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By Sunil Keppetipola
Trinity College Kandy celebrated its 148th anniversary on 17 January 2020. Sri Lanka will celebrate its 72rd Independence Day on 4 February 2020. Many names will be added to the 
National Heroes list, and due political recognition will be given to the newly-announced personnel for their services to our motherland. While congratulating them, I would like to take this opportunity write a few words regarding three outstanding heroes among the honoured names produced by Trinity College Kandy.
They are none other than late Lt. General Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa, Gamini Dissanayake and Lakshman Kadirgamar. All three of them were born in the 20th century and went through the World War II as children and lived in Kandy, Kotmale and Matale. They had their primary and secondary education at Trinity College, excelling in their studies and sports. Having successfully completed their education at Trinity College, they then went on to further their studies in higher educational institutions and ventured out to pursue in their respective professions.
Lt .General Denzil Kobbekaduwa as an officer cadet who had his initial training at the Army Training Centre in Diyathalawa and was posted to Royal military academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom for a two year training assignment. He also successfully followed military training assignments at the Royal Armoured Corps Training Unit at Bovington Camp, British Army Staff College at Camberley, Royal College of Defence Studies – all in the United Kingdom. He was one officer who had all his defence studies and training in the United Kingdom.
Lt. General Denzil Kobbekaduwa had a great military career and was the Overall operations commander of the Northern sector head quartered in Anuradhapura, Overall operations commander Eastern province, General officer commanding 1st brigade Western command head quartered in Panagoda, Commanding officer of his regiment Sri Lanka (Ceylon ) Armoured Crops.
Gamini Dissanayake was a lawyer by profession had his tertiary education at the Sri Lanka Law College. He started his political career in 1970 contesting and getting elected to parliament in 1970. He retained his parliamentary seat in the 1977 elections and was appointed as Minister in charge of the accelerated Mahaweli Development program. Later in life as a politician representing the Sri Lanka parliament during the Premadasa era he was side-lined. During this period he completed an MPhil Degree in International Relations at Cambridge University in United Kingdom.
Lakshman Kadirgamar was a lawyer by profession who went on to study law at the University of Ceylon in Colombo and the year after in Peradeniya, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) (Honours) degree. He was the top student with a First Class at the Advocates Intermediate Examination of the Ceylon Law College. He won the scholarship for the candidate placed first in the First Class at the Advocates Final Examination of the Ceylon Law College and was awarded prizes for the Law of Evidence and the Law of Persons and Property. In 1955 he took oaths as Advocate of the Supreme Court of Ceylon.
Thereafter he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied from 1956 to 1959, receiving in 1960 his BLitt degree from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. His thesis was on “Strict Liability in English and Roman-Dutch Law”. In November 1958 he applied successfully to become a barrister of Inner Temple, London. In the same month he became the second Sri Lankan (the first had been Lalith Athulathmudali one year earlier) to be elected to serve as President of the Oxford Union.
Having achieved success in their professional fields all three of them were seen in the national platform to serve the nation. The tragedy is that Sri Lanka lost the services of these three men when they were serving the nation at the highest level as a result of the assassinations carried out by terrorist in connivance with the politicians and their henchmen. It must be mentioned that these men had a great reputation and commanded the respect (not demanded) of all in their professions and the general public of our motherland Sri Lanka. They belong to the category of Statesman and were also well known personalities in their professions internationally and had the capacity to lead the country to stability & develop it but sadly it was not to be.
Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa was born in Kandy at The Kandy Nursing Home on 27 July 1940 to Loku Bandara Kobbekaduwa and Iona Ratwatte Kumarihami as their second child and eldest of three sons. He spent his early days of childhood at the Deldeniya Walawwa in the village of Deldeniya in Menikdiwela, surrounded within the misty mountains of Kadugannawa and later at his maternal ancestral home Amunugama Walawwa in the village of Amunugama Gunnepana a property of famous Meegastenne Adigars/Seneviratne Ratwatte fame.
