Dr. Sudath Gunasekara Ex secretary to Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranayake and President SASA 1991-93.

Proposal to set up a Memorial Museum of Patriotic wars of Kandyan Sinhalese (1505-1848) and an International Institute of Post Graduate Research on Colonial crimes in Sri Lanka and the Global South” at the old Bogambara Prison site.

Mahanuwara. (Kandy) 9.3. 2025.

 A prelude

Bogambara is an ugly vestige of an uncivilized, repressive, inhuman and brutal torcher British Bastille of Sri Lanka, from 1818 to 1948 where the bones of the native victims buried on this ground will bear witness. The first two patriotic national leaders to be beheaded here, were the two national heroes, Keppetipola Disava and Madugalla Disawas on 25th 1818, for leading the historic Uva Wellassa rebellion, the first freedom struggle by the Sinhalese against the British invaders. This was followed by the most uncivilized and barbarous incident that took place here, the murder of Kudapola Thera, by shooting in his robes on 26th August in 1848, under orders by Torrington, the savage white murderer, in spite of strong objections by his own legal adviser, the then Attorney General H.G. Selby, violating all civilized norms of human behavior. Both Brownrigg and Torrington followed the same uncivilized and brutal practices on this spot, in all murders between 1818 to 1850. All these public executions were carried out here in the open air as there was no prison at that time.

It is to be noted here that the charge against all these patriots was treason against the British Crown, whereas all those who were either shot or beheaded, were executed only for rising against the invader, to protect the beloved mother land, where their ancestors had lived and jealously protected for millennia from the inception of human history. These patriots had only risen against a foreign invader to defend their government and the Motherland. By what criterion they called it treason? Was it another synonym for patriotism?

Bogambara prison built in 1877.

This Prison was built on this ground in 1877. Till then all murders were carried out in the open air. Ever since this Bastille of the British was built at the heart of the most Sacred and spiritual heart of the Kandyan Kingdom, it had been used as a torcher house by the British colonial government that had carried on their carnage and imprisonment sprees here until 1948, to satisfy their own savages’ killings with no justice for the native Sinhalese or their heritage at all. Even after they left the shores physically, by handing over the country to their British trained local black white proxy’s, who continued hanging and imprisonment on behalf of their British masters did not come to an end. They also continued to have the colonial prison at Bogambara, for hanging and imprisonment of their own people sentenced under the Roman Dutch law as if we never had a legal system from the beginning of history, without making any attempt to introduce our own legal or a political system. They also continued to have Bogambara Prison at the same place, until rising public agitation against its continuance in front of the Sri Daladaa Maligava, compelled the government to shift it to Pallekele in 2014.  Incidentally it was I who first started that movement by writing an article to the Daily News 29th August 1977, demanding that it should be immediately shifted to Pallekele. In spite of all these oppositions the governments of the so-called independent Sri Lanka continued hanging here, even after declaring it a Republic in 1972, until it was stopped in 1977 temporally. But the prison remained there until it was finally transferred to Pallekele in 2014 at last, as I had suggested in 1977.

In this historical backdrop we all know that the site on which Bogambara prison stands was a place immortalized by the remains of our patriotic ancestors who sacrificed their lives on our behalf to save the motherland from the invaders for posterity. In my opinion, it is therefore a historic place where all Sinhalese should assemble in tens of thousands annually, to pay their homage to the dead, who protected this country for 310 long years (1505-1815) from the enemy, confining three powerful invaders with enormous gunpower to a narrow coastal belt of this Island.

The invaders, having openly violated the Kandyan Convention 1815 in 1818 the uncivilized British murderers    converted this sacred city to a grave yard, where the remains of thousands of our patriotic freedom fighters including Buddhist Monks such as Kudapola Thera and others were brutally executed by beheading, hanging or shooting in public even without trial.  As such Bogambara, in my opinion should be protected as a site of annual moaning of the Sinhala nation cum a national memorial center of the murdered Sinhalese patriots” rather than making it a fool’s merry making paradise, by converting it to a 7-star Hilton, Marriot or Oberoi as some fools have suggested, making the dead to rise from their graves in protest.

Therefore, obviously this is no place suitable for merry making or night life as our politicians and some public officials, who have no vision or a mission at all in their heads for nation building and indulge in promoting crazy tourism, which is a veritable canker  to our economy and culture, as it has already been proved particularly in the Southern and the Eastern parts of the Island, where  Israelist ,Indians, Chinese and even Russians have already taken over the trade in to their own hands, syphoning  all the income to their countries  and thereby depriving this country of its much craved  US $. These negative economic benefits of tourism are in addition to the cultural and social ills that spill down our society, that will one day completely erode the 2566-year-old pristine Sinhala Buddhist civilization from the surface of this Island. Therefore, I call upon all self-serving politicians and officials in this country, who are still suffering from this night mare tourist syndrome, to read Dr Asoka Bandarage’s article Sri Lanka: The Beautiful, Besieged Island” in the Lanka web (3.9.2025.)

