, through the mans of temporally prolonged symbolic form, the private mind and heart caught in the changing events of a geographical place and a historical epoch.’ She also claims that ‘the fundamental aim of lyric is to grasp and perpetuate by symbolic form, the self’s volatile and transient here and now. To my mind, Helen Vendler’s remarks are too restrictive. Scholars like Culler have pointed out the need to consider lyric as public discourse which derives its authority from sonic devices such as meter and rhyme. An interesting feature of reverend Ananda’s Guru Devi Samara is that it reaffirms the importance of this line of thinking.

This poem is by no means flawless; it has its own share of weaknesses and deficiencies. Some of the stanzas are too prosaic and close to reportage to carry an emotional charge. Some of the strophes are too laden with didacticism and consequently unable to lift themselves off the page. It would have been more productive to depict the protagonist of the poem in more complex terms focusing on inner tensions and the intricate workings of heart and mind. Despite these deficiencies, this is a poem that merits close attention. The poet’s indubitable gifts and his firm discipline are evident throughout. His language, for the most part, recognizes the richness of lucidity. The aspect that I wish to focus on in this article is the poet’s adroit use of a demanding meter. This poem serves to promote a useful discussion on the being of a lyric, especially the functionality of meter. As one reads Tirikunamale Ananda Maha Nayaka Thera’s poem, one is inexorably drawn into a multi-faceted conversation regarding the ontology of the lyric.

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Midweek Review

At the edge of a world war

Published

4 days ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

In September 1939, as Europe descended once more into catastrophe, E. H. Carr published The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Twenty years had separated the two great wars—twenty years to reflect, to reconstruct, to restrain. Yet reflection proved fragile. Carr wrote with unsentimental clarity: once the enemy is crushed, the “thereafter” rarely arrives. The illusion that power can come first and morality will follow is as dangerous as the belief that morality alone can command power. Between those illusions, nations lose themselves.

His warning hovers over the present war in Iran.

The “thereafter” has long haunted American interventions—after Afghanistan, after Iraq, after Libya. The enemy can be dismantled with precision; the aftermath resists precision. Iran is not a small theater. It is a civilization-state with a geography three times larger than Iraq. At its southern edge lies the Strait of Hormuz, narrow in width yet immense in consequence. Geography does not argue; it compels.

Long before Carr, in the quiet anxiety of the eighteenth century, James Madison, principal architect of the Constitution, warned that war was the “true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” War concentrates authority in the name of urgency. Madison insisted that the power to declare war must rest with Congress, not the president—so that deliberation might restrain impulse. Republics persuade themselves that emergency powers are temporary. History rarely agrees.

Then, at 2:30 a.m., the abstraction becomes decision.

Donald Trump declares war on Iran. The announcement crosses continents before markets open in Asia. Within twenty-four hours, Ali Khamenei, who ruled for thirty-seven years, is killed. The President calls him one of history’s most evil figures and presents his death as an opening for the Iranian people.

In exile, Reza Pahlavi hails the moment as liberation. In less than forty-eight hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps collapses under overwhelming air power. A regime that endured decades falls swiftly. Military efficiency appears absolute. Yet efficiency does not resolve legitimacy.

The joint strike with Israel is framed as necessary and pre-emptive. Retaliation follows across the Gulf. The architecture of energy trade becomes fragile. Shipping routes are recalculated. Markets respond before diplomacy finds its language.

It is measured in the price of petrol in Colombo. In the bus fare in Karachi. In the rising cost of cooking gas in Dhaka. It is heard in the anxious voice of a migrant worker in Doha calling home to Kandy, asking whether contracts will be renewed, whether flights will continue, whether wages will be delayed. It is calculated in foreign reserves already strained, in currencies that tremble at rumor, in budgets forced to choose between subsidy and solvency.

Zaara was the breadwinner of her house in Sri Lanka. Her husband had been unemployed for years. At last, he secured an opportunity to travel to Israel as a foreign worker—like many Sri Lankans who depend on employment in the Middle East. It was to be their turning point: a small house repaired, debts reduced, dignity restored.

Now she lowers her eyes when she speaks. For Zaara, geopolitics is not theory. It is fear measured in distance—between a construction site abroad and a village waiting at home.

