Michael Roberts has noted that Senaka Weeraratna’s “Player Referral” concept was a historic paradigm shift that fundamentally altered sports officiating. [1, 2]
The Core of the Claim
The Concept: Sri Lankan lawyer Senaka Weeraratna first proposed the “Player Referral” system in a letter to The Australian newspaper on March 25, 1997.
The Legal Analogy: He used his legal background to argue that, like dissatisfied litigants in a court of law, players should have an appellate right to challenge a “trial” decision made by an on-field umpire.
Breaking Tradition: This concept shattered cricket’s absolute, centuries-old sacred tenet: “the umpire’s word is final”. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Michael Roberts’ Perspective
Historian and author Michael Roberts, writing as editor of Thuppahi, has highlighted that Weeraratna’s formulation was the first time in world sports history that a structured case was built around empowering the players themselves to trigger a technological review. While the International Cricket Council (ICC) had allowed umpires to initiate TV replays since 1992, Weeraratna’s design uniquely shifted the agency of appeal directly to the players. [1, 2, 3]
Global Legacy
The four pillars of Weeraratna’s 1997 blueprint—the direct right of appeal, the third umpire acting as an appellate judge, a strict limit on unsuccessful reviews, and utilizing technology to correct human errors—formed the direct basis of what the ICC officially implemented as the Decision Review System (DRS) in 2008–2009. This player-led review logic has since replicated across world sports, serving as the foundational philosophy behind VAR in football, challenge systems in tennis, and review protocols in rugby. [1, 4]
India’s decision to introduce massive incentives for shipbuilding component manufacturing is not merely an industrial policy. It is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s long-term maritime vision to transform India into one of the world’s leading naval and shipbuilding powers by 2047.
Recent reports in The Economic Times reveal that the Indian government is preparing new schemes with capital subsidies and production-linked incentives (PLI) to develop a complete shipbuilding ecosystem. (ETInfra.com)
This is not an isolated initiative. India has already approved a gigantic ₹69,725 crore maritime and shipbuilding development package, including financial assistance for shipyards, greenfield shipbuilding clusters, maritime investment funds, and shipbuilding development schemes. (ETManufacturing.in)
The strategic implications for Sri Lanka are enormous.
Colombo Dockyard’s Strategic Alliance with Mazagon Dock
The acquisition and strategic partnership between Colombo Dockyard PLC and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited can become a turning point for Sri Lanka’s maritime industry.
Mazagon Dock is one of India’s most important naval shipbuilders, with experience in building submarines, frigates, destroyers, and commercial vessels for the Indian Navy and international clients. Reports indicate that Mazagon Dock has already acquired a controlling stake in Colombo Dockyard and infused fresh capital while restructuring management. (Wikipedia)
This partnership gives Colombo Dockyard direct access to:
India’s rapidly expanding naval and commercial shipbuilding ecosystem
Advanced shipbuilding technology and management systems
Regional supply chains for components and marine engineering
Potential Indian Navy and regional commercial vessel projects
Access to South Asian and Indian Ocean maritime markets
Sri Lanka must understand that this is not simply a business deal. It is a geopolitical and industrial opportunity.
Why Sri Lanka Can Benefit
Sri Lanka occupies one of the world’s most strategic maritime locations in the Indian Ocean. With India expanding shipbuilding clusters in Tamil Nadu and other coastal regions, Colombo can become an auxiliary maritime engineering and repair hub supporting regional operations.
The Indian strategy resembles the successful South Korean shipbuilding model where clusters of ancillary industries manufacture engines, anchors, propellers, electrical systems, accommodation modules, steel structures, and marine equipment around major shipyards. (ETInfra.com)
Sri Lanka already possesses:
Skilled marine engineers and technicians
Strategic port infrastructure
Long experience in ship repair
Competitive labour costs
Geographic proximity to India’s southern shipbuilding corridor
If managed intelligently, Sri Lankan SMEs can integrate into India’s growing maritime supply chain by manufacturing:
Ship components
Steel structures
Accommodation modules
Electrical systems
Pipe systems
Marine outfitting products
Repair and retrofit services
Modi’s Maritime Vision Is Becoming Reality
Despite political setbacks in some Indian states such as Tamil Nadu, Prime Minister Modi continues to demonstrate long-term strategic thinking. His vision is clear:
Reduce dependence on foreign shipbuilders
Challenge Chinese maritime dominance
Expand Indian naval capability
Build a powerful indigenous shipbuilding ecosystem
Establish India as a dominant Indian Ocean maritime power
Many underestimated these ambitions a decade ago. Today, India is rapidly modernising ports, shipyards, inland waterways, naval infrastructure, and maritime manufacturing simultaneously.
This is no longer a dream. It is becoming reality.
The Warning for Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka must avoid the traditional bureaucratic delays and political indecision that have destroyed many industrial opportunities in the past.
If Sri Lanka acts quickly, Colombo Dockyard can become:
A regional repair and retrofit hub
A supplier to Indian shipbuilding clusters
A training centre for marine engineering
A strategic Indian Ocean maritime partner
If Sri Lanka fails to move decisively, other regional players will capture these opportunities.
The Indian Ocean is becoming the centre of global trade and geopolitical competition. Maritime industries will determine economic and strategic influence in the coming decades.
Sri Lanka must decide whether to remain merely a transit point — or emerge as an active maritime industrial nation.
Sri Lanka’s Richard in the Day, Daniel in the Night” Immigration Comedy
Sri Lanka proudly announces record tourist arrivals every month. Ministers smile, airports are busy, and hotels celebrate. But somewhere between the arrivals terminal and the Port City construction sites, something unusual seems to be happening.
A man arrives with a visa saying Assistant Cook.”
By morning, he is expertly preparing noodles for construction workers.
By midnight, perhaps he is allegedly preparing phishing emails for somebody’s bank account.
As the old Sinhala saying goes: Daaval Richard, Re Daniel.” (During the day he is Richard, at night he becomes Daniel.)
Today, perhaps it should be updated to: Morning Noodles, Night-time Hackers.”
Sri Lanka appears to have become the world’s easiest location for mysterious job descriptions.
One arrives as a cook.” Another as a cultural assistant.” One more as a technical adviser for dumplings.”
Yet somehow, many seem to possess advanced computer skills, multiple laptops, encrypted phones, and enough networking equipment to start a small intelligence agency.
Of course, genuine Chinese and Vietnamese workers contribute greatly to development projects. Many are hardworking and law-abiding. But recent reports and arrests involving cybercrime networks operating from apartments, hotels, and rented houses raise serious questions about loopholes in our immigration and monitoring systems.
When giant foreign-funded projects came to Sri Lanka — ports, conference halls, highways, towers, and now smart cities — we rolled out the red carpet. That is understandable. Development is necessary.
But perhaps we rolled it out so enthusiastically that we forgot to check who was walking on it.
In the old days, countries feared foreign armies entering through ports.
In modern times, perhaps the invasion comes through Wi-Fi routers.
Yesterday they built harbours.
Today they may be building server farms.
Tomorrow maybe somebody will accidentally mortgage the Central Bank through a mobile app.
One wonders whether some companies sponsoring temporary work visas even know who exactly they are bringing in. A company requests ten cooks; suddenly twenty IT-savvy culinary specialists” arrive carrying gaming computers larger than microwave ovens.
Sri Lankan officials then proudly stamp passports while asking the most important national security question:
Chicken or seafood noodles?”
Meanwhile, ordinary Sri Lankans struggle for visas to travel abroad. They produce bank statements, birth certificates, utility bills, school reports, blood groups, vaccination records, and perhaps even grandparents’ wedding photos.
But here, some foreigners seem to enter with a frying pan and leave with cryptocurrency profits.
The concern is not about nationality. Cybercrime has no nationality. Criminals can come from anywhere — local or foreign. The issue is whether Sri Lanka has adequate systems to monitor:
who enters,
who sponsors them,
where they stay,
what they actually do,
and whether cook” suddenly becomes cyber consultant” after sunset.
A modern economy needs foreign workers and investors. But it also needs intelligent immigration controls, inter-agency coordination, cyber monitoring, and accountability from companies sponsoring visas.
Otherwise, one day Sri Lanka may proudly advertise:
Visit Beautiful Sri Lanka — Beaches, Tea, Wildlife, and International Cybercrime Headquarters.”
Port City is supposed to become a global financial hub.
Let us hope it does not also become: Silicon Valley for Scam Artists.”
Sri Lanka must avoid paranoia, racism, or hysteria. Genuine investors and workers are welcome and necessary. But national security cannot operate on blind trust and noodle recipes alone.
Because in today’s digital world, the man stirring noodles in the daytime may also be stirring trouble online at night. And unfortunately,
And unfortunately, antivirus software alone cannot solve immigration policy failures.
The Supreme Court sentenced I.G.S. Prematilake, the former director of the National Institute of Education, to six years of rigorous imprisonment today (14) for contempt of court.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, including Justice Preethi Padman Surasena, delivered the verdict.
The charges against Prematilake involved his failure to implement a Supreme Court order related to the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination held in 2024.
Authorities filed the contempt of court case after he neglected to carry out the specific judicial directives pertaining to the exam.
The special committee appointed to investigate and provide recommendations regarding the release of 323 disputed containers from Customs convened yesterday (13) in Parliament.
Minister of Justice Harshana Nanayakkara chaired the session.
The meeting grew tense as heated debates broke out between government and opposition members while Nagananda Kodituwakku, General Secretary of Vinivida Peramuna, provided testimony.
This special parliamentary committee received its mandate to conduct a thorough investigation following the tabling of a previous report by a five-member Ministry of Finance committee that initially looked into the matter.
The government decided to conserve and officially gazette the Kapurella hot water wetland in Maha Oya, Ampara, which is recognised as the first and only geothermal wetland identified in Sri Lanka.
Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody and a group of officials visited the 20.1-hectare ecosystem in the Bogamuyaya Grama Niladhari Division on the 12th to observe the site.
While typical hot springs in the country take the form of small ponds, Kapurella features a unique marshy nature spread across a wide area.
Water heated by underground rock layers bubbles to the surface, creating a habitat for specialised bacteria, microorganisms, aquatic plants, and various bird species that withstand high temperatures.
The Ministry of Environment, National Water Resources Board, Central Environmental Authority, and the Department of Forest Conservation are currently making arrangements to declare the area a protected zone.
Before the LTTE asks the world to mourn its dead, it forced Tamil parents to mourn their living children. This is an ugly truth that LTTE fronts overseas can never excuse.
Do we empathize with the thousands of Tamil children taken from their homes, forced into LTTE uniforms, trained to kill, and indoctrinated to commit suicide if captured — or do we continue applauding annual placard campaigns staged comfortably in Western capitals by people who never sacrificed their own children to war?
The international community continues to hear endless slogans about Tamil suffering” and genocide.”
Yet very few ask one fundamental question:
What about the thousands of Tamil children denied their childhood by the LTTE itself?
For decades, Tamil parents in the North and East lived in fear. On the one hand LTTE claims to represent Tamils and yet Tamil parents lived in fear that their sons and daughters would be taken away by the LTTE. Many hid their children. Some stopped sending them to school. Others sent them away to relatives hoping to save them from forced recruitment.
Yet, thousands of Tamil children lost not only their lives, but their childhood itself.
That is the real genocide no one wants to discuss or count.
Reports over the years indicated that children as young as seven were trained as child soldiers, while various wartime assessments and rehabilitation records suggested that child recruits formed a significant percentage of LTTE ranks during different phases of the conflict.
