The 51st Commemoration of National Hero, the late Philip Gunawardena

Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda

“History Flows Through Us and Shapes Us”

The best article on Don Philip Rupasinghe Gunawardena was published in Ceylon Today (27 March) by Professor Wimal Dissanayake, one of the leading scholars of Asian cinema, culture and communication. This describes a political leader who exercised a profound influence on the thought and imagination of modern Sri Lanka. Promoting the cause of socialism in Sri Lanka, he connected it with culture and local resonance, giving it meaning and relevance.

Having attended the local Boralugoda Temple and the village school for his primary education, Philip Gunawardena studied agricultural economics and completed his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees at University of Wisconsin. In 1925 he went onto Columbia University , studying for a doctorate in Agricultural Economics. In 1929, he went to London, where he became part of the anti-colonial movement, campaigning alongside Jawaharlal Nehru, and Krishna Menon, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and the Indonesian freedom fighter and national hero, Tan Malaka.

In 1956 general election Gunawardena won the Avissawella seat and was appointed as a key member of Mr SWRD Bandaranaike’s cabinet as the Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Co-operatives. He is remembered as the architect of the Paddy Lands Act which guaranteed the tenant farmer his share of the harvest and protected him by law. He also developed the Co-operative movement to improve the living conditions of the villagers.

An important facet of Philip Gunawardena’s thinking was his profound understanding of the dynamics of history. Hailing from the gentry of the historic province of Seethawaka, his great hero was the great warrior king of Seethawaka, Rajasinha I. During the 16th century he and his father King Mayadunne, halted the tide of Portuguese colonization. Within a short space of time they turned the principality of Seethwaka into the largest and most powerful kingdom in Sri Lanka. Gunawardena’s fascination with this story, led him to embark on an absorbing historical study, Seetawaka Urumaya, the Heritage of Seetawaka. Drawing on legend, literature, poetry, folklore, tradition and architecture, this is a substantial work of historical research. These are his words.

“I feel that the past heritage is significant to the present as well as the future”

In the words of Indrani Meegama, the editor of the English translation of Seetawaka Urumaya

“Philip Gunawardena always had the fullest confidence in the ability and skill of his own countrymen and recognized the scientific and technological skills of the ancients, who built a complex hydraulic system and religious monuments of great beauty.”

Seetawaka Urumaya reflects Philip Gunawardena belief in the importance and value of channelling the energy of the past towards the momentum of the present. This perhaps is why we are seeing this film, In Search of the Malwatu Oya.

The second longest river in Sri Lanka, the Malwatu River lies at the very heart of Sri Lanka’s ancient past. It runs across northern and central Sri Lanka, the regions known as the Dry Zone. A land of soaring temperature and rolling plains, without the ability to store water, man could not have prospered.

The waters of the Malwatu Oya laid the foundation of a series of waterways, dams and reservoirs which marked the beginnings of ancient Lanka’s irrigation civilization. This enabled

the cultivation of rice on a vast scale throughout the Dry Zone. For the first 1500 years of her history, this was where most of Sri Lanka’s people lived. Thousands of years later, rice is still the single most important crop. 34 percent of the available land is still devoted to the farming of rice. 1.8 million families are still engaged in its cultivation. Rice still provides 45 per cent of the total calorie and 40 per cent of the total protein requirement of the average Sri Lankan. We are still the Children of the Irrigation Civilization

Malwatu Soya is a story of rivers and water and life. It is also a story of agriculture and farming, of irrigation, food and productivity. It is above all a story of the most precious commodity on earth- water. It features a river as the foundation of a country’s civilization, it history, its identity, its art, its monuments. To quote Philip Gunawardena’s grandson, current Member of Parliament Yadamini Gunawardena

“These massive structures were possible because we were rich in agriculture and in food. They were possible because of the wealth of water. Water is what we have.”

This river was also a foundation of international trade and commerce. At the mouth of Malwatu Oya was the port of Mantai, Mahatittha, which became Sri Lanka’s 1st Port City. For nearly 1,000 years, Mantai, was the largest and most important port in the Indian Ocean, a port and a city which was the centre of trade between East and West.

Philip Gunawardena understood the importance of the irrigation civilization and its decline. As Professor Wimal Dissanayake tells us in Ceylon Today

“He saw clearly how history flows through us and shapes us; it was his belief that our that our discomfiture before the future grows out of our loss of historical identity.”

A film is novel and imaginative way of remembering a political legacy. For a political commemoration in Sri Lanka is unheard of. It is in the tradition of a sophisticated, complex and self confident national leader. The underlying truth of Seetawaka Urumaya is this.

History Flows Through Us and Shapes Us. It is like a river, it flows through us and shapes us.What is Sri Lanka without history? An Ancient Living Culture or a failed and Bankrupt State with no identity, no imagination of our own. A country without a culture and an identity can never shape its destiny. It cannot not know where it is going or how it is going to get there.