Midweek Review

The rise of the Bonapartists: A political history of post-1977 Sri Lanka – II

Published

5 years ago

2020/12/9

By Uditha Devapriya

There were three Bonapartist revolutions in post-independence Sri Lanka. The first was Ranasinghe Premadasa’s election in 1989, the second Mahinda Rajapaksa’s election in 2005 and his re-election in 2010, and the third Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election in 2019. I consider Premadasa, Mahinda, and Gotabaya to be more Bonapartist than fascist, contrary to most accounts of them by the liberal intelligentsia. There is an important distinction to be made, as important as the distinction between the Old Right and the New Right.

A crucial difference between Bonapartism and fascism, with which Bonapartism is often conflated, is that the one responds to the public and the other regiments it. Bonapartism can deteriorate into fascism and it not infrequently does, yet its inherently populist-pluralist character deters it from doing so unless its co-option by a rightwing fringe group makes such a transformation inevitable. The latter point is important.

Here one must consider the first Bonapartist revolution, along with its impact on the Right. Mervyn de Silva called the 1988 election an event of sociological significance on account of who won it. Ranasinghe Premadasa has been called many things by many people. At the end of the day, regardless of whatever epithets or insults, he was, and remained until his passing away, a Bonapartist tied despite his populist trappings to the Right.

Yet, under Premadasa the J. R. model altered considerably. Development theorists of the Left, including Samir Amin, were by then propounding a paradigm of delinking in response to IMF enforced dependence on MNCs. This was the position taken up by the Left as well, and it was in keeping with the Soviet Union’s policy of disengagement. Regarding the latter, it must be mentioned that the intelligentsia of the Third World put forward a different strategy at the height of their influence: a bourgeois modernisation scheme, with emphasis on industrialisation. This is what Sirimavo Bandaranaike tried to adhere to.

As I have noted in my essays on the NAM to The Island, such an approach fell victim to its own contradictions, top among them the inability of bourgeois nationalist elites to take modernisation forward to its logical conclusion. Out of fashion then and out of fashion now, the bourgeoisie opted out of BOTH disengagement AND delinking.

In Premadasa they found the champion of their model: an open economy minus what the latter decried as “old style capitalism” vis-à-vis his predecessor. This, then, would be how the Bonapartist was to shed off the Old Right’s embracement of neoliberalism.

Foreign policy wise, Premadasa differed from Jayewardene’s pro-Western posturing. In 1977 Jayewardene stated that his policy of nonalignment would be “more genuine” that what it had been under his predecessor. Two years later, however, the New York Times reported his famous quote about nonalignment, the US, and the Soviet Union. With the establishment of the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (GCEC), the government tilted definitively to not just the US but also Britain and ASEAN: Motorola and Harris Corporation began building plants “with an initial employment capacity of 1,850 workers.”

Goh Chok Tong’s and Lee Kuan Yew’s visits to Sri Lanka reinforced the belief that Sri Lanka would regain its interrupted journey to becoming the Singapore of South Asia, a prospect promised by the Mahaweli Development Scheme.

This put the country at the backbenches of the pro-Western bloc in the Non-Aligned Movement: while Jayewardene courted Western European and American help, he was careful not to alienate the non-Western bloc. His warm rapport with Fidel Castro, for all the theatrics of Third World unity at the 1979 NAM Conference in Havana, belied his pro-US sympathies, as did his appointment of A. C. S. Hameed as Foreign Minister.

Less well apparent was his selection of Premadasa as an emissary of sorts to multilateral institutions. At the 1980 UN General Assembly, Premadasa called upon developed countries to shoulder their share of responsibility for underdeveloped countries. He was firm on this point: responding to a remark by Michael Littlejohns (of Reuters) that OPEC’s intransigence prevented the First World from aiding the Third, he politely but firmly contended, “You can keep on saying that, but it will do no one any good.”

It hardly need be added that after he became President, Premadasa took positions on foreign policy which contradicted some of Jayewardene’s, such as his expulsion of David Gladstone and his closure of the Israeli Special interests Section at the US Embassy; the latter act went as far as to provoke a confrontation with Stephen Solarz.

At a fundamental level, however, Premadasa’s vision remained bogged down in the IMF paradigm: Janasaviya, after all, was, despite its pro-poor leanings, funded by the World Bank. In other words, it continued to alienate the section of the middle-class – Sinhala Buddhist – which had evolved a cultural critique of neoliberalism.