Some estimates placed child recruits at nearly 30% of LTTE cadres at certain periods of the war.
If such estimates are even remotely accurate, then over nearly 30 years of conflict, the number of Tamil children who lost their childhoods to militarization, indoctrination, forced recruitment, displacement, and war could extend into the tens of thousands.
The loss was not merely in battlefield deaths.
It was in stolen education, broken families, psychological trauma, lost futures, lost professions, lost parents, and generations taught to normalize violence before understanding life itself.
A child denied education, denied family life, denied freedom, denied safety, denied the right to dream, denied the right to grow up naturally, and turned into an instrument of war has suffered one of the greatest crimes imaginable.
None of the placard holders in western climes experienced this fear.
What kind of liberation movement prepares children for suicide before preparing them for life?
Yet seventeen years after the defeat of the LTTE, the loudest international campaigns continue focusing almost exclusively on politically manufactured narratives while the suffering inflicted by the LTTE on Tamil children is deliberately pushed aside.
Where are the international campaigns for Tamil child soldiers?
Where are the annual vigils for children forcibly recruited into war?
Where are the UN reports naming the Tamil children abducted from homes and schools?
Where are the global protests demanding accountability for those who militarized an entire generation of Tamil youth?
Where is the UNHRC calling for accountability for kidnapping children & denying them their childhood?
Why are Tamil child soldiers absent from the placards raised annually in Geneva, London, Toronto, and other Western capitals?
Why are world leaders reluctant to make statements about the genocide of these children’s childhood?
Why are the children the LTTE destroyed not treated as victims worthy of justice?
Instead, every May, enormous effort goes into commemorating LTTE dead while presenting them all as civilians,” even though many died as armed cadres fighting to preserve a separatist militant movement. Let us never forget, the LTTE had a trained armed civilian force – none of these deaths can be categorized as civilian.
At the same time, mothers of rival Tamil militant groups killed by the LTTE are denied equal space to mourn publicly. When was mourning allowed only for LTTE dead?
Why should only LTTE-linked deaths dominate remembrance while Tamil victims killed by the LTTE itself remain politically inconvenient and invisible?
And when Tamil politicians participate in these LTTE annual events it clearly shows whose side they are on.
The truth is uncomfortable.
The LTTE did not merely recruit children. It normalized the destruction of childhood itself.
Children who should have become doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, accountants, scholars, and community leaders were instead:
handed rifles,
taught military drills,
indoctrinated into hatred,
trained for combat,
and given cyanide capsules before they were even old enough to understand life itself.
For decades, Tamil children in LTTE-controlled areas were transformed from students into fighters, from schoolchildren into militants, from sons and daughters into instruments of war.
Traditional Tamil civilization historically valued:
education,
family honour,
scholarship,
religion,
discipline,
artistic achievement,
and social advancement through learning.
The LTTE replaced these aspirations with a cult of armed struggle.
This was not liberation. This was organized child militarization.
A movement that kidnaps children, trains them for combat, and glorifies suicide cannot morally claim to represent freedom.
Many of these children came from poor, vulnerable families and low caste homes. Some were orphans. Some disappeared into jungle camps never to return. Some died anonymously. Some were shot trying to escape. Many families still do not know what happened to their children.
Is it because they did not matter that they were the guinea pigs of a greater separatist agenda?
Was this not why the Eastern cadres separated from LTTE realizing that they were always sent to the forefront knowing their ultimate destiny.
How many Tamil children died inside LTTE training camps?
How many were buried without names?
How many girls suffered sexual exploitation inside LTTE bunekers?
How many children were psychologically destroyed long before they entered battle?
Who speaks for these children today?
Why are the Tamil organizations silent on the human rights of these children?
Why do they blame their deaths to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces yet keep silent about their abduction from their parents & being denied their childhood?
What is this hypocrisy?
The overseas LTTE networks continue romanticizing militancy while raising their own children safely abroad with the freedoms they denied Tamil children in Sri Lanka.
Their children attended the best schools. Tamil child soldiers were denied schooling.
Their children wore graduation gowns. Tamil child soldiers wore cyanide capsules & LTTE uniforms.
Their children built careers. Tamil child soldiers were taught how to die.
This is the hypocrisy at the center of the LTTE narrative seventeen years after its defeat.
The overseas LTTE bandwagon exported emotion. Ordinary Tamil families paid with blood.
Even today, commemorations continue under LTTE flags, LTTE symbols, and imagery glorifying militants. Yet there are almost no memorials solely dedicated to the Tamil children whose lives were stolen by forced recruitment and indoctrination.
That silence itself is revealing.
Where are the flowers for:
the child recruits who never returned home,
the boys forced into frontline combat,
the girls denied safety and education,
the children shot while attempting escape,
the families broken permanently by forced recruitment?
Because acknowledging the scale of LTTE child recruitment destroys the carefully protected myth of the LTTE as a liberation movement.”
A movement that kidnaps children, trains them for violence, and glorifies suicide cannot morally claim to represent freedom, justice, or human rights.
Video Evidence & Testimonies on LTTE Child Recruitment
Seventeen years after the defeat of the LTTE, Sri Lanka faces not merely the challenge of preserving peace — but the challenge of defending truth against political mythology.
Real reconciliation cannot emerge from selective mourning. It cannot emerge from glorifying militancy while erasing the suffering inflicted upon Tamil children themselves.
The truth is painful but undeniable:
One of the greatest tragedies of Sri Lanka’s conflict was the genocide of Tamil childhood itself.
And until that truth is openly acknowledged, justice remains incomplete.
The public has every right to ask difficult questions about the Easter Sunday attacks and demand answers. Most importantly the victims, their families deserve truth, accountability & justice. In this framework media has an important role to play. Journalists must highlight the failures, expose inconsistencies, question institutions and examine those in positions of authority during the attacks. These are all facets of a functioning democracy. But there are some ethical lines that cannot be crossed.
The media is not the Police
The media is not the CID or the TID
The media is not the Attorney General’s Dept
The media is most certainly not the Judiciary, the Judge or the Jury.
Yet, increasingly sections of Sri Lanka’s media in particular the social media are moving beyond reporting into something far more dangerous – narrative adjudication.
Following Sri Lanka’s Easter attacks, multiple investigations, commissions, intelligence reviews, parliamentary committees, debates, arrests indictments & public debates have been taking place. Successive governments began opening separate investigations too. As such conflicting theories, different narratives competed for dominance. Facts were often pushed aside, while sensationalism replaced restraint.
Considering the legal complexities, it is unfortunate that even members of the State legal apparatus are playing politics in the manner of their submissions to Magistrates whereby they too are seen advancing narratives that influence the public without justifications.
Moreover, it is equally troublesome to see how certain members of numerous social media channels have in their hands key data pertaining to cases wherein no sooner they are taken up in courts they issue commentaries as hot news”.
How have they secured insider information”?
The issue becomes even more serious when examining how sections of the media are treating Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay.
Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay was reportedly arrested without a warrant. Questions have also been raised regarding denial of immediate access to legal counsel, concerns relating to his treatment while in custody, and the broader implications for due process and fundamental rights. Yet, how many media institutions treated these issues with the same urgency and outrage repeatedly displayed when amplifying allegations against him?
How many media channels seriously questioned whether allegations alone are sufficient to publicly portray an individual as the mastermind” of the Easter Sunday attacks before evidence has been tested in court?
How many questioned the evidentiary basis of claims made to foreign media platforms, including whether those making allegations could even establish key factual assertions regarding meetings, timelines, locations, or operational links?
How many questioned how an individual could be publicly framed as a central conspirator in matters relating to periods during which he was allegedly outside the country or not serving in operational command, intelligence oversight, or military decision-making capacities connected to the attacks?
Instead, portions of the media have allocated extensive airtime and emotionally charged programming towards constructing psychological certainty in the minds of the public — repeatedly presenting implication, suspicion, and narrative framing in ways that encourage audiences to emotionally conclude guilt long before any court of law has established it through tested evidence.
This is not responsible journalism.
This is the danger of narrative conditioning replacing due process.
Unknowingly the public are the subject of experimentation.
They are repeatedly fed speculations that turn to assumptions.
Before legal standards are applied, the storyline sold to the public becomes perceived as ‘evidence’.
This is where journalism has transformed into trial.
The process is not only dangerous it is political & psychological.
One of the most recognized psychological phenomena applicable here is the Illusory Truth Effect — the tendency for people to gradually believe a claim simply because they hear it repeatedly.
This becomes accepted as truth inspite of evidence disputing such.
When national tragedies occur the effect is devastating.
The public is repeatedly exposed to:
the same names,
the same theories,
the same imagery,
the same emotional framing,
and the same narrative emphasis.
Over time, repetition itself begins creating psychological certainty.
Not surprisingly, the same persons are masters at spreading these narratives.
Framing Effect is another concept used widely by media – by manipulating the information presented to influence audience to interpret what media wants audience to accept. Media does this by playing on the emotions of people and their personal hate or envy.
For example – describing an individual as a suspect” mastermind” creates very different psychological responses especially when media links it to a political party / politicians people are made to hate. This perception is built long before a court has reached final conclusions.
Another feature that media manipulates is the Confirmation Bias that human mind is vulnerable to – tendency to favor information that reinforces existing beliefs while unconsciously filtering out contradictory information. Audiences are repeatedly exposed to one dominant narrative framework, alternative interpretations or evidentiary complexities are given less or no space. The manner the media presenter address individuals is another giveaway. Emotion alters judgement.
Psychological studies on Priming show that emotionally charged exposure affects later interpretation and decision-making.
Easter Sunday has had people emotionally charged with narratives that borders on hate & emotion not logic and evidence.
This is why democratic societies created courts of law.
Courts exist because human beings are emotional. Courts exist because repetition is persuasive. Courts exist because public opinion is vulnerable to psychological influence.
If media were the Courts – many innocent people would have received death sentence.
A criminal court requires evidence tested under law. It requires admissible material, cross-examination, procedural safeguards, and proof beyond reasonable doubt.
Media operates differently.
They function through speed, emotional engagement, narrative coherence, audience retention, repetition, public reaction and hyped sensationalism.
That does not automatically make journalism irresponsible or ethical.
But it becomes dangerous when unresolved allegations are amplified so persistently that public familiarity gradually replaces evidentiary caution.
Repetition is not evidence.
Public exposure repeatedly to a theory media and other parties wish to promote does not transform it into judicial fact.
Emotional conviction is not legal conviction.
Sri Lanka’s media and vested parties are using Easter Sunday terror attacks to generate public demand for a singular villain, a hidden mastermind, or a simple explanation capable of emotionally resolving collective trauma erasing all the factual evidence in place.
When media compress investigation complexities into singular emotionally dominant narratives before legal finality exists, they risk distorting public understanding itself.
The danger is not merely reputational harm to individuals. The deeper danger is institutional.
If extremist networks continue to exist, national attention cannot remain fixated solely on constructing politically convenient narratives around individuals while ignoring the broader security realities that may still pose danger.
When media begin constructing public guilt independently of judicial process, the line between journalism and adjudication begins to erode.
This weakens public trust not only in the courts, but in the concept of due process itself. We can see this happening.
Sri Lanka does not need less journalism. Sri Lanka needs more responsible journalism.
Journalism must investigate fearlessly — but it must also respect the distinction between raising questions and delivering verdicts.
A terrorist threat that was ignored resulted in catastrophic loss of life. If extremist networks or operational structures continue to exist, national attention cannot remain fixated solely on constructing politically convenient narratives around individuals while ignoring the broader security realities that may still pose danger.