He received his primary education at Hillwood College and in 1948 entered Trinity College Kandy. He represented the college at rugby, hockey and cricket. He won the Trinity Lion for rugby, was a coloursman for Hockey. He was a school prefect representing Lemuel house and also the senior prefect of Trinity College. Although he was offered admission to the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya he opted for a military career with the Sri Lanka (Ceylon) Army in 1960.
Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa joined the Sri Lanka (Ceylon) Army as an Officer Cadet and had his initial training at the Army training centre in Diyathalawa and proceeded to the Royal military academy, Sandhurst in the United Kingdom. Later on he followed many defence and military training programs from Royal Armoured Corps training unit at Bovington Camp and British Army Staff College at Camberley in the United Kingdom In 1988, he accompanied President J. R. Jayewardene to Islamabad for the fourth SAARC summit and after his return he was sent to the Royal College of Defence Studies.
General Kobbekaduwa was a person who was politically victimised on various occasions especially by the UNP politicians. In the latter part of the 1960s he was sent on compulsory leave when J.R. Jayewardene was Minister of State. In 1977 he was once again side-lined by the UNP Government under J.R. Jayewardene. In 1983 he was serving at the operations desk at the Army Head Quarters and requested the higher authorities to take immediate action to halt the July riots. But the Government was deaf to his request and later he was transferred to Diyathalawa officer training school.
In 1987 he was asked to get back to barracks after successfully completing the Vadamarachchi operation due the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord by J.R. Jayewardene. In 1988 General Kobbekaduwa was following a course at the Royal College of Defense Studies, only to be recalled during the middle of the course by Ranasinghe Premadasa. However, he was quickly sent back once the British Government questioned the recall mid-course.
General Kobbekaduwa is one person who did not betray the armed forces. He as a battle-hardened officer had the courage even to turn down an order sent by the Commanding Chief Ranasinghe Premadasa instructing the Sri Lanka Army in the battlefront to surrender to LTTE terrorists. The reply to the message carrier (a very high politician in the then UNP Government who was killed subsequently) by General Kobbekaduwa was that the Sri Lanka Army in the battlefront would not surrender to the LTTE terrorists but if the commanding chief so desires only a tactical withdrawal of troops from the battlefront could be done and he would be the last person to leave the operational areas once the mission was s completed.
On the battlefront General Kobbekaduwa commanded many military operations against the LTTE terrorists. ‘Operation Liberation’ also known as the ‘Vadamarachchi Operation,’ was an operation successfully carried out to gain control of the Vadamarachchi area in the Jaffna peninsula.
He also launched an operation ‘Operation Gajasinghe’ withdrawing troops from Kilinochchi and strengthening the Army garrison at Elephant Pass, the critical land strip that linked the Jaffna peninsula with the mainland.
Major General Kobbekaduwa proposed an amphibious assault launched code named Operation Balavegaya. Launching an amphibious assault for the first time in Sri Lankan military history, plans for Operation Balavegaya were drawn up at Joint Operations headquarters in Colombo. A total of 8,000 troops were deployed for the rescue mission to relieve the besieged Elephant Pass camp and regain territory captured by the LTTE. This was an amphibious operation using landing craft and helicopters to transport the soldiers.
Gen. Kobbekaduwa was mortally wounded and his commanders and staff killed when the Land Rover they were travelling exploded in the island of Kayts while making preparations for Operation Final Countdown the proposed invasion of the Jaffna Peninsula. This incident had occurred due to a conspiracy hatched by the politicians and their henchmen in connivance with the terrorists. Soon after the explosion on 8 August 1992 morning the Dambulla Hospital was named after Gen. Kobbekaduwa. But sadly the guilty personnel at that time did not know General Kobbekaduwa though wounded was still alive. Though the blast took place in the morning hours the security officials and other Government officials delayed in providing medical treatment to this great person and he was eventually taken to hospital in the late afternoon and it was too late by that time. He succumbed to his injuries at the Colombo General Hospital. More information to this conspiracy can be accessed on ‘Famous Assassinations in World History’ – an Encyclopaedia (volume 2) and Wikipedia.