In the absence of, on the one hand, a strong trade union driven Left movement, and on the other hand an equally strong radical youth movement – both decimated by Premadasa and Jayewardene – the Oppositional space gravitated to a nationalist-populist vacuum. What remained of the amorphous Mahajana Pakshaya (SLMP) gravitated either to the UNP (Ossie Abeygunasekera) or to the People’s Alliance (Chandrika Kumaratunga).

Premadasa courted considerable support among sections of the middle-class as well as the petty bourgeoisie, including artists and the clergy (as seen in the latter’s act of siding with his government after Gamini and Lalith launched their campaign against him). Yet in one respect he remained a part Bonapartist and not a total one: his inability to respond to the cultural critique of his politico-economic paradigm.

This widened a vacuum, filled by the Jathika Chintanaya; the latter’s evolution from an intellectual to a political movement, from Nalin de Silva and Gunadasa Amarasekara to S. L. Gunasekara and Champika Ranawaka, has been charted many times before by several commentators. All that needs to be noted here is that in the absence of a political critique of neoliberalism, especially in the face of neoliberalism’s consolidation by the People’s Alliance under Chandrika Kumaratunga, the cultural critique gained ground.

What helped that critique gain even more ground was the capitulation of the Left to the neoliberal line of the SLFP, as well as the dismantling of the state by the first Kumaratunga government. The latter point is significant, for unlike J.R. and Premadasa Kumaratunga set about rolling back the state while opening up the economy.

As Dayan Jayatilleka has suggested, the cooption of the Kumaratunga regime by NGOs and the new “civil society” did much to provoke the Sinhala nationalist lobby. Incensed, the latter sought a third force. In the absence of a viable Left alternative – for Kumaratunga’s first term was marked by the deterioration of the Left within the People’s Alliance – the critique of neoliberalism soon became a monopoly of cultural revivalists.

It must be noted that the SLFP-PA’s rightward shift did not transpire in a vacuum. After a decade of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, the Democrats in the US and the Labourites in Britain embraced what they euphemistically called “Third Way Centrism”, discarding their Marxist roots while embracing a neoliberal line. In Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the new SLFP thus had its Western archetypes to look up to, and to emulate.

Jayatilleka has argued that the SLFP-PA’s turn to the right was pragmatist. I disagree: it ended up decimating the Left, something not even three UNP administrations could do and something which paved the way for the nationalist lobby to gain in strength and numbers despite its convoluted, contradictory positions on the economy.

Indeed, the contents of the latter’s economic programme revealed its contradictions: the Sihala Urumaya Manifesto of 2000, to give a sampling, rejected a closed economy while rejecting neoliberalism, acknowledging that while “going back to a closed economy” was “unthinkable” it would, in stark contrast to its opposition to neoliberalism, avail itself “of the opportunities thrown up by globalisation.” Viewed this way, even Nalin de Silva’s campaign against Coca-Cola at the Kelaniya University in the 1990s seems to me more of a cultural rather than a political attack on globalisation; Sinhala nationalism of the petty bourgeois sort, after all, decries neoliberalism and, paradoxically, critiques Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s economic policies for having destroyed the “Sinhala businessman.”

In addition to strengthening the Sinhala nationalist lobby, by axing or relegating to the background the Left faction of the SLFP Kumaratunga not only moved her party to the neoliberal Right, she compelled the UNP to do the same as well.

Surprising as it may seem now, the UNP under Ranil Wickremesinghe originally opposed Kumaratunga over several sensitive issues, such as the proposed Federal Package. In the second CBK presidency, however, the UNP did a volte-face on those same issues. Ironically that time around it was left to Kumaratunga to rein in Wickremesinghe over his overtures to the peace lobby: at the very moment he landed in Washington after “brokering” a peace deal with the LTTE, she took over three Ministries and sacked him. That did not, however, incline her government automatically to oppose the peace lobby, as her experiment with P-TOMS (despite the opposition of the JVP) later showed.

The first Bonapartist revolt had taken place against the backdrop of an extreme Left uprising and widening discontent with an authoritarian rightwing presidency. A considerable section of the middle-class had voted for Premadasa despite their scepticism, but another section – Sinhala Buddhist nationalist – remained alienated from him.

The second Bonapartist revolt, on the other hand, took place against the backdrop of deepening neoliberalism, a rollback of the state unparalleled even by J. R. Jayewardene’s standards, and the internationalisation of a conflict the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist middle-class wanted a military, not a political, solution to. Since the Left could not, owing to the bottlenecks imposed on it, come up with a proper critique of these issues, it was left to the Jathika Chintanaya and its offshoots to so do from a cultural vantage point.