The Easter Sunday tragedy should not become a permanent theatre of speculative conviction based on biases of media owners or funding parties, where repetition substitutes for proof and emotional saturation substitutes for judicial determination.
Courts exist for a reason.
Because in any democratic society, guilt cannot be established through volume, repeated airtime, emotional persuasion, narrative dominance or building hatred for individuals.
Sri Lanka’s media has a vital role in protecting democracy. But democracy is not protected when journalism begins functioning as prosecutor, judge, and jury simultaneously.
Justice must ultimately rest on evidence tested under law — not on whichever narrative is repeated the loudest.
If media must act responsibly – the people watching/listening to media must act equally responsibly as well.
by, Professor Nishan C Wijesinha of the German School of Medicine
Kachchatheevu Islands are a 285-acre island located in the Palk Strait; which was recognized as Sri Lankan territory under the 1974 and 1976 maritime boundary agreements signed between India and Sri Lanka; in 1974 and 1976.
According to political scholars this was seen as a deliberate political move to unrest Tamil Nadu political powers: in fear of itself demanding independence.
This resulted in the curbing of the Tamil Nadu fisherman’s longest legitimate fisherman’s fundamental territorial rights; with the Kachchatheevu islands two agreements; signed between the then Prime Ministers Mrs. Indira Gandhi of India and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike; in 1974 and 1976.
This system change unfortunately is causing humiliation to the Tamil Nadu government as the Sri Lanka Navy’s operations are made to forcibly take into their custody these Tamil Nadu fisherman who enter into the territorial waters within the Kachchatheevu Islands.
I must also point out here that the long lasted Jaffna Peninsula and it’s Kingdom before it’s Dissolution by the Portuguese in 1619; was an exceptionally authentic Tamil Empowerment of South India.
Therefore I strongly point out to the facts straight and directly, “that what is historically evidential must not be made to be abrogated by the manipulation of political parties for their self recognition and governance”.
This short film is AI-generated for educational and memorial purposes. It was created with deep respect for the soldiers, civilians, and communities of Sri Lanka who suffered through the long civil conflict. This is not political content. It is a digital remembrance — meant to educate, honor, and never forget.
The Year: 1818. Sri Lanka’s first islandwide rebellion ignites. Kandyan chiefs, Sinhalese farmers, Buddhist monks, and villagers rise up against British rule. This is not just a battle of weapons — but of identity, land, and freedom. ⚔️
British troops march into Uva-Wellassa. 🏞️ Villages are burned. 🛖 Harvests are seized. ☠️ Thousands perish. But still, the spirit of rebellion burns. 👑 Keppetipola Disawe — a Kandyan Sinhalese noble turned rebel leader. 🧠 Monks of resistance — preaching freedom in the temples. 🌾 Peasants turned patriots — defending their soil with bows, blades, and bravery. 📽️
This is the story of the 1818 Uva-Wellassa Rebellion. Told through AI-powered cinematic recreation, deep historical memory, and respectful visual storytelling. Not fiction. Not propaganda. Just Sri Lanka’s past — preserved in motion. 🕯️
Who were the heroes history forgot? 🏹 Kandyan Sinhalese warriors ambushing redcoat patrols 🧒 Villagers sheltering rebels at night 🧘 Buddhist Monks inspiring hope through sacred verse 🔥 A nation refusing to kneel — even as it burned They fought not for empire… But for freedom of the people of Sri Lanka.
For identity. For Sri Lanka. 🇱🇰 📌
Disclaimer: This short film is AI-generated for educational and memorial purposes. It was created with deep respect for the soldiers, civilians, and communities of Sri Lanka who suffered through the long civil conflict. This is not political content. It is a digital remembrance — meant to educate, honor, and never forget.
The emergency intervention comes directly after the entire Executive Committee and President of SLC resigned on April 29, 2026. Following the mass resignation, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Sports established a Transitional Interim Committee. The visiting ICC officials are tasked with: [1, 2, 3]
Assessing Fairness: Evaluating if the new Transitional Interim Committee was appointed properly and fairly.
Reviewing constitutional changes: Checking proposals from the Ministry of Sports regarding vital amendments to the SLC constitution.
Setting election timelines: Establishing a strict time frame for fresh, democratic SLC elections if the interim guidelines meet ICC standards. [1]
The ICC has yet to issue an official public statement, and formal recognition of the new governance structure hinges entirely on the report submitted by this visiting delegation. [1]
Decision Review System (DRS)
The new Cricket Reforms Committee must raise the issue of the Intellectual Property Rights of Sri Lanka with respect to the unauthorized use of the Player – Referral system invented by Sri Lankan lawyer Senaka Weeraratna (1997) and nine years later (2006) rebranded by ICC as DRS (Decision Review System). The Foundational concept of DRS has roots in Sri Lanka. ICC must acknowledge this undisputed fact and pay due compensation to the author of DRS for use of his brainchild without a license, in the true Spirit of Cricket.
Recommended Strategic Actions for the Cricket Reforms Committee
To effectively elevate this dispute beyond a deadlocked intellectual property claim, the newly formed committee could pursue the following avenues:
Demand a Formal Commission of Inquiry: Use Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) voting leverage at ICC Annual General Meetings to demand an independent commission to investigate the true authorship and timeline of the player-referral system.
Escalate to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS): Push for a mutual agreement with the ICC to bypass corporate technical defenses and submit the compensation and naming rights dispute to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Seek State-Level Diplomatic Intervention: Partner with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Sports to elevate the issue as a matter of national heritage protection, lodging formal representations with global bodies like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Establish Local Recognition First: Lead by example within the country’s borders. The committee can mandate that Sri Lanka Cricket erect a permanent plaque at its headquarters honoring Weeraratna to establish formal institutional backing. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Sri Lanka has recorded 27,754 dengue cases and 14 deaths so far this year, with infections reported from all 25 districts, health officials said on Wednesday.
ri Lanka has recorded 27,754 dengue cases and 14 deaths so far this year, with infections reported from all 25 districts, health officials said on Wednesday.
The National Dengue Control Unit said the number of confirmed cases has increased compared with 2025.
According to the officials, the highest number of infections has been reported from the Western Province, while Matara, Galle, Ratnapura, Kalutara and Kandy have also recorded significant case numbers during the first four months of 2026.
Community Medical Specialist Priscilla Samaraweera of the National Dengue Control Unit said at a media briefing held at the health ministry that the start of monsoon rains could further increase transmission.
Officials said that breeding has increased more in schools, workplaces, religious institutions, government and private institutions than in households.
While improper waste disposal was identified as a key factor contributing to the spread of dengue, emphasising the need for strict public cooperation in prevention.
The public has also been advised to seek medical attention without delay if fever is accompanied by at least two symptoms such as muscle pain, headache, vomiting, and nausea or skin rashes.
Colombo, May 13 (Daily Mirror) – Over 10,000 patients are currently on waiting lists for heart surgeries in government hospitals, while the soaring cost of private sector treatment has made lifesaving procedures unaffordable for many Sri Lankans, according to the Medical and Civil Rights Doctors’ Trade Union Alliance.
Alliance Chairman Dr. Chamal Sanjeewa said the basic cost of bypass surgeries and stent procedures at private hospitals has now exceeded Rs. 1.5 million, with the total expense increasing further depending on the duration of hospitalisation and intensive care treatment.
He said nearly 10,000 patients are awaiting heart surgeries and related diagnostic tests at major state hospitals including the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, Teaching Hospital Kandy, Teaching Hospital Anuradhapura, Teaching Hospital Jaffna, Teaching Hospital Batticaloa and the Teaching Hospital Karapitiya.
Dr. Sanjeewa alleged that some patients have been forced to wait up to 29 months for surgeries, leaving many in distress and uncertainty.
He further claimed that although the President’s Fund had announced financial assistance for heart surgeries, there has been little evidence of such support being implemented in practice.
He also said that the absence of an effective national health insurance system has placed an additional burden on the public, especially those seeking treatment in the private healthcare sector.
Dr. Sanjeewa said shortages of essential surgical equipment in certain government hospitals and the need for patients to obtain some laboratory tests from private institutions have further worsened the difficulties faced by low-income patients seeking cardiac treatment.
Before the LTTE turned its guns on the Sri Lankan State, it turned them on Tamils.
Yet, even 17 years after LTTE defeat there are attempts to continue to portray LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil people”. This is deliberately suppressing an ugly truth: the LTTE’s first victims were Tamils themselves. Any Tamil who openly opposed, questioned or challenged the LTTE risked intimidation, isolation or elimination. Over time, fear replaced free expression. It became a case of either openly supporting LTTE or silently pretending to support them in order to survive. An entity seeking a separate state: self-determination for Tamils gave no democracy to Tamils. It was dictatorship and obedience based on fear.
LTTE began the systematic elimination of Tamil politicians, Tamil policemen, Tamil intellectuals, rival leaders of Tamil movements, ordinary Tamil civilians who refused to submit to its ideology. These killings were carried out even abroad. LTTE’s first killings overseas was not the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 but the 19 May 1982 assassination of Uma Maheshwaran in Pondy Bazaar, Madras in broad daylight. Fear replaced dissent. Assassinations replaced debate. Armed absolutism replaced democracy for Tamils. These facts have a way of being kept hidden from public discourse.
The 1st political assassination by the LTTE was that of Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappah. His assassination marked the beginning of a dark transformation within Tamil politics: disagreement would no longer be answered with debate but with bullets.
Thereafter, LTTE guns turned on Tamil policemen on duty in the North. Soon after it became moderate Tamil leaders, rival Tamil militant group leaders, public servants, academics & civilians. The LTTE gradually eliminated every independent Tamil voice that stood outside its control. By the time the war intensified Tamil society’s democratic and intellectual leadership was decapitated. Only those willing to be mouthpieces or pawns of the LTTE remained. Ironically, majority of the LTTE fronts operating overseas were created only after Prabakaran’s demise in May 2009.
The international media speaks volumes on Tamil suffering during the last phase of the conflict, but few speak of how Tamil society itself was internally terrorized for decades by the LTTE.
How many knew that parts of the North were denied electricity or any means of communication because the LTTE wanted to keep the people ignorant from what was happening outside their terrain. Many who saw the Sinhalese for the first time later were to tell how they were made to hate the Sinhalese.
This was how a movement claiming to fight for liberation systematically silenced the very people it claimed to represent.
The LTTE did not unify Tamil society. It monopolized it through fear & united those that had selfish agendas and ulterior motives.
This is why LTTE created TNA in 2001 and why TNA included LTTE was their sole representative” in their election manifestos. Any TNA leader going out of script knew his / her fate.
What kind of self-determination movement for their own people carries out assassination campaigns against fellow Tamil militants? How many are aware that the so-called Mullaivaikkal Commemorations as well as the Mahaveera Naal celebrations are only for LTTE dead and not for the Tamil men & women from EPRLF, PLOTE, TELO, EROS etc. The mothers of these movements are not allowed to openly mourn their children. Why should only LTTE mothers be allowed & not other mothers?
The LTTE understood that to dominate Tamil politics, all competing centres of influence had to be neutralized. There was no room for moderate politicians, Tamil intellectuals. They were all regarded as obstacles to the cause. How many of the Tamil elite can tap their conscience and admit that they too lived in fear.
Thus, seventeen years after LTTE defeat, one uncomfortable question remains unanswered by LTTE supporters worldwide: If the LTTE truly represented the Tamil people, why did LTTE fear Tamil dissent more than anyone else?
The LTTE’s brutality against Tamils extended far beyond assassinations.
