A Unique Event At Royal College In 1925

by Hugh Karunanayake

Royal College as well as the other leading schools in Colombo have produced some outstanding orators who have graced the national scene both in and outside the legislature. Names that readily come to mind are SWRD Bandaranaike from St Thomas, GG Ponnambalam from St Joseph’s, HL de Silva from St Peters, Sir Thomas de Sampayo from St Benedicts, Dr NM Perera from Ananda College, and Dr Colvin R de Silva, Pieter Keuneman, and JR Jayewardene from Royal College.

All of the leading schools in Sri Lanka have oratorical contests to select the best speaker in the school, and in fact these contests serve as an incentive to encourage senior students to excel in the art of public speaking. Inter school debates are also held to further motivate students to participating in oratory. In Royal there is a Gold Medal awarded annually to the best orator. In the year 1925 the MH Jayatilleke Gold Medal was the coveted prize offered to the best orator in Royal College. The contest was held in three divisions from which the finalists were chosen. In that year there were six finalists who were:

D.S . Jayawickreme

Stanley de Zoysa

George Chitty

T.S.Fernando

Colvin R de Silva

J.R Jayewardene

All six finalists were from the same class and on leaving school pursued law as a career and all six passed out as Advocates. DS Jayawickreme, George Chitty, and TS Fernando were awarded the honour of appointment as Queens Counsel an honour which would have been readily granted to Dr Colvin R de Silva who refused to apply for “silk” as he considered that an “imperial honour” something which he crusaded against all of his adult life. Stanley de Zoysa became the First Finance Minister in the 1956 Government of SWRD Bandaranaike, and JR Jayewardene was Finance Minister and later the first elected President of Sri Lanka.

Stanley de Zoysa presented the first budget of the SWRD Bandaranaike Government in 1956.Stanley was a polished speaker in English but struggled with his Sinhalese so he presented his first budget speech in English, and ironically so, from a Government elected to make Sinhala the national language within 24 hours! Dr Colvin R de Silva opened the debate for the opposition and was quick to pounce on the paradox of the Sinhala Only Government presenting its first budget to the nation in English! His party stood for parity of status for both languages Sinhala and Tamil, but would have been on difficult grounds if pressed to state which language his party would have chosen to present the budget as it could be presented only in one language.

He attempted to circumvent the issue by berating his old classmate and stating that the budget should have been presented in “the mother tongue”. Up jumped Phillip Gunawardene from the government benches with the query “which tongue is that?” Anyone else would have been rattled by the interjection, but not Colvin who retorted with “only those with two tongues will ask such a question”. Needless to say that retort left Phillip squirming in his seat.

That was the standard of debate in that day and age. The six finalists in the Oratorical Contest at Royal in 1925 would surely stand out as an unrivalled and unmatched group of orators in the history of any school in Sri Lanka. The winner of that contest was JR Jayewardene who was awarded the Jayetilleke Gold Medal.