In 2000, Dinesh Gunawardena’s Mahajana Eksath Peramuna joined the People’s Alliance. At the 2000 parliamentary election Gunawardena contested and retained his seat; he would do the same at the 2001 parliamentary election, becoming Minister for Transport and rescuing the SLTB from the moribund state to which it had deteriorated by then.

Gunawardena’s ideology – an impeccable blend of socialism and popular nationalism, not unlike his father’s – provided an impetus to a revolt within the SLFP. That revolt culminated in 2004 when an overwhelming majority of the party stood behind Mahinda Rajapaksa’s bid as party candidate for the presidential election. Mahinda revived Bonapartism in Sri Lankan politics thereafter, becoming an heir of sorts to Premadasa; not for no reason, after all, does Dayan Jayatilleka often compare the two with one another.

Where Rajapaksa differed from Premadasa was the acceptance he won among the Jathika Chintanaya ideologues and the Hela Urumaya MPs, as well as the Left (the Old Trotskyite-Communist and the JVP). Not that their tactics and objectives converged totally; the Hela Urumaya for instance sought a wider post-war political agenda than the Jathika Chintanaya. Champika Ranawaka thus campaigned for Rajapaksa in 2005 and 2010 on the understanding that once they achieved their primary aim, the ending of the war, they would enact reforms that would free the public sector from the inefficiencies and the culture of corruption which two and a half decades of untrammelled privatisation had pushed it to.

When he and Rajapaksa disagreed over the direction the latter took towards the end of his second presidency, Ranawaka not only had to leave the government, he had to leave it while being forced to shed his nationalist credentials. In a big way, that says a lot about how Rajapaksa stole the nationalist light from its original torchbearers.

Today, Ranawaka is caught adrift: on the one hand the Sinhala nationalist crowd attacks him as a renegade, while on the other ethnic minorities distrust him over his past. This was summed up at the recent parliamentary polls: despite being given the No 1 preferential vote for the Samagi Jana Balavegaya in Colombo, Ranawaka came second from last to Mano Ganesan; the Sinhala middle-class vote which he coveted went to the Pohottuwa, while the SJB vote trifurcated between the Premadasa Central Colombo bloc, Harsha de Silva’s suburban middle-class bloc, and the Rahuman-Ganesan minority bloc.

In other words, Rajapaksa has become not just a Bonapartist but a total Bonapartist, unlike his predecessor from the UNP. He remained so long after the JVP and the Hela Urumaya left his coalition, and one can argue he remains so even now. As for Gotabaya Rajapaksa and whether he has become a more right-leaning Bonapartist than his brother: well, it’s been a year, and a lot can happen in four years. No assessment of the Gotabaya presidency can be undertaken until it reaches its end. On the face of it, it hasn’t even begun to climb up to its peak. On the legacy it leaves behind will historians be able to record what is, to me at least, the third Bonapartist revolution in Sri Lanka. Until then, we will have to wait.

(The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com)

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Midweek Review

A victory that can never be forgotten

Published

4 days ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Matara victory parade, in 2014, held to mark the eradication of the LTTE.

The country is in deepening turmoil over the theft of USD 2.5 mn from the Treasury. The Treasury affair has placed the arrogant NPP in an embarrassing position. The controversial release of 323 red-flagged containers from the Colombo Port, in addition to two carrying narcotics and the coal scam that forced Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody to resign, has eroded public confidence though the NPP pretends otherwise.

Suspicious deaths of a Finance Ministry official, suspended over the Treasury heist of USD 2.5 million, and ex-SriLankan Airlines CEO Kapila Chandrasena shouldn’t distract the government and the Opposition from marking victory over terrorism.

But, the country, under any circumstances, shouldn’t forget to celebrate Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence achievement. Dinesh Udugamsooriya, a keen follower of conflict and post-Aragalaya issues, insists that those who cherish the peace achieved should raise the national flag in honour of the armed forces.

The armed forces paid a huge price to preserve the country’s unitary status. Those who represent Parliament and outside waiting for an opportunity to return to Parliament must keep in their minds, unitary status is non-negotiable, under any circumstances, and such efforts would be in vain.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Sri Lanka celebrates, next week, the eradication of the bloodthirsty separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a conventional threat to the survival of this nation, at least in our hearts, even if the authorities dampen any celebrations. The armed forces brought the war to a successful conclusion on 18 May, 2009. The body of undisputed leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was found on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon, on the morning of 19 May, less than 24 hours after the ground forces declared the end of operations in the Vanni theatre.

The LTTE’s annihilation is Sri Lanka’s greatest post-independence achievement. Whatever various interested parties, pursuing different agendas say, the vast majority of people accept the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capacity as the armed forces’ highest achievement.

