By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from June 21st, 2025 My rough English version of what General Ratnayake uttered in Sinhala does not at all do justice to his smart observation. I’ll explain this in a while. Let’s first take a look at the background to the event (namely, Charles Thomas’s ‘Sihinaya’ programme at the Padeniya […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The ‘Lanka Leader’ (ලංකා ලීඩර්) Sinhala language YouTube channel of May 27, 2025 published a news item  under a headline which may be translated as follows:  Public umbrage at General Daya Ratnayake for insulting the Mahanayake Theras” According to the YouTube channel, the retired former Army Commander  General Daya Ratnayake participated […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from May 22, 2025 For the twenty-two year old Anagarika Dharmapala, his encounter with the fifty-four year old Sir Edwin Arnold proved to be a pivotal moment in his life as a Buddhist revivalist and international Buddhist missionary (of his own characteristic Buddhist model). His acquaintance and his later mentor […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from Tuesday 13th May 2025 Light of Asia’s ‘stunning impact in Ceylon’ forgotten and the ‘Uncrowned King’ buried One of the dozen of books that Nehru got from his father, when he was imprisoned  in a Lucknow jail by the British in 1922, was a copy of The Light of […]

By Rohana R. Wasala This article is dedicated to the memory of Sri Lankan patriot, humanitarian, and friend of fellow global Buddhists, Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was instrumental in winning official recognition for Vesak as an international holiday at the United Nations in September 1999, on the eve of the 3rd Millennium Jairam Ramesh quotes […]

Rohana R. Wasala Lesson 2: Renewal begins with  children Timothy Snyder (55) maintained interaction with his two children (ten year old son and the younger daughter) while he was in a Florida hospital at the beginning of 2020.  No doubt, his wife Marci Shore (53), also teaching history  at Yale University then, helped this loving […]

Rohana R. Wasala Sri Lanka becoming a macbethian sick state? The traditional ritual of anointing medicinal oil (or ‘hisa thel gaema’ in Sinhalese, literally, applying oil to the head) is unique to the Sinhala Aluth Avurudda observances. This year, the ritual was performed at the auspicious moment of 9:04 a.m. (Sri Lanka time) on Wednesday […]

By Rohana R. Wasala  සුභ අලුත් අවුරුද්දක් වේවා! The Sinhala Aluth Avurudda or the Sinhalese New Year is celebrated in the month of Bak according to the traditional lunar calendar of the Sinhalese people. The name ‘Bak’ comes from the Sanskrit word ‘bhagya’ meaning ‘fortune’. The month of ‘Bak’ corresponds to April in the Gregorian […]

Rohana R. Wasala In the despicable absence of an urgent practical response on the part of the JVP Anura Kumara Dissanayake-led NPP government to the devastating 28th March earthquake in Myanmar, Hon. ex-president Ranil Wickremasinghe has made a very timely and sensible proposal regarding how to assist our disaster stricken fellow humans in that country. […]

By Rohana R. Wasala I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar……. My readers, alert as usual, may be wondering why this essay is entitled ‘The Case of Karu Jayasuriya’ instead of […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from Friday, March 7, 2025  Leaders should lead us as far as they can and then vanish. Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit.  Part I of this article ended with the following two sentences: When countries are unequal partners, the weaker nations become subject to various […]

Rohana R. Wasala After Ranil Wickremasinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake became president one after the other (in 2022 and 2024 respectively) without any sign of full-hearted public approval, though, their social media admirers shared posts that claimed that they both had made a substantial contribution to ending the separatist terrorism that had plagued the country […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from Monday, February 17, 2025 When I am formulated, sprawling on a pin” (from T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock’ first published 1915) In moments of self-reflection, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake probably feels the way Prufrock does, helplessly exposed to the probing, judgemental gaze of the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from  Friday, February 7, 2025 Since the JVP/NPP’s arbitrary decision to curtail former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s security and have him relocated to less expensive accommodation is now being legally challenged through an FR petition lodged with the Supreme Court in Colombo, nothing  more needs to be said here about it. […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Vinasha kale vipareetha buddhi” is an ancient Sanskrit proverb. It means: When a person’s doom approaches, their intellectual power becomes reversed/disoriented or turns against them (causing their destruction)”. This pithy saying seems to be as much applicable to incumbent president Anura Kumara Dissanayake as it once was to former president Mahinda […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Reading the detailed news article under the title ‘First Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in 105 years joins Oxford for MPhil in Buddhist Studies’  (The Island/December 6, 2024) was a refreshing experience for me, as it should’ve been for others among the readers who feel concerned about the future of the young […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island  A feature article on the Business pages of The Island of February 16, 2023 served as a formal event announcement for the  inaugural function of a new NGO called the People’s Convention on Good Governance (PCGG) that was scheduled to be held nine days later (i.e., on February […]