The people of Sri Lanka did not accept the then Government’s version of this explosion and always felt that it was a conspiracy. The then Government’s representatives who attended the funeral of Lt. Gen. Kobbekaduwa, Ministers John Amarathunga and A.J. Ranasinghe, were assaulted by the general public and were injured and had to be escorted out to safety by the security officials.
A great war hero, General Denzil Kobbekaduwa sacrificed his life for the betterment of the future generation of our motherland Thambapanni/Taprobane (Sinhale/Sri Lanka).
During the 1988-1993 era a fair amount of battle-hardened service personnel retired from the security forces establishments since they felt the then Government did not have a clear policy to fight the war against the terrorists. There were even young officers (who were identified as future commanders) who left the Army due to double standards adopt by the Government and did not wish to get victimised by the politicians. Then Lt. Col. Gotabaya Rajapakse too left the Sri Lanka Army during this period and I am sure if this question is put to him now the answer will be that they did not have faith in the political leadership in the country at that time.
Lt. General Denzil Kobbekaduwa, a strategist warrior, worked with vision to finish off the war with the LTTE and requested the then political leadership to draft a political solution for all Sri Lankans to live in peace with dignity and move forward as one nation. But the politicians from the south and north had other ideas and double-crossed him, resulting in him getting assassinated on 8 August 1992 in the battlefront. As a result the war against LTTE terrorists got extended up to 2009 (17 long years) at tremendous cost to the nation.
An enormous number of lives of Sri Lankan solders of the Tri Forces, Police and Civil Defence Force was lost and also injured and disabled. There were civilians too who lost their lives and got injured and disabled due terrorist activity in the north as well as in the south of Sri Lanka. There were terrorist causalities due to fighting and civilian causalities who could not leave the battlefront due to LTTE orders. The arms dealers made a considerable amount of money by selling arms to both sides Sri Lanka Security Forces and LTTE terrorists. Purchase of arms for the Sri Lankan security forces cost an enormous amount of money resulting in dragging the country’s economy down. The taxpayers of Sri Lanka had to bear this additional expenditure for the sake of peace in the country.
As a mark of respect for this great statesman Lt. General Denzil Lakshman Kobbekaduwa the general public of Sri Lanka has erected statues of this hero in 12 different locations from north to the south with their personal funding (not State funding).
As a believer in Buddhist philosophy we all believe that General Kobbekaduwa he has attained a ‘Deva Athma’ and he will be reborn in Sri Lanka one day to serve the nation once again. The country’s historians should have a special chapter dedicated to General Denzil Kobbekaduwa in the ‘Mahawanansa’ of Sri Lanka/Sinhale.
Dissanayake Mudiyanse Ralahamilage Lionel Gamini Dissanayake (known as Gamini Dissanayake; (20 March 1942-24 October 1994) was a prominent Sri Lankan politician, a powerful minister of the United National Party, and Leader of the Opposition. He was designated as the UNP candidate in the 1994 Presidential Election, but was then assassinated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in connivance with politicians and their henchman.
He was born in Kandy as the eldest son of a family of seven children to Andrew Dissanayake who served as an MP and a deputy minister in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. His mother Welegedara Samaratunga Kumarihami of Kotmale. Born and bred in Kotmale, his basic values were cultivated in this rural milieu social surrounding and environment. The wealthy Dissanayake family resided in both Kandy as well as Kotmale Nuwara Eliya. Gamini Dissanayake had his schooling at the best school of all, Trinity College in Kandy, and received his tertiary education at the Sri Lanka Law College. Later in life, he completed an MPhil Degree in International Relations at Cambridge University UK.
