My uncle Lakshman

by Rajiva Wijesinha

It will be 40 years tomorrow since my Uncle Lakshman, Bishop of Kurunagala, died, worn out by the activity he had driven himself to after the riots of July 1983.

He had been in England when they happened, and I had gone there the day he left, so we only spoke on the telephone. I told him to take things easy, for his heart was weak, and he had in fact taken a year off to recuperate, and to write up the Asian approach to Christianity that he had developed over the preceding years.

He told me he would be careful, but that did not happen. And in the midst of his efforts to comfort those who had been afflicted, he also had to deal with the realization that, as he put it, those who had been brought up in Lakmahal, the house he had grown up in, had contributed to the mayhem.

But while that humanitarian commitment, which led to political activism that required great courage was a vital part of his personality, I thought here to spend time of the affection he commanded in so many. I am moved to this in that recently I was given a copy of the Recollections of Senior Friends of the Student Christian Movement of Sri Lanka, and that is replete with references to his impact.

The Rev Noble Sugunananthan, who had finished at university by then and was Chaplain at Trinity College, referred to Lakshman’s stint at Peradeniya University in describing him as the ‘rarest of University Chaplains, the most admired friend and spiritual leader of the students’. Sriyantha Senaratne records that he was ‘under the spell of its resident Chaplain the legendary Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe’. He adds that ‘To this day he is regarded as one of the most courageous, forward-thinking and bold examples of Christian leadership.’

Sriyantha refers at length in his piece to the intellectual stimulation Lakshman Wickremesinghe provided as Chaplain at Peradeniya, which in fact bears upon issues that later cost him his life. The SCM had ‘long, interesting discussions on the contemporary issues facing the country, always with Father Lak overseeing the discussions’. For ‘These were stirring and often tragic times with the emerging trends of the ethnic divide that was to shatter the social fabric of our society. It was evident to us, looking back now, that Father Lak saw far into the future and his discussions and sermons threw light on the emerging trends’.

Lakshman was a brilliant mentor, ensuring that youngsters took on responsibilities which, even if they were nervous initially about them, they fulfilled admirably. Annathie Devanayagam, who later married Geoffrey Abeysekera, and was someone my uncle often referred to fondly in later years, wrote how ‘He invited me to be in charge of the SCM library at the chaplaincy building. I enjoyed that work and I spent some of my free time on those premises’.

Lakshman Fernando records how he had an unexpected visitor in the vacation before his final year, ‘whom I had not met earlier but about whom I had heard some very positive and even adulatory comments. He introduced himself as the Rev. Lakshman Wickremesinghe, who was to take up the position of being the second NCC Resident Chaplain of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya. He said he had come to introduce himself and to request my active support and participation in his future work in the campus. How could I have ever refused?

Little did I realise that this would be the beginning of a very close, persuasive and decisive relationship that I was going to have with him during the future years. The Rev. Lakshman Wickremesinghe’s presence…gave a tremendous impetus to the Christian presence there – together with the solid contribution made by Fr. Ignatius Pinto who ministered to the Roman Catholic student community.

The presence of a Resident Chaplain greatly enabled the USCM Peradeniya to see itself not only as a University society but also as part of the Church of Lanka… During my final year at the University, I interacted closely with Fr. Lakshman in his Chaplaincy/SCM activities. It was he who persistently broached the subject and finally succeeded in getting me to agree to accept the responsibility of being the full-time General Secretary of the SCM.

But I should note too how he promoted a broader outlook in his flock in different ways, for instance sending the studious Sydney Knight ‘to a work camp at Kumbalgud organized by the Bangalore YMCA’. Sydney was later to become Chaplain at the Peradeniya University himself, and I stayed once at the Residency with him and his wonderful wife Saro, when I was teaching there myself in the early eighties.

It was wonderful to be back there in a place where I had spent happy holidays as a child, my sister and I going there with my grandmother when she was recovering from the early death of her second son Tissa, early in 1961. Those are amongst my happiest childhood memories, and though my sister and I were perfectly happy pottering about the place, catching tadpoles I remember being a particular joy, he always had time for us in the evenings in the midst of his busy schedule.

That practice continued over the years, for after he had moved to Kurunagala as Bishop, though it was at the family house I stayed, the Old Place, he would always have me over to dinner, and it was remarkable how he treated me as an adult while I was still in school. I loved those evenings, sitting out on his verandah overlooking the church, and that continued after I came back from Oxford, something he and I had in common, and he realized how alike our thinking was.

He approved wholeheartedly of my having resigned from my university post to protest at the removal of Mrs Bandaranaike’s Civic Rights, for he was one of the few who understood early on what that meant for the future of democracy, a blight that has never left us since it was followed by a premature Presidential election, the ghastly referendum, and then the attacks first on Supreme Court judges and then on Tamils.

Despite his increasing ill health, Lakshman spoke out against all these, and though he was in England when the attacks took place he threw himself into trying to provide some comfort on his return. In terms of his own vision of what his responsibilities were, one cannot regret the intensity of his activity. But he left a great gap, in the body politic as well as in my own life.