It is in this sad and appalling backdrop that I propose to setup a Memorial Museum of Patriotic wars of Kandyan Sinhalese (1505-1848) and an International Institute of Post Graduate Research on Colonial crimes in Sri Lanka and the Global South” at the old Bogambara Prison site, to attract the attention of the whole world, instead of the mad idea of a tourist hotel.

I give below the reasons for selecting Sri Lanka for this proposed International Institute

Sri Lanka is centrally located on the world map; it is easily accessible to all countries, both by sea and air; it is one of the leading members of the Aon-Aligned Movement (NAM) right from its beginning in 1956 Bandung days; During Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranayakaya’s time (1972-1977), in 1971 at her initiation together with Julius Nyerere of Tanganika, got the UN to declare the Indian Ocean Ocen as a peace Zone by United Nations General Assembly resolution. (A/RES/2832(XXVI 1971) This declaration called for great powers to eliminate military bases and weapons from the Indian Ocean and for all states to respect it as a zone, free from military rivalries and weapons of mass destruction. (But it had been violated by UK and subsequently by US by opening up a military base on Diago Garcia, right at the center of the Indian Ocean, with B-2 bombers capable of carrying 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs with a 10,000 km range.US used this base in their recent attack on Ira). I am lost to understand as to why India, as the biggest power in the region is keeping silent on this breach of UN resolution). Again, during her tenure as Chairman of the NAM, 1970/76, she had the NAM meeting in Colombo where 85 NAM leaders had grazed the occasion making it one of the most colorful events in the annals of the NAM.

Furthermore, Sri Lanka was the only country in the world, where British invaders could not conquer by war; (they annexed it in 1815 only by a mutually agreed friendly Convention between two equal Kingdoms by intrigue cleverly hatched by Doily and Brownrigg. It was blatantly and illegally violated by British, as preplanned, on Nov 21st 1818 by a Royal Proclamation, by which the British consolidated their arbitrary power, as if they had captured this country by defeating the Sinhalese by war, completely ignoring the Kandyan Convention which is legally valid even today, as an international Agreement between the Sinhale and the United Kingdom. Brownrigg resorted to the most inhuman and uncivilized methods in this dastardly act, which Daivy in 1821 had described in the following words.  The history of British rule in Sri Lanka after the 1818 rebellion cannot be related without shame. None of the members of the leading families in in the Kandyan country have survived. Smallpox and privations have destroyed those spared by the gun and the sword” In fact it was under this type of proclamations British ruled this country up to1948, under the iron boot.

Thus, the suppression of Kandyans by the British has gone down in world history as one of the most savages and cruel and barbaric operations ever known to man on earth.

Finally, and most importantly, this country was the only country in the world that was not conquered in war by the British, but only by deception and intrigue. Even to get that done three powerful colonial invaders had to fight for 310 years from1505- 1815, where the Sinhalese successfully kept the invaders at bay by keeping them confined to a narrow coastal belt all that time. This indeed was a unique achievement on the part of the Sinhalese in world history.

In this backdrop, I have no doubt that all NAM countries will readily welcome this idea. Such an institution will form a formidable forum for all NAM countries to voice their objections to the neo-colonial agenda of the colonial Atlantic civilizations. It will also open the gates for the whole world to know, how these colonial invaders had destroyed this country in particular and almost all countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East as well for centuries, in general, to enrich their treasuries at home and build up their Empires.

This subjugation was followed by the creation of a network of global colonial dependencies by the colonia powers as sources of cheap raw materials for their industries and markets in order to consolidate their dominance over the so called third world,  they themselves have created for 4 centuries by subjugation, repression,  exploitation,  subordination and murder to perpetuate their western colonial dependency trap at the expense of the so-called Third World or the Global South  as they sometimes call them, a diabolical creation of the Atlantic Civilization of Sea Pirate nations.

 I am confident, once we initiate this project, it could be expanded to attract the interest of all the so-called Global South countries, who had been the victims of colonialism for centuries and continue to be so even at present. The proposed could be developed as the Headquarters of an International Institute of Research on Colonial crimes in the Global South”

 As a first in this step, I suggest we first address a letter to the SRAAC General Secretary and convince him on the advantages of this proposal not only to expose colonial misdoings but also to keep all major powers led by the US, India and China with self-interest at bay, by asserting Sri Lanka as the hub in this pursuit in the Indo Pacific region by uniting the Global South under the banner of the Non Aling Movement. Our next step should be to summoning a joint meeting of the SAARC countries to work out the inter-governmental commitment modalities. The next step should be to summon a meeting of the NAM to build up the joint Global South movement. A strong NAM could even be a challenge to the New World Order that is struggling to be born, where Sri Lanka could be its epicenter.  As Shenali Waduge has correctly asserted such a strategy could even turn Sri Lanka in to a diplomatic, economic, moral hub of the 21st century in a New Brave Modern World and reassert Sri Lanka’s role as a neutral hub of dialogue in the Indo-Pacific. If Sri Lanka takes the lead, it will no longer be a pawn shuffled by others, but the square on which the next game of geopolitics is reset.”

*(A draft of the Proposed Project Report is annexed)