Gamini Dissanayake won the 1970 elections and became a Member of Parliament under UNP candidature and was among one of the 18 UNP Members in Parliament at a time when his party has faced a humiliating defeat. He comfortably secured his Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya multi electorate seat in the 1977 elections and was appointed as the minister of Mahaweli Development.
Dissanayake spearheaded the Mahaweli Development Project. This was a huge project which was expected to take 30 years to finish. But due to Dissanayake’s skills he managed to finish the project within six years. The Mahaweli Development Project is the largest development project conducted in Sri Lanka after independence. The whole country was affected by the project which focused on irrigation, hydro power generation, agriculture, and town and country development. Further it was criticised by the time as to introduce Sinhala population into Tamil’s dominant areas. Majority of the power generated for the local consumption is generated from these hydropower plants while an overwhelming majority of the rice cultivation in Sri Lanka is conducted in these Mahaweli areas.
He was the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board in the early 1980s and helped Sri Lanka to gain the Test Status in cricket. During this period he also rendered great support to his alma mater Trinity College Kandy to construct and convert the Asgiriya cricket grounds into an international cricket stadium.
He played a pivotal role in signing the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord in 1987. In 1989 he was re-elected as a MP from Nuwara Eliya District securing the highest percentage of preferential votes obtained by any UNP MP. He was the Minister of Estate Development during Premadasa regime. He was not awarded a portfolio in the 1990 Cabinet reshuffle and remained as a back-seat MP in the Parliament.
Gamini Dissanayake was a strong leader who had the potential to negotiate a solution to end terrorism in Sri Lanka. However the then political leadership double-crossed the leading leaders of the then UNP Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali and forced them to leave the UNP. This was a disastrous situation for the UNP and the country as a whole.
As a result of the assassination of Ranasinghe Premadasa by the very LTTE who had the support of Premadasa, the then UNP had a major crisis regarding the party leadership. Ranil Wickremesinghe who succeeded as Prime Minister wanted to take over the leadership of the party. However the majority of the UNP membership requested Gamini Dissanayake to come back and take over the UNP leadership and contest the next Presidential Elections. There were a few disgruntled personnel within the UNP and they did not give the maximum support to Gamini Dissanayake.
During the Presidential Election campaign in 1994 Gamini Dissanayake and many key leaders of the UNP were assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber during an election rally in Grandpass. As a result Gamini Dissanayake’s wife Srima Dissanayake stepped in continued the campaign but lost to Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.
After the Presidential Elections in November 1994 Ranil Wickremesinghe took over the UNP leadership and for the past 26 years he has remained as the Party Leader. The progress made by Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Party Leader and four-time short-term Prime Minister is yet to be analysed.
On the eve of the 72nd year of Sri Lanka’s independence we as citizens should recommend the name of late Gamini Dissanayake to the National Honours list. May his journey in Samsara be a short one and eventually achieve Nirvana.
Sri Lankabhimanya Lakshman Kadirgamar, PC (12 April 1932-12 August 2005) was a Sri Lankan Tamil lawyer and statesmen. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka from 1994 to 2001 and again from April 2004 until his assassination in August 2005.
He achieved international prominence in this position due to his wide-ranging condemnation of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and his efforts to have them banned internationally. A distinguished lawyer and international humanitarian, he was assassinated by an LTTE sniper on 12 August 2005.
Lakshman Kadirgamar was born in Colombo. He hailed from a Tamil family; his father was Samuel J.C. Kadirgamar Snr, JP, UM a Proctor, who was the President of the Colombo Proctor’s Association and the founder President of the Law Society of Ceylon and his mother was Edith Rosemond Parimalam Mather. He had four older brothers; S.J.C. Kadirgamar Jr., QC who became an eminent lawyer in commercial law; Rear Admiral Rajan Kadirgamar who became the head of the Royal Ceylon Navy and Major Selvanathan “Bai” Kadirgamar of the Ceylon Artillery, Thirumalan “Mana” Kadirgamar, a planter who died in a motor bike accident very young. His mother died when he was seven years and he was looked after by his older sister Eeswari who married Dr. A.M.D. Richards.