Sri Lanka’s triumph cannot be discussed without taking into consideration how the Indian-trained LTTE, who also went on to fight the New Delhi’s Army deployed here, in terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord, signed in July, 1987, giving it an unforgettable hiding. The Indian misadventure here cost them the lives of nearly 1,500 officers and men. Just over a year after the Indian pullout, in March, 1990, the LTTE assassinated Rajiv Gandhi who, in his capacity as the Prime Minister, deployed the Indian Army here. But India launched the Sri Lanka destabilisation project during Indira Gandhi’s premiership.

Western powers, the now decimated United National Party (UNP), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and an influential section of the media, propagated the lie that the LTTE couldn’t be defeated. But, the United People’s Freedom Party (UPFA), under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s resolute leadership, sustained a nearly three-year long genuine sustained offensive that brought the entire Northern and Eastern regions back under government control.

The UNP relentlessly hindered the war against the LTTE. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, hell-bent on undermining the military campaign, had no qualms in questioning the military strategy. The former Prime Minister went to the extent of sarcastically questioning the culmination of the military campaign in the East with the capture of Thoppigala (Baron’s cap) in the second week of July, 2007, calling it just a rock outcrop with no significance. Believing the military lacked the strength to continue with the campaign, Wickremesinghe publicly ridiculed the Thoppigala success. The then Brigadier Chagie Gallage, the pint-sized human dynamo, provided critical leadership to the highly successful Eastern campaign that deprived the LTTE the opportunity to compel the armed forces to commit far larger strength to the region. We clearly recall how he went to announce the prized capture from his forward base, that afternoon, driving his own jeep, dressed as a soldier wearing a cap, with his second in command seated by his side, obviously not to fall victim to any sniper hiding in the surrounding jungles.

The likes of Ravi Karunanayaka, Lakshman Kiriella, Dr. Rajitha Senaratna and the late Mangala Samaraweera demeaned such successes by contributing to a vicious political campaign that dented public confidence in the armed forces. Then Lt. General Sarath Fonseka’s Army needed a massive boost, not only to sustain the relentless advance into the enemy territory, but to hold onto and stabilise areas brought under government control. But the viciousness of these critics were such that Samaraweera had the gall to say that Fonseka was not even fit to lead the Salvation Army.

The Opposition campaign was meant to deter the stepped up recruitment campaign that enabled the Army to increase its strength from 116,000 to over 205,000 at the end of the campaign. In spite of disgraceful Opposition attempts to cause doubts, regarding the military campaign among the public, with backing from Western vultures, who were all for LTTE success, the Rajapaksa government maintained the momentum.

President Rajapaksa had a superb team that ensured the government confidently met the daunting challenge. That team included Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Vice Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, Air Marshal Roshan Goonetileke and the then Chief of National Intelligence (CNI) Maj. General Kapila Hendawitharana. There were also the likes of Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera, who returned from retirement to transform the once ragtag Home Guards into a worthy back-up to the military, as the Civil Defence Force, at critical places/junctures.

The then Governor of the Central Bank, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, played a significant role in overall government response to the challenge. The then presidential advisor MP Basil Rajapaksa’s role, too, should be appreciated and Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe as well as Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe contributed to counter the false propaganda campaigns directed at the country. Whatever the shortcomings of the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led UPFA may have had, the armed forces couldn’t have succeeded if the resolute political leadership he provided, with his team of brothers, failed both in and outside Parliament. That is the undeniable truth.

During the 2006-2009 campaign, the UNP twice tried to defeat the UPFA Budget, thereby hoping to bring the war to an abrupt end. Th utterly contemptible move to defeat the UPFA Budget ultimately caused a split in the JVP with a section of the party switching its allegiance to President Rajapaksa to save the day.

Amidst political turmoil and both overt and covert Western interventions, the armed forces pressed ahead with the offensive. It would be pertinent to mention that the Vanni campaign began in March, 2007, a couple of months before the armed forces brought the eastern campaign to an end.

Vanni campaign

The Army launched the Vanni campaign in March, 2007. The 57 Division that had been tasked with taking Madhu, and then proceeding to Kilinochchi, faced fierce resistance. The principal fighting Division suffered significant casualties and progress was slow. An irate Fonseka brought in Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias as General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the 57 Division to advance and consolidate areas brought under control.

The Army expanded the Vanni campaign in September, 2007. The Task Force 1 (later 58 Division) launched operations from the Mannar ‘rice bowl’. Fonseka placed Gallage in command of that fighting formation but was replaced by the then Brigadier Shavendra Silva, as a result of a medical emergency.