Tamils lived under intimidation, forced taxation and extortion. They could not leave the North without some form of proof they would return.
Parents hid their children to prevent forced recruitment. Young boys and girls were taken into militant camps – some never to return.
Yet another ugly fact is kept hidden. These kidnapped children came from low-caste & poor homes. Some were orphans kept in orphanages in the middle of the jungles and administered by those in cloaks. No one has counted how many children were taken to be turned into child soldiers. No one has counted how many Tamil children died in these terror training camps. No one has counted how many Tamil children were shot dead trying to flee & return home. No one has counted how many female child soldiers also functioned as comfort women for men inside bunkers.
All those displaying placards in Geneva and the worlds capitals never ask these questions on behalf of their Tamil children. Why not? Why are Tamil child soldiers omitted from human rights slogans? Weren’t these Tamil children denied their fundamental rights to live as children, to study, to play, to be loved by their parents to dream of becoming somebody one day instead of being confined to the thick jungles and killing for a living. One of the greatest tragedies of the conflict was the destruction of Tamil childhood itself. What could these generations of youth become if they did not hold a gun?
They would have been doctors, teachers, engineers, accountants, artists and scholars. Instead they were kidnapped, handed rifles, a tiger uniform, sent to the jungles, taught to kill & commit suicide biting cyanide capsules.
This was not liberation. This was the militarization of an entire generation.
The so-called liberation movement transformed Tamil civilian life into a militarized existence – obedience became their survival. The LTTE supporters overseas did not mind so long as this suffering enabled them to obtain asylum and refugee status.
The relief that came in May 2009 understandably was not vocalized. LTTE ground forces was eliminated but the LTTE political force remained. The remnants continue glorifying the movement from foreign shores, happy to come out for anniversary dates in their numbers, make profits selling their LTTE souvenirs, hold events charging entry fees – continuing LTTE campaigns is another lucrative market. As in all cases someone has to foot the bill while others benefit.
The loudest voices demanding separation of Sri Lanka ironically come from individuals and organizations safely living abroad. They were always away from the battlefield. They never sacrificed their children, they never cared that the child soldiers had no education, no right to live as a child – but they sent their children to the best of schools, dressed them in the best of clothes and now get them to do social media reels.
Ordinary Tamil families lost their children. Did the LTTE fronts overseas send a penny to these families who lost their children from the LTTE kitty? Did these LTTE fronts send monthly stipends to the LTTE members injured or maimed for life? Yet they are happy to take flight to Geneva, hold placards, romanticize separatism overseas but they never sacrificed their own sons or daughters except for media lens.
The LTTE fronts overseas are guilty of exporting emotion
Ordinary Tamils paid with blood.
Another truth rarely discussed is how LTTE emerged – within long-standing internal social frustrations inside Tamil society itself. What was originally acts of violence against their own was quickly repackaged into a militant outfit & branded anti-Sinhalese and for a separate state. This served the numerous co-partners to the cause that propped LTTE and its leadership. LTTE however did not reform society, LTTE destroyed its internal balance altogether. One-man authoritarian rule was centred around fear, martyrdom and militarized obedience. The only plus point of this was the manner Prabakaran was able to keep geopolitical hawks out of the North and Eastern terrain for 30 odd years. Considering the manner geopolitics are creeping and taking over Sri Lanka’s national assets and natural resources post 2009 in these areas – if Prabakaran was not around we may not even have a North or East by now.
Where external actors failed to exploit Sri Lanka’s natural resources/assets, they used this phase to exploit Sri Lanka’s ethnic tensions for political & geopolitical interests.
Regional politics in India, emotional mobilization from Tamil Nadu, foreign lobbying structures, and overseas propaganda networks all contributed to sustaining separatist narratives long after ordinary Sri Lankans desperately wanted peace.
External actors treated Sri Lankan Tamils as geopolitical instruments while ordinary Tamil families carried the suffering.
Even today, seventeen years after the defeat of the LTTE, commemorations continue under LTTE flags, LTTE symbols, and imagery glorifying militants.
Yet one must ask:
Where are the memorials for Tamil victims killed by the LTTE?
Where are the candles for Tamil policemen murdered by LTTE?
Where are the tributes to moderate Tamil leaders silenced by assassination?
Where are the memorials for children forcibly recruited into war?
Where are the flowers for Tamil civilians shot while trying to flee LTTE?
If these commemorations are truly about civilians, why are the symbols always those of the LTTE?
The answer is uncomfortable but increasingly clear.
For many political actors, the goal is no longer mourning. It is narrative control.
Seventeen years after the defeat of terrorism, Sri Lanka faces a new battle — not against bombs and bullets, but against the rewriting of history itself.
The defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 was not the defeat of the Tamil people.
It was the end of a movement that had already turned against the Tamil people long before the conflict itself started or ended.
Tamils should never forget that their own politicians travelled the seas to object to the 1957 Social Disabilities Act that enabled Tamil low castes to enter schools and obtain education. It was not the Tamil political leadership that paved way for low caste Tamils to gain education – it was the Sinhalese.
Real reconciliation cannot be built upon selective memory, political mythology, or the glorification of terror.
It must begin with the courage to tell the truth.
And the truth is this:
The LTTE’s first victims were Tamils and when considering the men, women, children kidnapped to become militants – how much have Tamils lost to a conflict created for whom & against whom?
Former Member of Parliament Udaya Gammanpila addressed the media after providing a statement to the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID), outlining a series of claims connected to investigative material arising from the Easter Sunday terror investigations. What he revealed cannot be lightly dismissed because Sri Lanka has already paid the price once for ignoring warnings. The Easter Sunday massacre of 21 April 2019 did not occur because there were no warnings. It occurred because warnings — both internal and external — were ignored, delayed, downplayed, politicized, or not acted upon with the urgency required. That is the core issue now confronting the country once again.
Why is Gammanpila being questioned instead of the claims being investigated?
If the CID can:
arrest the former intelligence head under the PTA,
obtain Presidential approval for 90-day detention orders,
travel overseas to record statements from individuals making allegations to foreign media,
then why are former MP Gammanpila’s warnings being subjected primarily to questioning instead of a parallel national security investigation into the claims he has presented?
Why is the Cardinal & Cyril Gamini silent about these warnings as well?
This is the question the public must ask.
Especially when:
the Easter Sunday Commission already confirmed intelligence failures,
repeated pre-2019 warnings existed,
and Sri Lanka now faces fresh public warnings regarding extremist radicalisation and existing hidden unfinished operational networks.
Warnings existed long before Easter Sunday
Sri Lanka cannot pretend today that concerns regarding extremist religious-radicalisation suddenly emerged a few years before 2019.
Among those who repeatedly raised alarms were:
Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero
who publicly warned for years about rising extremist ideology and foreign-influenced radicalization – the response was to accuse him of creating tensions between communities.
Critics often dismissed these warnings as attempts to create communal tension, resulting in insufficient attention being paid to extremist elements operating within small radicalized circles rather than entire communities.
Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe who, as Justice Minister in 2016, warned that 32–38 Sri Lankan Muslims together with family members had reportedly travelled to Syria to join ISIS and also raised concerns regarding foreign preachers arriving on tourist visas,
theState Intelligence Service Sri Lanka
which repeatedly compiled intelligence reports and circulated warnings prior to Easter Sunday. They were secret units shadowing targeted individuals – these units were disbanded and the officers imprisoned in 2015 with regime change. Another factor that crippled intel of fundamentalists allowing them to roam without monitoring.
Rohan Gunaratna has recently made public warnings of a likely ISIS attack.
If those warnings had been properly acted upon:
would Zaharan Hashim have remained operational?
would two arrest warrants issued after 2017 have failed to result in his arrest?
would extremist training structures have expanded unchecked?
would Easter Sunday have happened at all?
These are legitimate national questions.
The unresolved questions surrounding the investigation
Serious concerns now arise from the direction of the present investigation.
If:
the 24 individuals facing indictments over Easter Sunday have not implicated this newly targeted third suspect”,
and if earlier TID files relating to Zaharan were not acted upon by the AG’s dept despite the gravity of the intelligence,
then what exactly is driving the current investigative focus?
The public deserves answers grounded in evidence, not political theatre.
What Gammanpila told the media
According to Gammanpila:
Timeline of alleged extremist training network
Operational period allegedly ran from:
November 2017 to 2019
First identified camp:
Rambewa, Medawachchiya (November 2017)
A total of:
17 training camps were allegedly identified through witness statements.
Basis of the figures
The figures cited were allegedly derived from:
witness statements,
terrorism-related testimonies,
and references summarized in the Easter Sunday Presidential Commission material.
Witnesses reportedly:
had no written attendance records,
relied on memory-based estimates.
Thus, the numbers represent approximations, not certified registries.
These were described as part of a broader 17-camp structure.
Total estimated training population
The aggregated witness-based estimate allegedly ranged between:
339–406 individuals.
According to the statement: trainees were allegedly required to choose whether they would function as:
suicide attackers, or
armed operatives/gunmen.
No confirmed breakdown allegedly exists identifying how many selected each role.
However, Gammanpila argued that under a worst-case assessment, the entire pool must be treated as potentially suicide-oriented until proven otherwise.
Alleged Dalada Perahera targeting plan
Gammanpila further referred to affidavit-based material allegedly discussing:
targeting of the Dalada Maligawa / Dalada Perahera.
Individuals allegedly referenced in statements included:
Zaharan
Hasthun
Millan
Mohammad Anwar
Riskan
Rilwan
He alleged that statements described a two-stage attack model:
Stage 1
Suicide bomb attacks in crowded public gatherings
Objective:
mass casualties and injuries
Stage 2
Follow-up attacks using:
motorcycle bombs,
van bombs,
targeting:
injured victims,
hospitals,
responders and rescuers.
He stated these materials were submitted to the CID.
These remain allegations and investigative claims, not judicial findings.
Rilwan and the alleged continuation narrative
According to the press conference:
black robes used in oath-taking videos had allegedly been prepared and recorded prior to the attacks,
materials were allegedly handed to Rilwan,
who later reportedly died in the Sainthamaruthu explosion together with 17 others.
Gammanpila further claimed that prior to suicide, a video message allegedly declared:
Even if we die, our struggle will continue.”
This, according to him, is why present warnings cannot simply be ignored as political rhetoric.
The central warning
The former MP’s core warning was direct:
Sri Lanka may still face:
radicalised extremist remnants,
ideological sleeper structures,
and individuals who were trained but never operationally identified.
He argued that:
no proper rehabilitation framework exists,
no long-term deradicalisation strategy has been implemented,
and successive governments failed to confront the ideological dimension seriously.
The dangerous diversion
Instead of confronting these questions directly, there now appears to be a growing tendency across sections of social media and political discourse to:
discredit,
ridicule,
or character-assassinate
those issuing warnings.
The same pattern occurred when Gnanasara Thero raised concerns years earlier (2011).
The issue is not whether one likes or dislikes the messenger.
The issue is whether the warning itself contains facts requiring urgent investigation.
Those dismissing the warnings must explain why allegations of continuing radicalisation and extremist operational remnants should not warrant serious investigation.
Before Easter Sunday, many of the warnings remained confined within intelligence channels, security reports, ministerial discussions, and internal communications.
The general public did not fully know:
the extent of the extremist threat,
the intelligence alerts,
the foreign links,
the radicalization concerns,
or the operational failures taking place behind the scenes.
That lack of public awareness has allowed many present-day mastermind narrators” to continuously redirect the national conversation entirely toward political theories while avoiding serious attention to the secret extremist infrastructure itself.
