Great personalities of 'Little Rome' brought to light

Meepura Keerthidharayo

Author: Bernard Sri Kantha

An Author Publication

86 Duwa, Negombo

Price: Rs. 200

STEEPED deep in the history, traditions and legends of Negombo, an up and coming novelist, author and compiler of literary themes Bernard Sri Kantha of Negombo has brought out an excellent publication in Sinhala titled "Meepura Keerthidharayo" which literally means great personalities of Negombo.

Historically and culturally, Negombo is a rich ground for research on varied facets of history, religion - both Catholicism and Buddhism, legends, customs, traditions, fisher folk and what not worldy affairs.

That old world town has historical connections with Sitavaka, Sri Jayawardhanapura - Kotte, Kandy kingdoms and Portuguese, Dutch and British periods in our history.

Spiritually Negombo is quite rightly the "Little Rome" of Sri Lanka as far as Catholicism is concerned, promulgated in that place by the Portuguese soon after landing on our shores and their spiritual conquest of the maritime regions.

Bernard Sri Kantha, the author of this outstanding work has painstakingly written in simple, chaste and lucid language the biographies of 20 great personalities of that town who had rendered excellent service in the various spheres of their activity - ecclesiastical, political, commerce and trade, judicial or as City Fathers.

The homage paid to the religious dignitaries include Very Rev. Thomas Cardinal Cooray, Very Rev. Nicholas Marcus Fernando, former Archbishop of Colombo, Bishops Very Rev. Edmund J. Fernando, Very Rev. Anthony de Saram (Catholic) Ven. Sri Medankara Thera and Ven. Meegomuwe Jinawansa Thera (Buddhist).

The honest politicians of the calibre of State Councillor Gate Mudliyar A. E. Rajapakse, A. N. D. A. Abeysinghe, MP. Dr. Hector Fernando MP and Denzil Fernando MP and Minister presented in the book are worthy of emulation by present generations of politicians whatever their colours and ideologies.

Some of the present day politicians as Karl Marx said attempt to create a lumpen society which comprises of village youth who move into the slums of urban areas. They are without education and human values. They would just go to the highest bidder, the politicians, who pay them or to those who appeal to their basic instincts - one of which is the tremendous evil of liquor.

Reference is also made to Mudliyar T. David Mendis, H. de Z. Siriwardena, Mohammed Thaha, the well-known author, newspaper journalist D. F. Kariyakarawana, great artists like N. S. Godamanne and Camillus Perera and the recognized businessmen like Jude Muttiah and Clifford Murray.

Last but not the least, the remarkable careers of two distinguished sons of the soil namely, Negombo known to me personally referred to therein are worthy of special attention.

Those two gentlemen par excellence are Warnakulasuriya Santiago Fernando (Wa. Sa. Prananda), the swabasha schoolmaster turned pioneer leftist politician of the LSSP and later the MEP and his worthy son W. T. A. Leslie Fernando, student leader, lawyer, judge, author and writer of repute both in Sinhala and in English. His contribution of resourceful articles to the press is legion.

Of the father Warnakulasuriya Santiago Fernando, I refer to the following quotations from Shakespeare with reference to ingratitude for he has not been awarded his due.

"Blow, blow thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude.

Thy tooth is not so keen

Because thou art not seen

Most friendship is feigning,

most living mere folly."

(Shakespeare - As You Like It - Act II - VII)

Society is fickle and notorious for discarding goodness of unselfish social workers like Santiago Fernando.

And to his son Leslie Fernando, chip of the old block was a distinguished judge who tempered justice with mercy without any fear or favour. Of him his biographer W. A. Abeysinghe has quoted from Shakespeare thus "But I am constant as the Northern Star."

I would like to add a few more lines with reference to the same quotation:-

"Unshaked of motion, and that

I am he,

Let me little show it, even in this,

That I was constant Cimber

should be banished

And constant do remain to keep

him so."

(Shakespeare, Julius Caeser - Act III.1)

Moreover for Leslie Fernando

"All the worlds' a stage

And all the men and women

merely players."

(As You Like It Act II.Viii)

With the enthusiasm, experience, observation and prowess of the author, let us hope and wish that he would bring out in the not so distant future another more comprehensive book on other forgotten great personalities of Negombo.