The Army gradually took the upper hand in the Vanni west while the LTTE faced a new threat in the Vanni east with the newly created 59 Division, under Brigadier Nandana Udawatta, launching offensive action in January, 2008. Having launched its first major action in the Weli Oya region, that Division fought its way towards Mullaitivu, an LTTE stronghold since 1996.

The 53 (Maj. Gen. Kamal Gunaratne) and 55 (Brig. Prasanna Silva) Divisions, deployed in the Jaffna peninsula, joined the Vanni offensive, in late 2008, as the TF 1 fought its way to Pooneryn, turned right towards Paranthan, captured that area and then hit Elephant Pass and rapidly advanced towards Kilinochchi. The TF 1 and 57 Division met in Kilinochchi and the rest is history.

Once the Army brought Kilinochchi under its control, in January, 2009, the LTTE lost the war. The raising of the Lion flag over Kilinochchi meant that the entire area, west of the Kandy-Jaffna A9 road, had been brought under government control. By then the LTTE had lost the sea supply route, between Tamil Nadu and Mannar region. The LTTE was surrounded by several fighting formations in the Vanni east while the Navy made an unprecedented achievement by cordoning off the Mullaitivu coast that effectively cut them off on all sides.

During the final phase of the naval action, they captured Sea Tiger leader Soosai’s wife, Sathyadevi, and her children Sivanesan Mani Arasu and Sivanesan Sindhu. Spearheaded by the elite Fourth Fast Attack Flotilla, the Navy conducted a sustained campaign, with spectacular success in the high seas, and, by late 2008, the Navy dominated the waters around the country.

The sinking of floating LTTE warehouses, with the intelligence provided by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) and the US Pacific Command, after the Americans decided to speed up the inevitable, and a campaign, directed at operations across the Palk Strait, weakened the LTTE. By early January, 2009, the LTTE had lost its capacity to carry out mid-sea transfers, and the use of Tamil Nadu fishing trawlers to bring in supplies, and it was only a matter of time before the group surrendered or faced the consequences.

Although Tamil Diaspora still believed in the LTTE launching a massive counter attack on the Vanni east front and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), under the leadership of the late R. Sampanthan, worked hard to halt the offensive, President Rajapaksa declared that the offensive wouldn’t be called off. President Rajapaksa had the strength to resist the combined pressure brought on him by the West and the UN until the armed forces delivered the final blow.

The despicable efforts made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block IMF funding for Sri Lanka is in the public domain. Clinton was obviously trying to please the Tamil Diaspora. The US made that attempt as the ground offensive was on the last phase against the backdrop of the international community suspending relief supply ships to Puthumathalan.

The IMF provided the much required funding to Sri Lanka, regardless of Clinton’s intervention.

A targeted assassination

The Air Force conducted a strategic campaign against the LTTE while providing support to both the Army and the Navy. Despite limited resources, the Air Force pulverised the enemy and high profile target assassination of S.P. Thamilselvan, in his Kilinochchi hideout, in early November, 2007, shook the LTTE leadership. The deployment of a pair of jets (Kafir and MiG 27), on the basis of intelligence provided by the DMI and backed by UAV footage, to carry out a meticulous strike on Thamilselvan’s Kilinochchi hideout, caused unprecedented fear among the LTTE.

Current Defence Secretary, Sampath Thuyakontha, in his capacity as the Commanding Officer of No 09 Squadron, played a vital role in action against the LTTE. Thuyakontha earned the respect of all for landing behind enemy lines in support of LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol).

As the Army advanced on the Vanni east front, thousands of LTTE cadres gave up their weapons, threw away their trade mark cyanide capsules and surrendered. Their defences crumbled and even hardcore cadres surrendered, regardless of the warning issued by Prabhakaran. By the time the armed forces concluded clearing operations, over 12,000 LTTE cadres were in government custody. Although those who couldn’t stomach Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE propagated lies regarding the rehabilitation programme, the ordinary Tamil people appreciated the project.

C.V. Wigneswaran, in his capacity as the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, called for a US investigation into the death of ex-LTTE cadres in government custody. The retired Supreme Court judge sought to consolidate his political power by alleging the Army executed surrendered men by injecting them with poison. The then Yahapalana government failed to take action against Wigneswaran who claimed over 100 deaths among ex-combatants.

Instead of initiating legal action, the war-winning Rajapaksa government rehabilitated them. Even after the change of government, in 2015, the rehabilitation project continued. Almost all of them had been released and, since the end of war, the members of the defeated LTTE never tried to reorganise, though some Diaspora elements made an attempt.