Kadirgamar received his primary education at C.M.S. Ladies’ College, Colombo and moved with his sister to Matale in the war years, where her husband was posted. He decided to attend Trinity College, Kandy as a boarder for his secondary education even though all his brothers had attended Royal College, Colombo. It was a common practice to board children in places away from Colombo as Colombo was under the threat of bombing by Japanese.
At Trinity, he captained the college first eleven cricket team in 1950 while also competing in the college athletics and rugby teams. He played in the annual Bradby Shield Encounter. He was the winner of the Senior Batting Prize in 1948, a Rugger Coloursman in 1948 and 1949, Trinity Athletics Lion in 1949, and winner of the first Duncan White Challenge Cup for Athletics in 1948. In recognition of his all-round performance in academic and extra-curricular spheres, he was awarded the prestigious Ryde Gold medal for the best all round student of 1950. He was also the Senior Prefect of Trinity College.
In 1950 Kadirgamar went on to study law at the University of Ceylon in Colombo and the year after in Peradeniya, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) (Honours) degree in 1953. Kadirgamar was the holder of the All India Inter University 110-metre hurdles title in both 1951 and 1952.
He was the top student with a First Class at the Advocates Intermediate Examination in 1953 of the Ceylon Law College. In 1954 he won the scholarship for the candidate placed first in the First Class at the Advocates Final Examination of the Ceylon Law College and was awarded prizes for the Law of Evidence and the Law of Persons and Property. In 1955 he took oaths as Advocate of the Supreme Court of Ceylon.
Thereafter he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied from 1956 to 1959, receiving in 1960 his BLitt degree from the University of Oxford. His thesis was on ‘Strict Liability in English and Roman-Dutch Law’. In November 1958 he applied successfully to become a barrister of Inner Temple, London. In the same month he became the second Sri Lankan (the first had been Lalith Athulathmudali one year earlier) to be elected to serve as President of the Oxford Union. Upon leaving Oxford he took up a legal career. He returned to Ceylon and built up a practice in commercial, industrial and administrative law.
Lakshman Kadirgamar left Ceylon in 1971 following the JVP insurrection that year, moving to England, practicing in London for three years. Going on to work for international organisations in Geneva, Kadirgamar served in 1974-6 as a consultant for the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Then in 1976 he took up an appointment with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), in which he was appointed in 1983 to the newly created post of Director for Asia and the Pacific. He also served as Director, Industrial Property Division and Director, Development Cooperation and External Relations Bureau for Asia and the Pacific at WIPO. In 1988 he returned to Sri Lanka and resumed his legal career there. In 1991 he was appointed President’s Counsel.
Although Lakshman Kadirgamar had never been actively involved in politics before, and had never even addressed a political rally, he was selected as National List MP in 1994 on the People’s Alliance (PA) list for the General Elections. Following the victory of the PA, he was appointed Foreign Minister in the PA Government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga. He held the post till 2001, playing a significant role in having the LTTE banned internationally. The United States and the United Kingdom proscribed the LTTE on 8 October 1997 and 28 February 2001 respectively, thereby depriving that organisation of a primary source of funding.
Widely respected in his role as Foreign Minister, he was elected Vice-Chairman (1997-99) and later Chairman (2003-05) of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC). In 1998-2001 he was Chair of the Council of Ministers of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). From 1999 onwards he was also a Chair of the South Asia Foundation (SAF), a Non-Governmental Organisation.
After the defeat of the Government in 2001, he became Special Adviser on Foreign Affairs to President Kumaratunga. He became critical of the attempts to negotiate with the Tamil Tiger insurgents in northern Sri Lanka and of the Ceasefire Agreement concluded on 22 February 2002 between the Government and the Tamil Tigers. His criticisms of this agreement, and of the Norwegian mediation effort in Sri Lanka, were most cogently expressed in his speech from the Opposition in the Parliament in Colombo on 8 May 2003.