That will pave the way to enlighten the reading public with more historical background of that city - a fertile ground and food for thought for a literary pursuit for an ambitious author like Bernard Sri Kantha.

The book is exquisitely printed with very rare photographs, with both sides glossy outer coverings, carrying the photographs of those unsung heroes and in the back cover a brief introduction of the writer.

It is moderately priced at Rs. 200 and is available at his personal address.

- Stanley E. Abeynayake

The ravages of war

Sri Lanka Voices from a war zone

Author: Nirupama Subramanian

Viking, Penguin Books India (Pvt) Ltd., New Delhi

THE ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, which has taken a heavy toll of human lives, has inspired the publication of a large number of literary works - books written by academicians, partisan accounts penned by pro-LTTE and pro-Government authors, reminiscences by Indian and Sri Lankan diplomats and officers of the armed forces and, poetry and fiction written by talented authors.

This absorbing account of war-torn Sri Lanka belongs to a different category. Nirupama Subramanian, who served in Sri Lanka for seven years, first as the correspondent of Indian Express and later of The Hindu, had the good fortune to view the fast-changing events in the island at close quarters.

Her stint in Sri Lanka coincided with the end of one peace process and the beginning of another. In between, the island was subjected to the brutality and savagery of the Third Eelam War.

Little histories

The book is not just an account of the ethnic conflict; it is, as Nirupama mentions, "little histories" - soldiers and their widows; the families of the disappeared; mothers of child soldiers; children who escaped from training camps; people displaced by the war; people living amidst war; a government official whose job demanded walking the fine line between the government and the Tigers; the only psychiatrist in the northeast; a counter-insurgent; a child monk; women training to work as housemaids in rich homes abroad; the distraught father of a woman who was killed in suicide bombing; people who thought they had escaped the war, but realised that they had become virtual prisoners in refugee camps.

Woven into these narratives is the broader canvas - the tragedy of Chandrika Kumaratunga, who became Prime Minister and later the President on a massive mandate for peace, but was forced by circumstances to pursue the military option; the metamorphosis of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which wrote the history of Sri Lanka in blood two times in recent history, but today has taken to the parliamentary path, propounding an ideology which is a mix of socialism and Sinhala nationalism, an ally in the ruling coalition, which parted company with the People's Alliance on the question of associating LTTE in interim administration and post-tsunami relief work; and above all, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the cult figure of the Tigers, who has emerged as the undisputed leader of the most ruthless and, at the same time, disciplined terrorist organisation in South Asia.

Has Prabhakaran given up the demand for a separate state? Will the Tigers settle for a federal solution? How long will the present ceasefire last?

The dilemma

The dilemma facing the Sri Lankan Tamils was articulated by Jagan as follows, "The Tigers have to be handled by us. We have allowed a tyrant to come up from among us, the Tamils.

Now we have to throw him out. But we cannot do it with the Sinhalese troops treating the Tamils as their enemies. Look at it this way, we carry a double burden now. We have to fight the Sinhalese racism and the tyranny of the Tigers, both together."

It is not merely the Tamils who lost; the ordinary Sinhalese were also subjected to considerable suffering. During 1987-89, when the JVP became the champion of Sinhala nationalism and unleashed unprecedented violence, Kelani Ganga and Kalu Ganga, those two rivers of exquisite beauty, were "clogged with bodies and foamed with blood."

Bishop Reginald Heber, with prophetic vision, wrote in the 19th Century, "What though the spicy breezes, blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle, though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile."

Reading the absorbing accounts of the author, I was reminded of an encounter described by the Sri Lankan writer, Rohini Hensman, with a refugee family.

Need for peace

The story relates to Anna's family. Anna's father pointed out the irony that "for two years between 1983 and 1985, they were living in the very same camps, when their home in Dehiwela was attacked and all their belongings burned."

The family moved to Batticaloa and slowly rebuilt their lives. They are now back in the camps, having lost everything for the second time, "reduced to destitution once again." Anna's mother remarked, "The problem is that neither the armed forces nor the Tigers are the least bit concerned about people... They are fighting for their own reasons..."

In Colombo, they wanted to kill us because we were Tamil, in Batticaloa they wanted to kill us because I speak Sinhala and they thought I was Sinhalese. There is no freedom anywhere in the country. What we need is peace, not Eelam.

- V. Suryanarayan, The Hindu