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| Wednesday, 17 September 2003 |
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Portrait of a Great Leader : Some unfocused angles by Padma Edirisinghe This article is written in connection with the commemoration of the 97th birth anniversary of President J. R. Jayewardene that falls today. A ceremony aligned to this event will be held today at the JRJ Centre, Dharmapala Mawatha, Colombo. Trevor Fishlock, a subscriber to the JRJ Felicitation Volume informs the reader that the youth Junius Richard, converted to Buddhism from Christianity when he was 17. Ever since that the philosophy of his mother's religion wielded such an impact on him that he ended up by authoring many a book on Buddhism. This aspect of President JRJ, his role as a prolific writer or as "a man of letters and literature", is one many are not acquainted with. Especially after his rather impetuous speech at a meeting in the deep South that literature has no pragmatic value in today's day-to-day living, adversaries were quick to taint him with a cruel insensitivity to the aesthetic facet of life and only embroiled with dry economic policies as Laissez-affaire and all that. But it may not be far from the truth to state that out of the Presidents we have had so far, except for R. Premadasa who authored a few novels, JRJ was perhaps the only one who put out some serious academic works as "Buddhism and Marxism". Other major works are "Buddhist Essays" and "Golden Threads". Even when compared to Presidents of other countries JRJ owns almost a "track record" of producing a prolific multitude of articles and books. Had he not taken to the "family trade of politics" JRJ may have blossomed into one of our very promising writers for writing seems to have run in his blood from his school days. The innate talent was of course nourished by his background. Abundant reading material was available in his book-lover father's massive library. And his English governess saw to it that he read Shakespeare and Dickens while he himself had taken to the habit of reading The Times from the age of 10. "For 65 years I have been reading it regularly" he has later declared.
So reading nourished his writing. Thanks to his mania of collecting, his school boy essays are today deposited in his archives and here is a piece that some would say proved almost prophetic in his later political life. Perhaps the Royal College Primary English master had set an assignment to write a letter to a neighbour and this is what little JRJ wrote to his neighbour Mr. Jones, his Park Road neighbour way back in the year 1920. Dear Mr. Jones, Your little fox-terrier having come into my garden last night killed three of my pet canaries and seriously damaged my chrysanthemums. We failed to catch him but had the pleasure of seeing him vanish through a hole in the wall. I will fill up the hole at my cost and will be much obliged if you will send me a cheque for Rs. 50 which I think sufficient for the damages done. Please take care of your dogs after this as I might be obliged to shoot them next time. Your truly, J. R. Jayewardene. Many of his essays have won good remarks by the teacher but when he writes that two elks fell on to his lap on a train trip to Nuwara Eliya the master uses his red pen to remark "Very very curious". Anyway during the subsequent turbulent political career of his adult life with the pendulum see-sawing between the two main parties and an ethnic strife to add to the traumatic scenario, not only elks but almost a 1,000 monsters fell in his way submerging his literary activities that were to flower only in the English speeches he made at world assemblies. To go back, student JRJ's brilliance in the writing field earned him many a post at Royal College as Magazine Editor, Assistant Librarian, Senior Vice President of the Royal College Literary Association. Later at Law College his research article on "Kandyan marriages" won him the Walter Perera Award. The two most brilliant speeches that took the whole world by surprise as coming from a simple, white clad Asian who due to family responsibilities had never been under the portals of a University in England (unlike in the case of Hon. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, another brilliant orator and statesman of ours) were those delivered at San. Fransisco (1951) and at Kathmandu SAARC summit (1987). (Continued on page 28) |
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