The LTTE’s demise brought an end to the use of child soldiers. Those who demand justice for Tamils, killed during the war, conveniently forget that forcible recruitment of children, by the LTTE, also ended in May, 2009. Struggling to overcome severe manpower shortage, amidst mounting battlefield losses, the LTTE abducted Tamil children, from the early ’90s, to be press-ganged into their cadre.

Although the UN and ICRC sought a consensus with the LTTE, way back during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure as the President, to cease forced recruitment of children, they couldn’t achieve the desired results. The much publicised UN-ICRC projects failed. The LTTE continued with its despicable abduction of children. The LTTE never stopped child recruitment and, depending on the ground situation, it carried out forced recruitment drives. The signing of the Norwegian arranged Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), too, failed to halt forced child recruitment.

The Darusman report that accused the military of killing over 40,000 civilians during the last phase of the war revealed that the LTTE tried to recruit children as it was about to collapse.

The TNA, or any other like-minded group here or abroad, never urged the LTTE to give up civilian shields and stop recruiting children, though they realised Prabhakaran could no longer change the outcome of the war. Norway, and those who still believed in a negotiated ‘settlement’ in a bid to prevent the annihilation of the group, desperately tried to convince Prabhakaran to give up civilian shields.

A note, dated February 16, 2009, sent to Basil Rajapaksa, by Norwegian Ambassador Tore Hattrem, expressed concern over the fate of those who had been trapped in the Vanni east. Hattrem’s note to Basil Rajapaksa revealed Norway’s serious concern over the LTTE’s refusal to release the civilians.

The following is the Norwegian note, headlined ‘Offer/Proposal to the LTTE’, personally signed by Ambassador Hattrem: “I refer to our telephone conversation today. The proposal to the LTTE on how to release the civilian population, now trapped in the LTTE controlled area, has been transmitted to the LTTE through several channels. So far, there has been, regrettably, no response from the LTTE and it doesn’t seem to be likely that the LTTE will agree with this in the near future.”

In the aftermath of the Anandapuram debacle in the first week of April, 2009, the LTTE lost its fighting capacity to a large extent. The loss of over 600 cadres marked the collapse of the organisation’s conventional fighting capacity.

The LTTE sought an arrangement in which it could retain its remaining weapons and start rebuilding the group again. President Rajapaksa emphasised that only an unconditional surrender could save the group’s remaining cadre. The President refused to recognise an area under the LTTE’s control. The CFA, signed by Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran, in February, 2002, recognised a vast area under the LTTE control. The CFA gave unparalleled recognition to the terrorist group and that was exploited by them to the hilt.

NPP’s dilemma

During his controversial May Day address this year, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared that only the armed forces and police could carry arms. Dissanayake warned that no one else could retain weapons.

President Dissanayake’s declaration is of pivotal importance as the armed forces and police twice crushed JVP-led insurgencies, in 1971 and 1987-1990. Dissanayake is the leader of the JVP and the NPP, two political parties recognised by the Election Commission.

Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, caused controversy last year when the government announced that the President wouldn’t attend the 16th annual war heroes’ commemoration ceremony at War Heroes’ Memorial, in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte.

That announcement triggered massive backlash. The government rescinded its earlier decision. Having received an unprecedented endorsement from the northern and eastern electorates, both at presidential and parliamentary polls in September and November, 2024, respectively, President Dissanayake seemed to have been somewhat reluctant to join the national celebration.

Yahapalana leaders President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe succumbed to Tamil Diaspora and Western pressures to do away with the 2016 annual armed forces Victory Day parade. That treacherous move followed them betraying the war-winning armed forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in October, 2015.

They co-sponsored accountability resolution, introduced by the US in terms of an understanding with the LTTE’s sidekick. Sirisena and Wickremesinghe forgot that the TNA recognised the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people, in 2001, thereby setting the stage for Eelam War IV. Sampanthan’s outfit, the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led TNA, showed its true colours when it joined the UNP-JVP led initiative to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa. Having accused the war-winning Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, of unpardonable war crimes, the TNA, along with the UNP-JVP combine, backed Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. The South rejected Fonseka and he lost the race by a staggering 1.8 mn votes which late JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe foolishly called a computer ‘jilmart’, a newly coined word of our fake Marxists. Fonseka’s indefensible declaration, in the run-up to the 2010 presidential election that the celebrated 58 Division executed surrendered LTTE cadres, didn’t do him any good. President Rajapaksa never explained why the US’ unofficial contradiction of Fonseka’s claim was never used cleverly to counter unsubstantiated war crimes allegations, along with Lord Naseby disclosures made in October, 2017.

Sri Lanka’s failure to properly defend the armed forces is nothing but an insult to them. They saved the country from the JVP twice, and Indian trained over half a dozen terrorist groups, finally bringing the largest and the deadliest of them, the LTTE, down to its knees, on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.