However, the situation today is fundamentally different.
Today:
warnings have been made publicly,
names, locations, timelines, and allegations have been openly discussed,
concerns have been formally submitted to investigative authorities,
and the public is now fully aware that allegations exist regarding continuing extremist radicalization and unfinished operational structures.
There are volumes of details in the commission/committee reports.
Therefore, if authorities fail to properly investigate these warnings, and if public figures continue diverting national attention entirely toward politicized narratives while dismissing or trivializing operational extremist concerns, they cannot later claim ignorance in the event of another tragedy.
This is the critical distinction.
Before Easter Sunday:
the public did not know the full extent of the warnings.
After these public statements:
no one can now say they were unaware that warnings existed.
That is why those who continuously push only a political mastermind” narrative while refusing to equally confront the extremist network allegations being publicly raised today must understand the responsibility attached to their conduct.
If future violence were to occur after such public warnings:
the question would inevitably arise whether national attention was once again diverted away from investigating potential operational threats and their secret cells.
This is not an argument against investigating any political dimension.
It is an argument against ignoring, minimizing, or politically overshadowing warnings relating to extremist operational structures and radicalization risks that are now already in the public domain.
Sri Lanka ignored warnings once and paid a price with lives.
The country cannot afford to normalize selective blindness a second time.
A question Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and Fr. Cyril Gamini cannot avoid
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and Cyril Gamini Fernando have consistently pursued the question of a political mastermind” while downplaying the existing Islamic extremism. They congratulated Asad Maulana’s C4 documentary and even forgave all of the suicide bombers.
But if:
extremist operational networks,
religious-based ideological radicalisation,
foreign linkages,
and unfinished terror structures
continue to exist as alleged, then national attention cannot remain confined solely to political narratives while ignoring the operational extremist nexus itself. Every attack cannot be passed off to a politically-linked mastermind” and then expect investigative agencies to fit or adjust evidence to match that narrative, without first presenting credible material to justify and commence such an investigation.
If another attack were ever to occur after such public warnings were openly made, those who consistently redirected national attention away from investigating secretly operating extremist cells would inevitably face serious public scrutiny when critical warning signs are once again minimized.
Sri Lanka ignored warnings once and paid with innocent lives.
The country cannot afford another failure where ideology, extremism, and radicalization warnings are overshadowed by selective political narratives.
If Norway is truly interested in serving the people of Sri Lanka rather than clandestinely
helping sectarian interests leading to fragmentation and balkanization of the country on a platform of ‘ Divide and Rule’ , as was done in the past, it must shift its role from that of a ‘peace mediator’ toward pursuing colonial reparations from fellow European nations. In other words, it must begin to address the long – term historical grievances of the people of Sri Lanka that suffered heavily during the colonial era i.e., the darkest chapter in Ceylon’s history ( 1505 – 1948).
Norway must take unequivocal steps to obtain reparations from the three colonial western countries namely Portugal, Netherlands and Britain for the crimes against humanity they inflicted particularly on the Buddhist Sinhalese during a period of 443 years (1505 – 1948) of colonial rule. Systemic Repression of Buddhism was the common distinguishing feature of Western colonial rule. All colonial powers were unreservedly united on this score.
Norway must unhesitatingly obtain for Sri Lanka from Portugal, Netherlands, and Britain the following requested items and actions:
Formal Apology and Recognition: A public apology and formal recognition from the governments of Portugal, the Netherlands, and Britain for the destruction of “man-made as well as natural foundations of life” in Ceylon between 1505 and 1948.
Repatriation of Cultural Artifacts: The return of sacred objects, artifacts, and cultural treasures looted or removed from Sri Lanka during the colonial period.
* Restitution for Religious Destruction: Specific restitution or compensation for the systematic destruction of hundreds of Buddhist temples, and Buddhist educational institutions (pirivenas) between 1505 and 1658 by the Portuguese
* Economic Compensation: Financial compensation for the long-term economic consequences of colonialism, which included the exploitation of land, resources, and the imposition of punitive taxes especially on the Buddhist Sinhalese.
· * Restoration of Land and Rights: Action to reverse or compensate for the displacement and marginalization of local populations mainly Kandyan Sinhalese peasantry caused by colonial land policies, particularly in the Kandyan regions. [1, 2, 3, 5, 7]
· * Reparations Committee – Help establish a Reparations Committee to function as the pivot of this endeavour to pursue compensation from Western nations.
· * A Proportion of Museum Revenue: Requests that colonial powers provide a portion of the revenue earned from exhibiting looted Sri Lankan ( Sinhalese made ) artifacts in European museums. .
· It is worthy of note that the Campaigns for Reparations and Apology in former Western colonies in Black Africa, Caribbean and even India (in Asia) are led by lawyers drawn from law schools and the legal profession in the respective countries. Their protest literature and law school conversations reflect a fighting spirit to confront the ‘ bad guys’ from foreign countries who invaded and destroyed the foundation of their civilizations and religions. They are fighting for Restitutio in integrum (often rendered as restitutio ad integrum) which is a Latin legal phrase meaning “restoration to original condition”. It is an admirable fight for Justice.
· In Sri Lanka we are taught Human Rights ad nauseam without any reference to the suffering of our people during the colonial era (1505 – 1948) and our collective right to restitutio ad integrum. A failing of leadership in the past in legal educational institutions on this score since the grant of independence in 1948 is not a viable excuse for not starting the demand for compensation afresh today.
· “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. It emphasizes that having a clear, purposeful direction is essential for progress in educational institutions.
The rise and fall of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar remains one of the darkest chapters in modern criminal history. Escobar did not merely run a drug empire — he built a parallel power structure through fear, intimidation, bribery, and murder. Judges were assassinated. Journalists were silenced. Police chiefs were targeted. Politicians lived under constant threat. Even ordinary citizens became collateral damage in a system where criminal power attempted to overpower the State itself.
Colombia during that era became a frightening example of what happens when organized crime infiltrates institutions and when fear prevents society from speaking openlySri Lanka is obviously not Colombia of the 1980s. Yet recent incidents involving mysterious killings, underworld violence, suspicious deaths, intimidation, political patronage networks, and attacks on media personnel have raised disturbing questions among the public.
People increasingly ask:
Why are certain investigations delayed?
Why do some criminal figures appear untouchable?
Why do witnesses fear speaking?
Why do journalists and social activists sometimes operate under pressure?
Why do suspicious deaths quickly disappear from public discussion?
Whether these incidents are connected or isolated is for law enforcement and the judiciary to determine. However, the growing public perception of fear and impunity itself is dangerous for democracy.
The lesson from Escobar’s Colombia is not merely about narcotics. It is about how criminal influence grows when:
institutions weaken,
political patronage protects wrongdoing,
fear silences honest officers,
and society gradually normalizes violence.
One of the most frightening aspects of the Escobar era was that many ordinary citizens initially tolerated him because he funded housing projects, football fields, and welfare activities. Criminal power often attempts to buy legitimacy through philanthropy while simultaneously destroying the rule of law behind the scenes.
Sri Lanka must be careful not to drift into any culture where:
criminals become celebrities,
political connections override justice,
or violence becomes an accepted tool of influence.
The country has already suffered decades of conflict, terrorism, political unrest, and economic hardship. The people deserve a society governed by transparent laws and accountable institutions — not fear.
The responsibility now lies with:
the Police,
the Judiciary,
independent media,
civil society,
and political leadership
to ensure that no parallel culture of intimidation takes root.
History shows that once organized criminal influence penetrates deeply into governance and public life, reversing the damage becomes extremely difficult.
Sri Lanka must learn from the mistakes of other nations before it is too late.
The USA-owned platform, WordPress, has ‘reinstated’ e-Con e-News (ee) after an almost 2-day suspension. No reasons have been given. ee is seeking alternate platforms, so as not to be subject to the whimsy of some decadent hand. Our latest blog was about who exactly rules the USA, as it seeks to further dominate Sri Lanka. Check it out. It’s intriguing. Perhaps the US wishes to tell ee it already owns Sri Lanka. We are fully aware that the USA seeks to control the internet, as much the waterways that surround us, treating this ‘highway’ much like the English claimed the ‘Kandy Road’ – to push its import-export swindle between plantation and port. ee has sought to use this ‘new’ road, to do something different. We have used the medium as a carriageway to promote a real economy, a modern industrial (machine-making-machine) society. We have sought to promote a real literacy, an industrial knowhow, not the type of innumerate literacy that receives awards for who can disparage a people or a nation best – a people and a nation who have been withstanding, and seek to recover from, a siege of over 500 years. We have sought to enable a national conversation about industrialization, fully aware that a merchant and money-lender and multinational corporation dominated media seeks to prevent such a dialogue and only wish to maintain, at all cost, the colonial status-quo, which is now perpetuated by India, the USA, the EU and its local ‘chamber’ orchestras and think tanks, etc…’
Please keep supporting us, especially with your thoughts and comments
Calls for reducing or removing Security Forces camps in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province in particular the Jaffna & Wanni security forces, are being promoted as post-conflict normalization, reconciliation, and civilian land release. These developments must be read as part of Sri Lanka’s broader transition from sovereign security control toward system-based dependency systematically instigated across Sri Lanka but visibly seen in the North and East strategic arc.
This issue cannot be treated lightly. Such a decision cannot ignore wider geopolitical reality and implications that are being built around regional connectivity.
growing external economic and infrastructure penetration
maritime competition in the Indian Ocean
strategic interest in Sri Lanka’s northern maritime corridor
evolving regional power influence
cross-border logistics links
cross-border people connectivity
The first and most visible pressure points of this transformation are Jaffna and Wanni, where military reduction, land release, and conversion of strategic infrastructure are already being advanced.
This is not symbolic.
It is structural.
It affects Sri Lanka’s:
sovereignty
maritime control
territorial continuity
national security resilience
unity, sociocultural and political integrity
Jaffna and Wanni are not post-war zones.
They are part of Sri Lanka’s most sensitive and vital northern frontiers.
WHY MILITARY PRESENCE WAS PLACED IN THE NORTH – IS REASON WHY MILITARY PRESENCE SHOULD REMAIN
Sri Lanka’s security doctrine (N.Q. Dias era) identified the North as a permanent vulnerability due to:
proximity to South India
illegal maritime movement
illegal immigration
smuggling routes across the Palk Strait
external influence exposure
strategic maritime access
This was never temporary.
It was a security doctrine that was relevant then and is relevant now and crucial in the foreseeable future. This is so because the competition for dominance over the Indian Ocean region is at a crossroads between great powers, shaping the future of our country.
The Northern Areas, especially the Wanni jungles, became more critical during the separatist conflict when:
arms smuggling
offshore logistics
external coordination networks
jungle hideouts and most importantly, terrorist training bases were actively used.
The situation was compounded by short-sighted decisions of the post-Sirimavo government that removed some of the security camps in the Northern areas, enabling a Tamil-separatist movement to cross the shore, hide, build logistics, train and attack the Sri Lankan state.
WHY ARE THE NORTHERN AREAS STILL STRATEGICALLY VULNERABLE AND CRITICAL FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
Today, the same vulnerabilities continue in modern form:
illegal fishing and resource exploitation
narcotics trafficking across Indian Ocean routes
human smuggling networks
maritime intelligence gaps
external influence activity
competition among external powers for dominance of marine & natural resources within the EEZ.
The North + East form a single strategic arc linking:
Palk Strait
Bay of Bengal approaches
Indian Ocean shipping lanes
Trincomalee deep-water harbour region
This is why the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord referenced both North & East.