The war in Iran has shattered calculations that once felt practical. Nations like Sri Lanka now require strategic foresight to navigate unfolding realities. Reactive responses—whether to natural disasters or external shocks like this conflict—can cripple economies far faster than gradual pressures. Disruptions to energy imports, migrant remittances, and foreign reserves show how distant wars ripple into daily lives.

War among great powers is debated in think tanks. Its consequences are lived in markets—and in quiet kitchens where uncertainty sits heavier than hunger.

The conflict does not unfold in isolation. It enters the strategic calculus of China and Russia, both attentive to precedent. Power projected beyond the Western hemisphere reshapes perceptions in the Eastern theater. Iran’s transformation intersects directly with broader alignments. In 2021, Beijing and Tehran signed a twenty-five-year strategic agreement. By 2025, China was purchasing the majority of Iran’s exported oil at discounted rates. Energy underwrote strategy. That continuity has been disrupted. Yet strategic relationships do not vanish; they adjust.

In Winds of Change, my new book, I reproduce Nicholas Spykman’s 1944 two-theater confrontation map—Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War. Spykman distinguished maritime power from amphibian projection. Control of the Rimland determined balance. Then, the United States fought across two vast theaters. Today, Europe remains unsettled through Ukraine, the Pacific simmers over Taiwan and the South China Sea, Latin America remains sensitive, and the Middle East has been abruptly transformed. The architecture of multi-theater tension reappears.

At this juncture, the reflections of Marwan Bishara acquire weight. America’s ultimate power, he argues, resides in deterrence, not in the habitual use of force. Power, especially when shared, stabilizes. Force, when used with disregard for international law, breeds instability and humiliation. Arrogance creates enemies and narrows judgment. It is no surprise that many Americans themselves believe the United States should not act alone.

America’s strength does not rest solely in its military reach. Its economy constitutes roughly one-third of global output and generates close to 40 percent of the world’s research and development. Structural power—economic, technological, institutional—has historically underwritten deterrence. When force becomes the primary instrument, influence risks becoming coercion.

The United States now confronts simultaneous pressures across continents. The Second World War demonstrated the capacity to sustain multi-theater engagement; the post-9/11 wars revealed the exhaustion that follows prolonged intervention. Iran, larger and geopolitically deeper, presents a scale that cannot be resolved by air power alone.

Carr’s “thereafter” waits patiently. Military victory may be swift; political reconstruction is slow. Bishara reminds us that deterrence sustains stability, while force risks unraveling it.

At the edge of a potential world war, the decisive question is not who strikes first, but who restrains longest.

History watches. And in places far from the battlefield, mothers wait for phone calls that may not come.

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Millennium Project, Washington, D.C., and the author of Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, published by World Scientific

Midweek Review

Live Coals Burst Aflame

Published

4 days ago

2026/03/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Live coals of decades-long hate,

Are bursting into all-consuming flames,

In lands where ‘Black Gold’ is abundant,

And it’s a matter to be thought about,

If humans anywhere would be safe now,

Unless these enmities dying hard,

With roots in imperialist exploits,

And identity-based, tribal violence,

Are set aside and laid finally to rest,

By an enthronement of the principle,

Of the Equal Dignity of Humans.

By Lynn Ockersz

Midweek Review

Saga of the arrest of retired intelligence chief

Published

6 days ago

2026/03/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay’s recent arrest attracted internatiattention. His long-expected arrest took place ahead of the seventh anniversary of the bombings. Multiple blasts claimed the lives of nearly 280 people, including 45 foreigners. State-owned international news television network, based in Paris, France 24, declared that arrest was made on the basis of information provided by a whistleblower. The French channel was referring to Hanzeer Azad Moulana, who earlier sought political asylum in the West and one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan aka Pilleyan. May be the fiction he wove against Pilleyan and others may have been to strengthen his asylum claim there. Moulana is on record as having told the British Channel 4 that Sallay allowed the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing the 2019 presidential election. The French news agency quoted an investigating officer as having said: “He was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks. He has been in touch with people involved in the attacks, even recently.”