The armed forces shouldn’t hesitate to remember their glorious victory over terrorism. Since the change of government in September, 2024, the armed forces refrained from at least mentioning their battlefield achievements. At the last Independence Day, the armed forces shockingly mentioned their role in the Ditwah cyclone recovery efforts as their main achievement, to please the political masters, who themselves have been lackeys of the West, while outwardly professing to be Marxists, the latter line they have already conveniently dropped for all purposes. The armed forces shouldn’t play NPP politics but explain the situation to the current dispensation. The failure on the part of armed forces to erase their proud achievements against terrorism, out of their press releases/narratives, look rather stupid.

Midweek Review

A Novel, a Movie and a Play

Published

4 days ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Drawing a Thread through Loss and Creativity in Shakespeare’s Life

William Shakespeare [1556-1616] is generally regarded as the greatest playwright and poet in the English language. Notwithstanding the universal appeal and the timelessness of his work, very little is known about his inner-self. Despite his profound understanding of the human condition, evident in his remarkable works of drama and poetry, the origin of his psychological insights – formed long before formal theories of the mind emerged – remain unknown, often loosely ascribed to an innate gift. The thematic and philosophical dimensions of his work are often said to be influenced by the classics of the ‘ancient world’ such as Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

The bestselling novel, Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell is a confluence of fact and fiction. The award-winning movie, by the same name, is an adaptation of the novel, its screenplay co-written by Maggie O’Farrell and Chloe Zhao, the director. The central theme of the novel and the movie is the devastating impact of the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, in 1596, at an early age of eleven, and the sensitive portrayal of the grieving process of the family, inviting the audience to reflect on the proposition that Shakespeare channelled his personal grief into writing Hamlet, the play, four years later.

Mourning and melancholy take centre stage in Hamlet prompting a probable link between William Shakespeare’s own emotional world and his artistic imagination. Interestingly, the names Hamnet and Hamlet were used interchangeably during the Elizabethan era, adding weight to the speculation.

The movie matches the imaginative and descriptive brilliance of the novel. The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of Stratford-upon-Avon and its environs and its inhabitants of Elizabethan England, finally shifting to London and the Globe Theatre. The film won eight nominations at the 98^th Academy Awards, including best picture, best director for Zhao, and best actress for Jessie Buckley, who immortalises Anne Hathaway, [‘Agnes’] Shakespeare’s wife, through whom the real face of family grief is portrayed. Shakespeare [nameless] remains ‘silent’ and virtually ‘back-stage’ in London preoccupied with the playhouse, the players and the plays.

Many Shakespeare scholars have speculated about a probable link between the death of Hamnet Shakespeare and the writing of Hamlet, his Magnum Opus:

“No one can say for certain how the death of Shakespeare’s son affected him, but it is hard not to notice that in the years following Hamnet’s death Shakespeare wrote a play obsessed with fathers and sons, grief, and the persistence of the dead.” [James Shapiro]

“Hamnet’s death must have been a devastating blow…..and the shadow of that loss may well lie behind the profound meditations on mortality in Hamlet.” [Park Honan]

“The death of Hamnet is the most plausible personal event to have touched Shakespeare deeply in these years, and it is tempting to hear an echo of that loss in the grief that permeates Hamlet.” [Germaine Greer]

That echo is clearly heard in Act 4, scene 5 in Hamlet:

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.

Yet, in the play, a son loses his father, and the circumstance of the loss is different. Hamlet mourns the sudden death of his father, king Hamlet, he idolised. The young prince is faced with a complex emotional challenge as the late king’s brother, Claudius, usurper to the throne, marries the widowed queen, denying the young prince of his lawful right to sovereignty. The process of mourning is weighed down by the profound significance of the personal loss to the prince and being bereft of any trusting relationships to share his grief – mourning turning to melancholy.

Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, Hamlet, has gained unremitting interest of audiences, universally over four hundred years, and has been open to divergent appraisal. Any commentary on the play without an exploration of the psyche of its protagonist, prince Hamlet, would be as the popular cliché goes, ‘like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark!’ Hamlet is the longest of all Shakespearean plays, with the least amount of action, but with the most amount of spoken word, mainly by prince Hamlet, which includes his soliloquies [solo locution: self-discourse] that opens the door to his inner self, inviting in by Hamlet himself: “pluck out the heart of my mystery”.

In the first of his soliloquies, Hamlet reveals his affliction with melancholy. He describes the world as worthless, wishes he is dead, contemplates suicide but regrets that God does not sanction such self-destruction. “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw and resolve itself into dew/ O, that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His cannon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O, God, God/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!’