Weakening the North+East strategic arc directly impacts Sri Lanka’s:
National security & strategic resilience for the national defence posture against separatism and extremism
maritime sovereignty
trade security
energy routes
national defence posture
Cultural integrity, unity & the safeguarding of vital national heritage sites.
For the island nation of Sri Lanka:
The keys to enter & exit must not only legally belong to Sri Lanka but also be under its exclusive non-negotiable control.
Maritime security = National survival of Sri Lanka.
SECURITY FORCES = NATIONAL RESILIENCE SYSTEM
Security Forces in the North are not just military units.
They provide:
coastal surveillance
anti-narcotics operations
intelligence networking & monitoring
disaster and pandemic response
emergency logistics
humanitarian assistance
dominance & defence of vital national infrastructure and assets
During COVID-19 and floods, they:
ran entire logistics operations
supported isolated communities
maintained essential services
enabled national emergency response – filling a key gap in national civilian capacity & capability.
Security Forces provide – Cultural and Civilizational Security Layer
protection of archaeological sites in North
security for pilgrimage routes
protection of Buddhist theroes under constant attacks
prevention against vandalism of national heritage & ruins
Land encroachment and the prevention of illegal settlements that affect natural population growth & expansion.
Security Forces’ role in safeguarding heritage, civilian rights & religious movements.
These sites form part of Sri Lanka’s civilizational security architecture in the Northern Frontier, one that is constitutionally binding.
Removing them removes more than military presence”.
It removes State identity, erases history and most importantly, the capacity for crisis response & people’s hope for safety.
It threatens and removes state capacity during crisis response & people’s hope for safety and security; if denied, a failure in providing human security for the citizens is an inalienable and undeniable responsibility of a State.
WHAT REDUCTION ACTUALLY MEANS
If Northern military infrastructure is reduced, Sri Lanka will face:
weaker coastal surveillance
slower response to trafficking networks
intelligence blind spots while enabling space for the growth of external & spy/intelligence networks.
reduced disaster response capability
loss of rapid deployment readiness
erosion of state presence in frontier zones
creates gaps in the erosion of national identity, history, heritage and people’s rights to safety and security. Thirty years of separatist conflict and religious extremism have provided an abundance of painful lessons & experiences.
Strategic Loss of Palali Military Air Capability
Palali airbase conversion risk (transferring a military base into a civilian airport expansion pressure)
Loss of rapid military airlift capability
Loss of evacuation and reinforcement corridor
Irreversibility of civilian conversion of military airbases
Impact on Jaffna Security Forces HQ strategic depth
Conversion of Palali airbase into a strategic air transportation hub aligned with Indo-Pacific security frameworks, including QUAD and Indian Ocean Region (IOR) connectivity and logistics architectures, risks progressively reducing Sri Lanka’s independent control over critical northern air mobility infrastructure: more critically impacting Sri Lanka’s traditionally held non-aligned policy.
The Palali airbase conversion is not an administrative upgrade but a strategic reclassification of a wartime military asset into a civilian airport, permanently reducing the State’s rapid military airlift capability, later to be converted into a regional air hub for external use.
Reduction of the Jaffna Security Forces HQ and conversion of Palali airbase must be viewed as interconnected strategic shifts, not as separate administrative decisions and as seriously undermining Sri Lanka’s national security.
More critically:
Once dismantled, operational capability cannot be quickly rebuilt, and what about the cost to rebuild and relocate such infrastructure elsewhere, and the time involved?
What about the security gaps during the transition period?
Does the Sri Lankan government have the fiscal capacity and the will to undertake such a strategic transformation of the existing national defence system, which was built over decades based on battle experience?
A more important question is whether the external powers with vested interests will allow such commitment by the Sri Lankan government to align and restore its defence system strategically, which might undermine their geostrategic and geopolitical interests?
Closure of Security Camps in Jaffna & Wanni results in loss of:
terrain knowledge
intelligence networks
local operational familiarity
logistical depth
Abandoning strategically important defence grounds that were defended at the cost of many young and brave lives.
These take decades to develop, not months, and billions of government money that could otherwise be invested in state capacity building for national development.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCE & SOFT TRANSFORMATION
The North sits at a strategic intersection of:
India proximity
Indian Ocean access
post-war reconstruction flows
infrastructure and connectivity projects
Geopolitical influence today comes in different forms.
Infrastructure
development funding
diplomacy
education networks
cultural & religious transformation
all types of connectivity corridors
The question is not who controls land”.
It is:
Who shapes systems operating on that land?
Sovereignty today is not only about land ownership. It is about who operates the systems that function on that land: logistics, data, transport, energy, and connectivity networks.
Modern sovereignty is determined not by territorial ownership alone, but by control over operational systems running on that territory — roads, railways, airports, and other logistics infrastructure; data, energy, and connectivity networks; and, more significantly and harmful
cultural penetration & externally-led sociocultural reshaping.
This aspect reshapes people’s thinking and realigns them to a foreign-controlled model.
Sri Lanka may well legally control the land, but what happens when systems operating on that land are controlled by external forces, and once outsourced, Sri Lanka has little or no say!
WHO IS PUSHING FOR THE REDUCTION OF SRI LANKA’S MILITARY FROM JAFFNA & WANNI?
Pressure for reduced military presence comes through:
demilitarisation and defence reform frameworks
UNHRC post-conflict reconciliation narratives
devolution advocacy groups
external policy influence networks
diaspora-driven political campaigns
incremental integration based on connectivity, infrastructure, institutional alignment, and people-to-people networks can evolve into structural dependence, reducing Sri Lanka’s sovereign decision-making capacity and ultimately resulting in Sri Lanka’s strategic absorption into a foreign-dominated regional system.
The language used is:
reconciliation
normalization
development
civilian governance
defence sector reforms, modernization and restructuring
In modern geopolitics, control is exercised not only through territory but through infrastructure, logistics systems, and connectivity networks that operate on that territory.
But missing from the discussion is one reality:
Strategic vacuum will always get filled — it is never left empty.
There are many historical lessons: a state that fails to enforce precise decisions with regard to national security and defence will perish, never to recover for centuries!
This is what should worry Sri Lanka’s political & defence leadership.
THE REGIONAL POWER REALITY
Small states do not operate in isolation.
In South Asia, influence is shaped through:
economics
infrastructure
maritime access
security partnerships
cultural & religion
ethnicity & historical roots of common identity
Sri Lanka’s location makes it inherently strategic.
Therefore: Reducing strategic presence in the Northern areas without a fitting military replacement capability creates dependency vulnerabilities that are difficult to reverse.
MODERN THREATS ARE NOT MILITARY ALONE
Today’s threats include: these syndicates often work in cohesion
separatist and extremist networks
narcotics economies
cyber-financing systems
digital radicalisation pipelines
coordinated destabilisation campaigns
social media influencers / narrative creators (pose the biggest threat)
non-governmental organizations and foreign-funded proxy networks
State weakening does not begin with war.
It begins with:
reduced surveillance
reduced presence
reduced readiness
reduced reinforcements
reduced capabilities and preparedness
increased cultural & educational integration
increased proxy activities and anti-regime intelligence networking
increased external dependence
increased external footprints
increased information warfare shaping national mindset, transforming consciousness
Then the surprise emerges: Sri Lanka was and is not ready, and Sri Lanka is being exploited right in front of our eyes!
HISTORICAL WARNING — WHAT SRI LANKA ALREADY EXPERIENCED
Strategist N.Q. Dias identified the Northern areas as a permanent strategic choke point.
After 1977, weakening northern security architecture contributed to:
loss of surveillance depth
growth of militant networks
offshore arms logistics
expansion of separatist violence
nearly 30 years of war
loss of state control and governance
This created early surveillance gaps in a region already identified as a permanent strategic frontier!
The lesson is clear:
Weakening strategic presence and intelligence creates space for the escalation of elements that will threaten Sri Lanka at every level and at every time.
MODERN LESSON — 2019 EASTER ATTACKS
Sri Lanka also learned that:
Even after peace periods:
threats can re-emerge
networks can evolve
intelligence gaps are exploited
The 2019 Easter Sunday attacks proved that stability is not permanent, peace is fragile, and state armed forces were not ready, and the intelligence network was paralysed.
WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE
Removing or reducing the Armed Forces from Northern Areas is not administrative reform.
It is a strategic restructuring.
It affects:
sovereignty control
maritime dominance
intelligence coverage
emergency response capacity
territorial continuity and connectivity
restraints on external powers, proxy networks and foreign intelligence activities.
Most importantly:
For the people of Northern areas, military presence is not just security.
It is:
guaranteed assistance (in numerous forms), security & protection
disaster response
emergency logistics
protection of infrastructure
stability during crises
state presence in vulnerable zones
Protection and preservation of heritage & state identity as per Sri Lanka’s Constitution.
Northern areas are strategically important for providing a safety buffer to Anuradhapura, a place that has historically been under constant threat since its establishment as the first Kingdom of Sri Lanka; together they form the central security corridor between the north and the rest of the island.
Anuradhapura, out of all places, is the most sacred and sensitive heritage of Sri Lanka; specially to Buddhist and Sinhalese. Therefore, the continued existence of security camps in the Wanni is critical to safeguard Anuradhapura and not to repeat the kind of heinous massacre that took place at Jayasri Maha Bodhi committed by LTTE.
Wanni functions as Sri Lanka’s central defence buffer zone linking the Northern frontier to the national interior security belt. Giving up this access is administrative & security hara kiri.
For civilians in Jaffna and Wanni, the presence of Security Forces is not an abstract military policy — it is immediate protection during disasters, crises, and instability, and, most importantly, untold numbers of other support networks for civilians by military forces since the end of the conflict in 2009.
No foreigner will look after one’s own like one’s own.
The critical question remains whether Sri Lanka has the fiscal capacity, technological base, and institutional depth to develop and sustain advanced military and surveillance systems capable of replacing the operational gaps that would be created by a reduced Security Forces footprint in Jaffna and Wanni.
Reforming, modernising, and restructuring the national defence system is not a simplistic administrative exercise; it cannot be at the behest of foreign advice or pressure to satisfy their geopolitical and geostrategic interests!
Reforming, modernising, and restructuring the national defence systemrequires long-term strategic foresight – wisdom in national security design, sustained investment, and defence planning that goes far beyond visible political electoral cycles.
National defence can never be in conflict with political interests.
At present, there are concerns regarding uneven regional development and strategic neglect in areas such as Mannar, which already shows signs of limited infrastructure prioritisation, ethnic, cultural and religious divisions and disunity despite its geographic importance to the nation’s survival.
If similar patterns of reduced strategic investment extend to Wanni as a result of removing the armed forces’ presence in a jungle terrain that the LTTE exploited to the fullest, the resulting gaps could significantly weaken Sri Lanka’s northern defensive depth, maritime monitoring capacity, and rapid-response capability while creating more gaps for the expansion of foreign intelligence networking, regional exploitation and subsequent outcomes.
In geopolitical terms, the Northern-Eastern maritime corridor remains one of the most sensitive segments of the Indian Ocean region. Any sustained reduction in state security infrastructure risks gradually alters the strategic balance of the island’s sovereignty and creates vulnerability for strategic resources in the EEZ for exploitation.
For a small island nation situated within a highly competitive maritime environment, the key issue is not only current policy, but the long-term trajectory of sovereignty protection, system resilience, and strategic autonomy.
The real question is not whether camps should exist.
It is: Can Sri Lanka afford to lose permanent state presence and capability in its most sensitive frontier region?