Following the victory of the United People’s Freedom Alliance in the 2 April 2004 Sri Lankan legislative elections, he was mentioned as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, but on 6 April President Kumaratunga appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa to the post. Four days later, however, he was appointed Foreign Minister again in the new Cabinet.
Kadirgamar was born to a Christian family. In 1999 he brought a proposal to the UN General Assembly to make the Buddhist holy day, Vesak Day, an international celebration day. In lectures he emphasised the common features in the parables and principles of the great belief systems: Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. His funeral was held according to Buddhist rites, but one of the speakers was the Anglican bishop of Colombo. May his journey in Samsara be a short one and eventually achieve Nirvana.
During a BBC interview he was asked if he thought he was a traitor to the Tamil people since he was a minister in a Sinhalese-dominated Government. He said: “People who live in Sri Lanka are first and foremost Sri Lankans, then we have our race and religion, which is something given to us at birth. We have to live in Sri Lanka as Sri Lankans tolerating all races and religion.”
It is widely believed around the world that Kadirgamar’s assassin belonged to the LTTE, a group banned as a terrorist organisation by a number of countries including the United States, Canada, India and the European Union primary due to his efforts. An overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans hold them responsible due to the fact that Kadirgamar was responsible for getting the US among many countries to classify the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. The Tamil Tigers have denied responsibility for the killing, and have stated that any damage made to their international reputation by Lakshman Kadirgamar was already done, and they would not risk the Cease-Fire Agreement by carrying out this assassination.
In 1995 Kadirgamar was made Honorary Master of the Inner Temple—one of the four Inns of Court in London. In 2001 he was awarded an Honorary DLitt at the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka. In 2004 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford. The Government of Sri Lanka posthumously awarded him its highest national honour Sri Lankabhimanya.
Kadirgamar is considered as one of the most successful foreign ministers Sri Lanka has had, due to his successful efforts of changing international opinion on Sri Lanka and the LTTE. His efforts in getting the LTTE listed as a terrorist organisation contributed to its ultimate defeat in 2009. He recognised that significant change was needed within Sri Lanka if its communities were to live together peacefully was an enduring part of his legacy.
The Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies, a think tank on international affairs, was established in his memory a year after his assassination. A statue of Kadirgamar has been erected at the Liberty roundabout in Colombo. In April 2013 Balliol College established the Lakshman Kadirgamar Fund to assist students from Asia at Balliol College.
As a person who earned the respect of the majority community and the minority communities (except extremist politicians who supported terrorism and extremism) at what position can the Sri Lankans slot him in the National Heroes list? May he have a pleasant journey.
Assassinations of these three personalities at the most crucial periods were a great loss to the Sri Lankan State and its people were enormous and we as a nation are still struggling to come to terms. When can we live with dignity as Sri Lankans in one nation, in a well-developed country in this modern era? When will an era like King Dutugemunu’s, King Parakrama Bahu’s dawn for Mother Lanka? Your guess is as good as mine.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, we all trust your visionary leadership and hope you will drive the nation to achieve the desired results for all Sri Lankans so that they could live a decent life with dignity. There is light at the end of the tunnel and we as citizens of all communities expect you to bring in a prosperous era for Sri Lanka. Please dislodge the divide and rule policy which was adopted by the invading nations to rule Sri Lanka which has brought the downfall of our nation. In an era where the younger generations of Sri Lankans are eagerly awaiting to dislodge the most unprofessional and unscrupulous lot of politicians and appoint a set of clean professionals to the Parliament at the next elections, it is of utmost importance that nominations are given to the most suitable professionals to contest at the next General Elections.
(The writer is a former Committee Member, Trinity College Kandy. O.B.A. Colombo Branch. The contents of this article are sourced from the writer’s personal collection of articles, Wikipedia encyclopaedia, ‘Encyclopaedia on Famous Assassinations in World History,’ Trinity College magazines, articles from Google searches, etc.)