****

Suresh Sallay of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) received the wrath of Yahapalana Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, in 2016, over the reportage of what the media called the Chavakachcheri explosives detection made on March 30, 2016. Premier Wickremesinghe found fault with Sallay for the coverage, particularly in The Island. Police arrested ex-LTTE child combatant Edward Julian, alias Ramesh, after the detection of one suicide jacket, four claymore mines, three parcels containing about 12 kilos of explosives, to battery packs and several rounds of 9mm ammunition, from his house, situated at Vallakulam Pillaiyar Kovil Street. Chavakachcheri police made the detection, thanks to information provided by the second wife of Ramesh. Investigations revealed that the deadly cache had been brought by Ramesh from Mannar (Detection of LTTE suicide jacket, mines jolts government: Fleeing Tiger apprehended at checkpoint, The Island, March 31, 2016).

The then Jaffna Security Forces Commander, Maj. Gen. Mahesh Senanayake, told the writer that a thorough inquiry was required to ascertain the apprehended LTTE cadre’s intention. The Chavakachcheri detection received the DMI’s attention. The country’s premier intelligence organisation meticulously dealt with the issue against the backdrop of an alleged aborted bid to revive the LTTE in April 2014. Of those who had been involved in the fresh terror project, three were killed in the Nedunkerny jungles. There hadn’t been any other incidents since the Nedunkerny skirmish, until the Chavakachcheri detection.

Piqued by the media coverage of the Chavakachcheri detection, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration tried to silence the genuine Opposition. As the SLFP had, contrary to the expectations of those who voted for the party at the August 2015 parliamentary elections, formed a treacherous coalition with the UNP, the Joint Opposition (JO) spearheaded the parliamentary opposition.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) questioned former External Affairs Minister and top JO spokesman, Prof. G.L. Peiris, over a statement made by him regarding the Chavakachcheri detection. The former law professor questioned the legality of the CID’s move against the backdrop of police declining to furnish him a certified copy of the then acting IGP S.M. Wickremesinghe’s directive that he be summoned to record a statement as regards the Chavakachcheri lethal detection.

One-time LTTE propagandist Velayutham Dayanidhi, a.k.a. Daya Master, raised with President Maithripala Sirisena the spate of arrests made by law enforcement authorities, in the wake of the Chavakachcheri detection. Daya Master took advantage of a meeting called by Sirisena, on 28 April, 2016, at the President’s House, with the proprietors of media organisations and journalists, to raise the issue. The writer having been among the journalists present on that occasion, inquired from the ex-LETTer whom he represented there. Daya Master had been there on behalf of DAN TV, Tamil language satellite TV, based in Jaffna. Among those who had been detained was Subramaniam Sivakaran, at that time Youth Wing leader of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the main constituent of the now defunct Tamil National Alliance. In addition to Sivakaran, the police apprehended several hardcore ex-LTTE cadres (LTTE revival bid confirmed: TNA youth leader arrested, The Island April 20, 2016).

Ranil hits out at media

Subsequent inquiries revealed the role played by Sivakaran in some of those wanted in connection with the Chavakachcheri detection taking refuge in India. When the writer sought an explanation from the then TNA lawmaker, M.A. Sumanthiran, regarding Sivakaran’s arrest, the lawyer disowned the Youth Wing leader. Sumanthiran emphasised that the party suspended Sivakumaran and Northern Provincial Council member Ananthi Sasitharan for publicly condemning the TNA’s decision to endorse Maithripala Sirisena’s candidature at the 2015 presidential election (Chava explosives: Key suspects flee to India, The Island, May 2, 2016).

Premier Wickremesinghe went ballistic on May 30, 2016. Addressing the 20th anniversary event of the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum, at the Sports Ministry auditorium, the UNP leader castigated the DMI. Alleging that the DMI had been pursuing an agenda meant to undermine the Yahapalana administration, Wickremesinghe, in order to make his bogus claim look genuine, repeatedly named the writer as part of that plot. Only Wickremesinghe knows the identity of the idiot who influenced him to make such unsubstantiated allegations. The top UNPer went on to allege that The Island, and its sister paper Divaina, were working overtime to bring back Dutugemunu, a reference to war-winning President Mahinda Rajapaksa. A few days later, sleuths from the Colombo Crime Detection Bureau (CCD) visited The Island editorial to question the writer where lengthy statements were recorded. The police were acting on the instructions of the then Premier, who earlier publicly threatened to send police to question the writer.