Hamlet’s anguish is expressed as: ‘This goodly frame, the earth’ is no more than a ‘Sterile promontory’; ‘this majestical roof fretted with golden fire’; the heavens, ‘a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’; and man, ‘the paragon of animals’, a quintessence of dust’, his mind ‘an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed.’ – Hamlet’s melancholic thought with depressive and nihilistic content expressed in philosophical terms.

But his anguish is best depicted in his fourth soliloquy [Act 3, Scene1] arguably, the most quoted piece of verse in all Shakespeare: ‘To be, or not to be’ – about life and death. He questions, ‘whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or take arms against a sea of troubles/ and by opposing, end them’. What happens after death? Is it a peaceful sleep or nightmare? Do we end our miseries by putting ourselves to the ‘quietus’ with a dagger, and enter that ‘undiscovered country’ from which ‘no traveller returns’, or put up with our problems? ‘Conscience makes cowards of us all’ and make us procrastinate.

In his soliloquies Hamlet reveals his affliction with melancholy. He wishes that his body would melt away, describes the world as worthless and contemplates suicide – negative cognitions about the self, the environment and the future, characteristic of severe mood disturbance – but regrets that God does not sanction such self-destruction.

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Grief is a universal human experience following loss, characterised by sadness, at times mixed with anger and guilt, and frequently transient in nature. Depending on the perceived significance [‘meaningfulness’] of the loss and the absence of a sharing or confiding relationship, grief may become prolonged, with a potential to become pathological.

In a seminal paper published in 1917, Sigmund Freud [1856 – 1939], argued that there are two different responses to loss – ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. His contribution remains the basis for understanding unconscious grief in psychoanalytic thought.

Freud describes mourning as a natural way to respond to losing something or someone significant. It is a transitory process, potentially transforming, albeit painful. In mourning the loss of a loved one, the bereaved gradually withdraws the emotional energy – ‘libido’ – from ‘the lost object’, and the emotional investment is redirected to an ‘alternate object’ or pursuit. Throughout this process the ‘self’ remains intact, allowing the person to heal by integrating the loss into life. In psychology, this process in which a person unconsciously redirects unacceptable or distressing impulses into socially acceptable or constructive activities is called sublimation – a concept introduced by Sigmund Freud and later developed further by his daughter Anna Freud. Instead of expressing the impulse directly, the energy behind it is transformed into something positive or productive – an ‘ego defence’.

On the other hand, Freud described melancholia as a persistent state that stays within the ‘unconscious’ – the repressed aspect of the mind, while the person feels trapped in unresolved emotions which jeopardises their mental and physical well-being.

Shakespeare lost a child, the only son, Hamnet, still in his formative years. The playwright had no option but to leave his family in his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, and return to London after burying his son to continue his work at the playhouse. The significance of the loss to the father would, no doubt, have been profound, as the Greek historian Herodotus fittingly proclaimed, “No one that has lost a child knows what it is to lose a child”.

In the novel, and as depicted in the movie, Agnes [Anne Hathaway] travels to London to meet her husband. Unknown to him she stands with the audience at the Globe Theatre to watch Hamlet, the play, while Shakespeare remains backstage. As O’Farrell poignantly writes in her novel, “Hamlet, here on this stage, is two people, the young man alive, and the father dead. He is both alive and dead. Her husband [Shakespeare] has brought him back to life, in the only way he can”. “She stretches out a hand as if to acknowledge them, as if to feel the air between the three of them, as if to pierce the boundary between audience and players, between real life and play”.

Many literary scholars speculate that Shakespeare in mourning gave voice to his grief through Hamlet, the play’s introspective protagonist, who takes to the stage with melancholic expression. There are others who dispute this view, arguing that Hamlet is a product of his creative genius that transcends any autobiographical explanation. While Hamnet, the novel, and its film adaptation do not assert a direct historical link, they suggest an association between the playwright’s personal loss and his artistic creation. The notion that Shakespeare sublimated his grief into creating the iconic stage work remains suggestive, yet unprovable, but reveals an important ‘therapeutic strategy’ [sublimation] in dealing with loss. Nevertheless, through Hamlet, he gives enduring expression to a universal human condition – grief – that resonates across time.

Moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, a work of art can truly be called Art – whether encountered on the page, the screen, or the stage – when it invites reflection or evokes emotion. The thread that runs through the novel, the movie and the play tend to reinforce that notion.

By Dr. Siri Galhenage, Psychiatrist [Retd]
sirigalhenage@gmail.com