Dr Rajiva Wijesinha, reviewing a book by Prof S Pathmanathan, in an essay entitled “Glimpses of an Ancient Civilization Society and Culture in Jaffna (300 BC –AD 500)”
It was an honour to have been asked last month to the launch of this impressive tome by a former colleague, Prof Pathmanathan. Indeed I think of him as an old friend, for he had been Vice-Chairman of the University Grants Commission while I was in charge of the pre-University General English Language Training Course.
He had been at Peradeniya during my brief tenure there and, though I could not remember him very well, he and the Chairman first appointed by Prof Kumaratunga, treated me as a great ally. They had been part of the opposition to the partisan establishment of my time there, represented most horrendously by Kingsley de Silva, and so they had been delighted when I resigned my position over the deprivation of Mrs Bandaranaike’s Civic Rights.
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