In response to police queries about Sallay passing information to the media regarding the Chavakachcheri detection and subsequent related articles, the writer pointed out that the reportage was based on response of the then ASP Ruwan Gunasekera, AAL and Sumanthiran, as had been reported.

Wickremesinghe alleged, at the Muslim media event, that a section of the media manipulated coverage of certain incidents, ahead of the May Day celebrations.

In early May 2016 Wickremesinghe disclosed that he received assurances from the police, and the DMI, that as the LTTE had been wiped out the group couldn’t stage a comeback. The declaration was made at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRIS) on 3 May 2016. Wickremesinghe said that he sought clarifications from the police and the DMI in the wake of the reportage of the Chavakachcheri detection and related developments (PM: LTTE threat no longer exists, The Island, May 5, 2016).

The LTTE couldn’t stage a comeback as a result of measures taken by the then government. It would be a grave mistake, on our part, to believe that the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity automatically influenced them to give up arms. The successful rehabilitation project, that had been undertaken by the Rajapaksa government and continued by successive governments, ensured that those who once took up arms weren’t interested in returning to the same deadly path.

In spite of the TNA and others shedding crocodile tears for the defeated Tigers, while making a desperate effort to mobilise public opinion against the government, the public never wanted the violence to return. Some interested parties propagated the lie that regardless of the crushing defeat suffered in the hands of the military, the LTTE could resume guerilla-type operations, paving the way for a new conflict. But by the end of 2014, and in the run-up to the presidential election in January following year, the situation seemed under control, especially with Western countries not wanting to upset things here with a pliant administration in the immediate horizon. Soon after the presidential election, the government targeted the armed forces. Remember Sumanthiran’s declaration that the ITAK Youth Wing leader Sivakaran had been opposed to the TNA backing Sirisena at the presidential poll.

The US-led accountability resolution had been co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo to appease the TNA and Tamil Diaspora. The Oct. 01, 2016, resolution delivered a knockout blow to the war-winning armed forces. The UNP pursued an agenda severely inimical to national interests. It would be pertinent to mention that those who now represent the main Opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), were part of the treacherous UNP.

Suresh moved to Malaysia

The Yahapalana leadership resented Sallay’s work. They wanted him out of the country at a time a new threat was emerging. The government attacked the then Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, who warned of the emerging threat from foreign-manipulated local Islamic fanatics on 11 Nov. 2016, in Parliament. Rajapakshe didn’t mince his words when he underscored the threat posed by some Sri Lanka Muslim families taking refuge in Syria where ISIS was running the show. The then government, of which he was part o,f ridiculed their own Justice Minister. Both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe feared action against extremism may cause erosion of Muslim support. By then Sallay, who had been investigating the deadly plot, was out of the country. The Yahapalana government believed that the best way to deal with Sallay was to grant him a diplomatic posting. Sally ended up in Malaysia, a country where the DMI played a significant role in the repatriation of Kumaran Pathmanathan, alias KP, after his arrest there.

Having served the military for over three cadres, Sallay retired in 2024 in the rank of Major General. Against the backdrop of his recent arrest, in connection with the ongoing investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage, The Island felt the need to examine the circumstances Sallay ended up in Malaysia at the time. Now, remanded in terms of the Prevention of terrorism Act (PTA), he is being accused of directing the Easter Sunday operation from Malaysia.

Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader and former Minister Udaya Gammanpila has alleged that Sallay was apprehended in a bid to divert attention away from the deepening coal scam. Having campaigned on an anti-corruption platformm in the run up to the previous presidential election, in September 2024, the Parliament election, in November of the same year, and local government polls last year, the incumbent dispensation is struggling to cope up with massive corruption issues, particularly the coal scam, which has not only implicated the Energy Minister but the entire Cabinet of Ministers as well.

The crux of the matter is whether Sallay actually met would-be suicide bombers, in February 2018, in an estate, in the Puttalam district, as alleged by the UK’s Channel 4 television, like the BBC is, quite famous for doing hatchet jobs for the West. This is the primary issue at hand. Did Sallay clandestinely leave Malaysia to meet suicide bombers in the presence of Hanzeer Azad Moulana, one-time close associate of State Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, aka Pilleyan, former LTTE member?