Rohana R. Wasala This is for the kind attention of my dear readers. When skimming through the article published in Lankaweb, I found some inadvertent errors that had survived my normal pre-emailing revision of the text. Please bear with me. I take this opportunity to amend only the following very misleading sentence that appeared towards […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Please ensure that none of these monks, not a single one, get exploited by politicians in the fast approaching election time and ever again in the future. No monks should be allowed to offer themselves as candidates or to collect funds for that purpose from donors. No monks should be allowed […]

By Rohana R. Wasala A four-member delegation of seemingly frustrated Buddhist monk activists led by Ven. Itthekande Saddhatissa Thera, General Secretary of the Ravana Balaya Organization,  called on the two Most Venerable Mahanayake Theras of the Siyam Nikaya in Kandy in their respective viharas (monasteries), as reported on a Colombo Today YouTube video dated June […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Poson was celebrated throughout the island by Sri Lankan Buddhists on the full moon poya day of June 21, 2024. Sri Lanka’s mainstream media including state media available online offered me little information about islandwide Poson observances that were held. It looks like state sponsorship of devotional activities connected with Poson […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Addressing a gathering as chief guest at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Sri Lanka Buddhist Society Moratuwa held at the Moratuwa Buddhist Society Hall on May 11, 2024, president Ranil Wickremasinghe pledged SLR 1 billion for research to ‘explore the connection between Buddha’s teachings and AI’ starting […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Praise to Kumar David (Quo vadis?/Sunday Island/June 2, 2024) for writing such an entertaining and informative essay. It is hoped that the ex-professor will forgive me for being so presumptuous as to comment on his writing.  He was grumpy on Vesak Day, he says, due to the rainy weather that prevailed […]

By Rohana R. Wasala It seems that persistent attacks directed in different forms at the historic Buddhist cultural establishment of Sri Lanka are based on the deliberate misconception or the distorted perception  that the Buddhist worldview is entirely pessimistic, life denying, backward, divisive, xenophobic, and that the demoralising defeatist attitudes supposedly adopted by the majority […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The following is a tribute to the late Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, the then foreign affairs minister of Sri Lanka, who won UN recognition for an international Vesak Day holiday twenty-four years ago. Buddhists annually celebrate the Vesak Full Moon Poya Day as the day that the Birth, the Enlightenment and the […]

by Rohana R. Wasala I was saddened by the unexpectedly rude sarcasm of the apparently perfunctory memorial feature The Jackson of all trades: A tribute to Jackson Anthony” (The Island/October 20, 2023) penned by Uditha Devapriya about the recently deceased celebrity. In my opinion, the article is hardly worthy of the dead icon, or of […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Aba – the mega Sinhala movie  Aba, the mega Sinhala movie directed by the versatile filmmaker Jackson Anthony, constitutes an impressive cinematic adventure for both its creators and its audiences. The film is a historical epic based on an independent and informed reconstruction of the Pandukabhaya story found in  The Great […]

By Rohana R. Wasala To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. This is an expanded and updated version of an article that I wrote in 2020 under the above title, which nevertheless has remained unpublished […]

By Rohana R. Wasala It would be obvious to the correctly informed impartial observer that Sri Lanka’s age-old Buddhist religious cultural establishment is under unprovoked attack both within the country and outside of it. The current controversy about Channel 4’s latest film on Sri Lanka concerning the Easter Sunday suicide bombings carried out by Islamic […]

By Rohana R. Wasala  At the conclusion of a thoughtful feature article under the title ‘A new identity for Sri Lanka’ in the Sunday Island of June 25, 2023, Uditha Devapriya, a young journalist that I admire for the quality of his writing, refers to what he calls a minority view that he shares about […]