Because once lost, it cannot be easily regained or rebuilt — and in a situation of financial strain, surrendering what little security presence and capacity remains physically, effectively exposes the state to external strategic dominance, a condition that is politically irreversible once it takes root.
Protecting our country demands serious & honest factoring in the past, current & future security threats while maintaining national independence & making national security decisions free from foreign & external pressure.
What is ours must remain ours not only legally but in terms of control as well.
Who will be accountable for the strategic miscalculations (if it is to ever happen) in national security and the defence of our state?
Is there an accountable and sustainable process, a resilient homegrown system of national security policy making, and set of experts who (who are also capable of understanding and navigating amid internal and external pressures and demands) could honestly advise on a critical national survival issue under the current context, while taking into account the states’ national interests, while fulfilling the citizens’ aspirations for a secure and peaceful country that experienced brutal 30 years separatist conflict, two armed insurrection in 1971 and 1988-1990 era and a religious extremism and terrorism in 2019?
These are defining decisions that will shape the future of national security and sovereignty. Any move to restructure the defence architecture must come only after these critical questions are rigorously examined, transparently debated, and responsibly answered. To proceed without such scrutiny is to risk compromising not just strategy, but the very sovereignty we are duty-bound to protect.
After 60 years of continued rule, Dravidian political parties suffered a massive defeat in Tamil Nadu state of India at its state election. DMK, AIADMK and their various offshoots failed to win a sizable number of seats to rule the state. Instead, a newcomer to the political scene – TVK – led by an actor turned politician swept the election. However, his party lacked the majority and had to rely on a rival party’s support to get Joseph Vijay’s claim to the Chief Minister post. His voter card states that he’s a Christian – a fact not lost during the election campaign as BJP-aligned groups used it to discredit him. He has stated he aligns with no religion and that his mother was a Hindu and his father was a Christian. But in India caste and religion are not up for change – these are documented in birth certificate, identity card and voter card.
His party – TVK or Tamilaga Vetri Kalagam – is still a racist party that harps on Tamil identity at the expense of an Indian identity. Therefore, nothing much has changed in Tamil Nadu. Due to its racist politics, clashes with other states, the central government of India and neighboring Sri Lanka are to be expected.
Tamil Nadus has the second largest state economy of India after Maharashtra. Both states could become newly developed countries within a decade if they gain independence from India due to the fact that they pay far more tax to the central government than they get back from the central government. These 2 states have no wars or disagreement with Pakistan or China and not saddled by India’s extremely poor states, war liabilities and other worthless incumbrances. However, laws inherited from the former Soviet Union including anti-sedition laws keep them tied down to poverty and under-development where all major decisions are made by Gujaratis and Uttar Pradesh politicians destining India to collective poverty. Vijay’s criticism of Indian central government’s imposition and management of GST (goods and services tax) contributed heavily to his election success.
Meanwhile Kerala ended its long relationship with socialist parties. Now India has no socialist or communist party rule in any of its states.
West Bengal replaced its own sectarian political party with a BJP alliance ending decades of ethno-racist politics. Following this shift, Tamil Nadu remains the only ethno-racist enclave in India, willing but unable, to fly free towards prosperity and independence breaking 750 years-old shackles of collective poverty.
In his February 2014 article, Senaka Weeraratna argued that a Narendra Modi premiership would trigger a “sea change” in India’s regional leadership, moving away from Western influence toward an assertive, nationalist foreign policy, marked by increased civilizational pride The author questioned whether Sri Lanka was prepared for this transformation, predicting a shift toward a more respectful, culturally aligned partnership rather than previous diplomatic approaches. Read the full analysis on esamskriti.com.
The Indian general election scheduled for May 2014 would, if the forecasts are proved to be correct, result in a sea change in India’s relationship with the rest of the world as well as a revolutionary transformation of her economy, industry and education if the changes introduced in Gujarat by Chief Minister Narendra Modi are an indication. It will also dramatically affect the ongoing ‘blow hot blow cold’ relationship that India currently pursues with Sri Lanka.
India under Narendra Modi as Prime Minister will claim its rightful place in Asia as one of its true leaders, politically, economically and even militarily, and in order to demonstrate these credentials India can be expected to gleefully abandon its current policy of servility and unconditional subservience to the West. It will do so in the full knowledge that continuing subservience to its former colonial masters and their allies i.e. the new sponsors of colonialism, will severely undercut any Indian claim to lead the once colonized but now liberated nations of Asia.
India will discard its junior partner status in any relationship with the USA and retaliate in a more effective manner if the American gaffe we saw in the recent past involving Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade were to be repeated.
India will reclaim its ancient spiritual and cultural heritage and take pride in its civilisational achievements in a way that will put to shame the negative attitudes being adopted currently by the Indian establishment, including its mass media and burgeoning film industry, lacking vision, sense of country’s purpose and more importantly, pride in its own history and heroes.
The upsurge of the view that India has nothing much to offer other that material goods and services and entertainment in this modern age has diminished India’s moral standing in a world long used, particularly in the pre-colonial past, to be the beneficiary of Indian philosophical thought, wisdom and outspokenness that had no equal.
India will mend any strains it has in its relationship with China and will not allow interfering outsiders, particularly from the West, to identify India’s friends and potential enemies and teach India how to conduct itself vis-à-vis imagined foes. India will take comfort from an historical fact that India and China despite being neighbours on the Asian continent had never gone to war with each other for over 5000 years except on one dismal occasion in contemporary history (1962) when it clashed over a border issue that has its roots in British colonial mischief.
India will set its own foreign policy agenda and goals from a central government perspective, rather than from a regional government perspective, which today has unfortunately contributed to India’s almost total isolation from its immediate neighbours in South Asia. This anticipated posture will contribute immensely to improvement of India’s ties with Sri Lanka. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the popular freedom fighter and nationalist leader that India never had as its Prime Minister, will come alive in the form of Narendra Modi and will revolutionise India’s national and international image.
India will no longer be the country that the West, particularly the USA, would take for granted with contempt for both its leaders and people, but a new India conscious of its place in the world and obligations to both humanity and all other living beings. India’s Constitutional provision that it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures” (Article 51 A (g)) will gain a new lease of life. This is the vision that India’s great son, Gautam Buddha, had for Bharat and its greatest Chakravarti Emperor Asoka faithfully strove to establish in the form of a compassionate society.
India’s moral voice can be expected to be heard again in the far flung corners of the world in a manner that the Buddha, Mahavira, Asoka, Nagarjuna, Swami Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Mahatma Gandhi and the like resounded to the serene joy and delight of humankind. Idealism will return to India and in turn help to recharge the batteries of a largely spiritually weakened Asia, now increasingly despoiled by unbridled crass materialism.
We must gratefully acknowledge that it was India more than any other country that originally provided the value system for the moral and ethical foundations of Asia, through the spread of the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism. Are we in Sri Lanka ready to meet the challenge of foreseeable radical changes in our closest neighbour, India?
amazed astonished to read a so beautiful blog by a srinkan lawyer who knows everything about india as if shrilanka is a part of india.hats off to the writer.
dabangg hindu February 01, 2014
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Brilliant note, Senaka Weeraratna.
Our civilization ties are so intense and far-reaching, that a renewed Bharat-Srilanka maitri should result in the constitution of an Indian Ocean Community — Hind Mahasagar parivaar — to revolutionise the development opportunities in a United Indian Ocean States. Start with a Colombo-New Delhi Boat Mail. Built the Trans Asian Highway and Railway.
Venerate the Buddha in Sanchi University set up with such joy and hope.
All the best. With the anugraham of tathagata, everything is possible. Dharma-Dhamma are inviolate, eternal.
Kalyan
S. Kalyanaraman February 01, 2014
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very good article.
sanjeev nayyar February 01, 2014
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Narendra Modi is an individual. We should believe in the capacity for goodness and greatness of individuals but not depend on one. Modi has his work, each of us have his or hers, that is the establishment of Dharma, not yours or mine, but the Universal Dharma.
Sri Weeraratna has recalled for us and emphasised the Calling of India that is Bharat. It requires great sensitivity and perspicacity to understand something as indefinable as Character, that too of a country, and what ability is needed to articulate this understanding! I extend my appreciation and gratitude to Sri Weeraratna, and express my hope that his confidence in Bharata is well placed.
Chandra Ravikumar February 01, 2014
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Thanks to the author for his understanding of the inevitable change which is going to happen in India after the May 2014 General Elections.
But as a Sri Lankan National he must articulate more on what his country is going to do, whether the Buddhist clergy will shed its fanaticism and move towards having a healthy, peaceful and progressive relationship with Hindus, and realise the fact that SL needs to assert its Buddhist-Hindu Identity.
I would be thankful if the author answers his own question ( Are we in Sri Lanka ready to meet the challenge of foreseeable radical changes in our closest neighbour, India?) by means of another article here in Vijayvaani.
B.R.Haran February 01, 2014
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Thanks to a Great article, NaMo frequently talks about India leading the world into Gyan Yug, before that he has to focus on reclaiming India’s leadership in Asia. Time demands Hindu-Buddhist countries in Asia come close with increasing economic,cultural and strategic engagement. But the main problem is that China cannot behave like a bully with claims on other territories. If China doesn’t realize the need for a cohesive Asia, west would continuously exploit the fault-lines in Asia and use them against both China and India
krishnarjun February 02, 2014
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I am afraid the writer of the article is reading far too much into the likely elevation of Narendra Modi as PM. Modi has been extremely shy of using the word “Hindu” (the worst swear word in India ever since Nehru was foised on an unwilling nation by the alleged Mahatma). Keen observers (of which there are indeed very few in India) say Modi has been slowly and steadily de-Hinduising himself for the past 10 years, just like Vajpayee earlier.(Remember his needless “Sadbhavana” rally and his equation of “devalaya” (temple) with “shauchalaya” (latrine)) Modi belongs to Gujarat whose people are known for being the most money-minded in India. There is much materialism in Modi’s home state but little culture or spirituality. If the BJP is fortunate to get a clear majority in Parliament, Modi may hopefully (despite jealous colleagues like Advani and Sushma) give the country a much less corrupt government than what the Christian-led Congress has given for 10 years. But that’s about all. Wise readers should expect only this from Modi. Nothing less but nothing more too. To cheat others may be bad but to deceive oneself is worse.
KNT February 02, 2014
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Bharat & Sri Lanka have the same cultural heritage and we are joined by genes,language,Dharmic traditions and the same philosophies towards life,living and the world at large. The dirty role played by self-seeking politicians,false histories written and propagated by the colonizers and taken forward by exploitative historian-‘time-servers’ has resulted in most of the people on either side of the RAMA SETHU to believe that we are different.Definitely not! We share a great,common Samskriti that has given Light to the world and is still lighting the darkest recesses of the world.
One pessimistic reader sadly has poured cold water on the author’s optimism regarding NaMo.He questions Modi’s performance and states that it may be slightly better than the present corrupt Congress. It is indeed very big true that NaMo’s coming to power,becoming Prime Minister of Bharat and setting things on track will be a very very difficult task as this present corrupt government has deliberately destroyed all institutions.This Congress knows fully well that now they can never seize power and so become ‘dog in the manger’! They are trying every dirty trick to stop Narendra Modi from coming to power. This is the very reason why we the people of Bharat have to unitedly support NaMo into coming to power. Nothing is ever easy and he knows this.May Bhagavaan help Bharat.Given the Indian people’s support and the power of ISVARA Sri Narendra Modi will change the face of our Bharat for the better from every angle. He has the will,character,strength and honest determination to bring back our lost glory,respect and dignity and once again make our Bharat a prosperous and happy nation. ??????? ???? !????? ??????!