The British channel raised this issue with Sallay, in 2023, at the time he served as Director, State Intelligence (SIS). Sallay is on record as having told Channel 4 Television that he was not in Sri Lanka the whole of 2018 as he was in Malaysia serving in the Sri Lankan Embassy there as Minister Counsellor.

Therefore, the accusation that he met several members of the National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), including Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran, in Karadipuval, Puttalam, in Feb. 2018, was baseless, he has said.

The intelligence officer has asked the British television station to verify his claim with the Malaysian authorities.

Responding to another query, Sallay had told Channel 4 that on April 21, 2019, the day of the Easter Sunday blasts, he was in India, where he was accommodated at the National Defence College (NDC). That could be verified with the Indian authorities, Sallay has said, strongly denying Channel 4’s claim that he contacted one of Pilleyan’s cadres, over, the phone and directed him to pick a person outside Hotel Taj Samudra.

According to Sallay, during his entire assignment in Malaysia, from Dec. 2016 to Dec. 2018, he had been to Colombo only once, for one week, in Dec. 2017, to assist in an official inquiry.

Having returned to Colombo, Sallay had left for NDC, in late Dec. 2018, and returned only after the conclusion of the course, in November 2019.

Sallay has said so in response to questions posed by Ben de Pear, founder, Basement Films, tasked with producing a film for Channel 4 on the Easter Sunday bombings.

The producer has offered Sallay an opportunity to address the issues in terms of Broadcasting Code while inquiring into fresh evidence regarding the officer’s alleged involvement in the Easter Sunday conspiracy.

The producer sought Sallay’s response, in August 2023, in the wake of political upheaval following the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, elected at the November 2019 presidential election.

At the time, the Yahapalana government granted a diplomatic appointment to Sallay, he had been head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). After the 2019 presidential election, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa named him the Head of SIS.

The Basement Films has posed several questions to Sallay on the basis of accusations made by Hanzeer Azad Moulana.

In response to the film producer’s query regarding Sallay’s alleged secret meeting with six NTJ cadres who blasted themselves a year later, Sallay has questioned the very basis of the so called new evidence as he was not even in the country during the period the clandestine meeting is alleged to have taken place.

Contradictory stands

Following Sajith Premadasa’s anticipated defeat at the 2019 presidential election, Harin Fernando accused the Catholic Church of facilitating Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory. Fernando, who is also on record as having disclosed that his father knew of the impending Easter Sunday attacks, pointed finger at the Archbishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, for ensuring Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena, as well as JVP frontliner Dr. Nalinda Jayathissa, accused India of masterminding the Easter Sunday bombings. Then there were claims of Sara Jasmin, wife of Katuwapitiya suicide bomber Mohammed Hastun, being an Indian agent who was secretly removed after the Army assaulted extremists’ hideout at Sainthamaruthu in the East. What really had happened to Sara Jasmin who, some believe, is key to the Easter Sunday puzzle.

Then there was huge controversy over the arrest of Attorney-at-Law Hejaaz Hizbullah over his alleged links with the Easter Sunday bombers. Hizbullah, who had been arrested in April 2020, served as lawyer to the extremely wealthy spice trader Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim’s family that had been deeply involved in the Easter Sunday plot. Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim had been on the JVP’s National List at the 2015 parliamentary elections. The lawyer received bail after two years. Two of the spice trader’s sons launched suicide attacks, whereas his daughter-in-law triggered a suicide blast when police raided their Dematagoda mansion, several hours after the Easter Sunday blasts.

Investigations also revealed that the suicide vests had been assembled at a factory owned by the family and the project was funded by them. It would be pertinent to mention that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government never really bothered to conduct a comprehensive investigation to identify the Easter Sunday terror project. Perhaps, their biggest failure had been to act on the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) recommendations. Instead, President Rajapaksa appointed a six-member committee, headed by his elder brother, Chamal Rajapaksa, to examine the recommendations, probably in a foolish attempt to improve estranged relations with the influential Muslim community. That move caused irreparable damage and influenced the Church to initiate a campaign against the government. The Catholic Church played quite a significant role in the India- and US-backed 2022 Aragalaya that forced President Rajapaksa to flee the country.

Interested parties exploited the deterioration of the national economy, leading to unprecedented declaration of the bankruptcy of the country in April 2022, to mobilie public anger that was used to achieve political change.