V.Pant February 02, 2014
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I did not “pour cold water” on the author’s optimism regarding Narendra Modi. I was only pointing to the need to assess people by their performance rather than by our fond wishes. V. Pant’s comment is a good example of the naivete for which Hindus are well known all over the world. “May Bhagavan help Bharat,” says Pant, despite the fact that there is no record of Bhagavan helping Bharat even in the dark centuries of horrendous Islamic oppression. The British rightly say “God helps only those who help themselves”. Pant says “given the power of Eesvara, Modi will change the face of Bharat”. The power of Eesvara has not been seen in the least in the unfortunate land of Bharat for the past 1,400 years. Hindus cannot afford to be so gullible in a world where only the most cunning survive. While I also wish that Modi becomes the next PM, I hope he will not disappoint Hindu patriots as Hajpayee’ and Advani did.
KNT February 02, 2014
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“Asia for Christ” is the clarion call given by the Vatican.It is impossible to convert Muslims and so the whole conversion activity is concentrated in Hindu and Buddhist soceity.Already,South Korea has become Christian majority country with Buddhists getting pushed to second place.The only Hindu kingdom in the world,Nepal was destroyed by the missionaries using their swordarm,the Maoists.Same thing is happening in Odisha,AP,TN and the North-East.Still Hindus want to be ruled by the Catholic mother and son,duo of Sonia and Rahul.
S.S.Nagaraj February 02, 2014
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Very true article
Ajay February 03, 2014
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wonderful article.
In the changed scenario,I wish to know the author’s view as to how Srilankan buddhists would start treating their and our Tamizh brethren and how Srilanka as a country would mend its relationship with Hindusthan. Especially, the way day in day out they arrest and ill-treat Hindusthani fishermen.
Khobragade issue. It’s not the individual but issues requiring importance. The case of the lady diplomat is very weak from her side and she deserves punishment for the wrongs done. But diplomatic relations between Hindustani and USA shall be strictly on reciprocal basis. With proper investigation, there is every possibility that some of the American diplomats in Hindusthan getting punishment under Hindusthani laws.
Namo has openly and proudly articulated that he is a Hindu Nationalist. Sure the Devalaya sauchalaya sort of rubbish could have been avoided. He has proved that he is not another “Hajpayee” by refusing to accept skull cap during the sadhbhavana movement. The likes of Sohrabuddins would see the beginning of their end once Namo comes into picture. Even if not Namo would change the face of Hindusthan in a day, the vily white church would realise that it would not be that easy to harvest souls in Hindusthan anymore.
krishnakumar February 03, 2014
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@krishnakumar I do hope your expectations about Modi are not belied. But, remember Modi rather apologetically said ” I am a Hindu” and then “I am a national”, then “so I am a Hindu nationalist” which is not quite the same thing as saying “I am a Hindu nationalist”. It is good that he did not accept the skull cap during the sadbhavana rally, but why hold a sadbhavana rally at all? Who wants any “sadbhavana” (whatever it means) anyway? The rally seems to have been organised merely to placate the secularist media who are implacable enemies of Hindu society. And I have seen a picture of Modi accepting an award from a denomination of Christians of Kerala, India’s most fertile breeding ground of the world’s most wily missionaries. Why accept an award from a known enemy?
KNT February 03, 2014
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India as it exists today is a colonial system, with a colonial economy.. The real nation is Bharat, which is systematically suppressed on all fronts..
So even if India breaks free from US influence, it will still be a colonial entity and NOT its 5000 year old society.
There are few things to do to reclaim the bharat and the bharata varsha..
1. The current Indian colonial system should be dismantled..
2. The current Indian Judiciary model (which Sri Lanka also uses) should be dismantled. The author of this article is a lawyer and he should first introspect what is the history of this judiciary system (with all those black gowns & hammers) ? Does he want this masonic system to be defacto?
3. The current economic system has to be dismantled.
But the fact is none of the above would happen, and unless this happens, there is no use in getting pride of india being asian leadership..
senthil February 05, 2014
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A profoundly pragmatic analysis and synopsis by Senaka.
His autopsy of the current and past political leaders is worth admiring for he has hit the nail on the head. From 1947 to-date, India has had suffrage and pseudo threats to its populace, boundaries, religion and self esteem.
MODI is the de facto restorer of these cherished and ingrained Indian Values, which will benefit not only the Indians but their neighbours who have been mollified into a perception of enmity by the West.
Let us all hope that MODI will be the next PM and that India as we know to-day will be a totally different and valued Country over the globe and, once again, regain its rightful place in history enshrining the principles of religion, education, humanity and truthfulness.
Ken Popat, London, UK February 07, 2014
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Political changes in India, when they are real, are only movements of the Pendulum. The problem in Srilanka is rooted in the discrimination against Tamils, pure and simple, and it is pointless to blame outsiders or external factors for what is obviously a self-inflicted wound. Powers like the US are merely exploiting it.
If the author- who is obviously biased against Tamils because the merit he sees in a Modi regime is that it would ignore (supposedly) the sentiments of Tamils in india while dealing with Srilanka- looks into himself he would realize people like him are at the root of the problem. It is a problem of ethnic discrimination and hate.
The hope that a new regime in India will enable Srilanka to vicariously get back at a self-righteous USA also is a mere wish. Modi’s party sells religion downward (the ranks), and upward the promises of some redemption for the identity-challenged classes and pseudo-patriotism which appeals to the timid types. In the middle it is a complete sell out to the marauding corporates especially the western (read US) corporates. It is no different from Congress in this sell out. We have seen it already.
This is Sri Lanka. Praised as the paradise island and called, in the history, as the granary of the east. Yes, it is true if one had the means. One can shift away from Colombo and seek refuge in regions where barely people live. It can be in the mountains, at the coast or even in the semi-barren Jaffna peninsula. Nature is reviving despite demographic pressure and random encroachment of virgin land.
In and around cities and towns people commute about trading, practising professions or even be government employees, professions all dream of having.
Population has been surging up since more than a century. The infrastructure, neglected, keeps no pace with it. It lags miserably behind. Infrastructure costs money and that is not available. But if money is work-force, it is excessively available. Stream lining it into the habitat is a different issue.
With the bare hand and palm, a nation as a whole has no ability to channel the muscle force found abundantly to do a reasonable work to improve the infrastructure. Work is: force multiplied by distant moved. Since the work done is nil or near nil, though the force exists increasingly in the surging demography, the distant moved has to be near nil or even nil. It exposes itself in the absence of badly needed infrastructure, especially on the ever important commuting tracks.
However, the force coming out from the surging population cannot be stopped. In populated regions it loses itself in wear and tear and shows position change, implying work is being done. The work-done exposes itself in degradation of the landscape with sapiens’ natural force. A kind of Sapien’s-Brownian motion
It is true because everywhere across the island one sees people sitting, gossiping, straying about and even brooding with the intention of raising themselves up for a revolt or to smash-down everything across the way with a lust for Nihilism. A strange phenomenon which suffocates inhabitants or force them to rampage out to decimate the next nearest or get themselves decimated by a xeno-somatic outsider. It is when the drive to emitting found in the genes of all species, likewise in homo-sapiens finds no tracks, fields or space-volumes to stretch out to preserve and multiply the species as they strive to have some pleasures and fulfil their dreams, intermittently remembering to protect the children and wives at home.
Yet, a few of these people do succeed or get chances to earn some rupees to fulfil their dreams. These people have to travel hither and thither to find the means for survival, as nature demands. One could see the drive in the overflowing packing of the trains with humans, if one is allowed to say so. They take all kinds of risks to find honourably the coins for their rice-kiribath, iddi-ahppa, ahppa and pol-sambol. Or when a favourable day falls dropping few more coins than usual into their palms, they afford exotic bread or Pahn turned indigenous, brought in by the Portuguese, with china-sambol called seeni-sambol to have for breakfast after a good sleep and stretched out muscles without to have the need to cook the over-starched food and what not, without rising up early with the doodle of the cockerels, and hooting of the cuckoos.
The railway compartment is thick packed and tight with people. No room to cough or sneeze without doing it straight on the others’ face. If one is lucky, one gets a finely carburetted and molucularised spray of saliva travelling, as some say, at speeds tending to reach the speed of sound, from the ones having lung muscles strong, straight on to the face. Full of bacteria, virus and all those molecular organisms of the order of billions at one blast.
If one is un-lucky, one may get a saliva spray with the same blasting speed, the molucularised carburation cocktailed with garlic, also straight on to the face. Often it is found that traditions are not lost. Then one may get a spray of Bulath-eatay-cocktail also straight on to the face. Redder than Kabuk and sprinkling the shirts to appear modern art. One should not forget, sneezing mostly follows cold. Then the spray has that carburation with the virus soaked molucularised mucus from the lungs. Then one has it.
All as Minister of Health, Minister of Transport, the President and all the accompanying sycophantic orchestra are busy having conferences to master this problem since decades unknown at grand scales. In guarded mighty halls acclimatised and well served with delicious delicacies with lot of space between one another.
A railway compartment may carry two busloads normally. But at these traffic hours in the mornings and evenings, it comes to more than 3 busloads per compartment, if one had the space to stand and the means to count.
In a railway trip, there are usually about ten compartments. It comes to thirty or more busloads in one swing by the rickety train coming from Colombo Fort and dashing down through broiling-heat, winds and rains with its steal dachoto-phony towards down south Matara.
North of Colombo Fort, it is not different whether towards Kandy, Badhulla, A’pura, Jaffna, and the coastal line to Puttlam with spoilt air with a strange perfume with Babynona’s watty having fish remains. One need not speak of the lines to Trinco or Batticoloa as travel past Galoya, horning. The story is the same. Hanging is prohibited by law. Yet one shouldn’t sight it.
What if more than thirty busloads per train that moves at this time of the day, every half-hour, are put on to the roads in buses? It needs no explanation. The perennially discordant country’s economy in time and space will deepen in lagging so much that many machines have to be switched off. Traffic will just not move in the humid disgusting still-standing heat, not to speak when monsoon rain beats down. People deprived of the time saving trip resort to walk home to have pleasant sharing with their families blended with a bit of bragging over the day’s achievements or grudging over the under-cuttings and newly made enemies. Ticket fare gone.
How to settle this problem? In Part Two.
Natural Wealth Generating
Engineering
Paddy, cereal, and vegetable fields have sacrificed over 90% of their Floral Volume.
Nature-emulating methods to activate the unused floral volume are progressing, though sporadically.
Norway’s intervention in Sri Lanka’s affairs is tantamount to a Kiss of Death. Its intervention in the past has always undermined national sovereignty, promoted betrayal of Sri Lanka’s true interest and was always seen as the continuation of the deadly colonial policy of ‘Divide and Rule’. Norway enjoys the reputation of a dedicated Christian theocratic State. Only followers of the Christian Lutheran Church were able to hold high office including the King of Norway, Judges and all senior civil and military officials, county governors, and most cabinet members, under the Constitution of Norway. The Church of Norway remains recognized as the “national church” (folkekirke) and receives state financial support. Though there may have been cosmetic changes in the Constitution in the recent past it still regards itself as a Christian country to the core and thereby ever ready to dislodge the rightful place enjoyed by Buddhism in Sri Lanka under Article 9 of the Constitution. The hidden agenda is a singular determination to undermine and break the millennia old Dharmic civilizational links between India and Sri Lanka.
Norway, first clean your house before trying to clean the house of others. Physician, heal thyself.
