Kingsley M. De Silva …. a summary memo drafted way back by Professor Kingsley M. De Silva and sent to me in July 2024 by Iranga Silva of the ICES in Kandy[1]
Early in 1981, I had two American visitors, one of whom, Professor Donald Horowitz, I had known since the late 1960s when he visited the island for research on the abortive coup d’état of 1962 in the island. The other was Robert Goldmann, a programme officer of the Ford Foundation in New York. They had come to Kandy to invite me to a Ford Foundation-sponsored conference to be held in August 1981 at the Taita Hills Game Park about 200 km from Nairobi, Kenya, where a group of scholars and administrators—from governments and the private sector—from many parts of the world would discuss the theme of ‘Ethnic Problems in the Developing and Developed Worlds’. A record of the proceedings of this conference—including most of the papers presented—is available in the library of the ICES in Kandy.
Prof. Goldmann
to be presented one of Prof. Horowitz
Robert Goldmann was on the verge of retirement from the Ford Foundation but kept on pressing the Ford Foundation on the need to establish a research institute for the study of ethnicity and conflict, and the policies and mechanisms useful in coping with such conflicts.
At the Taita Hills conference, there was unanimous support from participants for the proposal to establish an institute to study ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Most participants believed that such a research institute was important, and indeed some felt that it was a vital necessity because there were very few such institutes in the world, and none in any part of Asia and Africa.
There were three Sri Lankan invitees at this conference: myself, Dr Neelan Tiruchelvam and Dr C. R. de Silva; all of us argued that Sri Lanka should be chosen as the home of the proposed centre because of Sri Lanka’s convenient geographical location with easy access to South and South East Asia no less than to East Asia; and because of its relatively free intellectual life, relative that is to say, to most parts of Asia and Africa. Although it was recognised that the work of the centre to be established was important enough, it was also felt that the themes of ethnicity and conflict were too sensitive and too controversial for most countries in our part of the world, Asian and African alike. It was felt that governments in Asia and Africa would be reluctant to encourage the establishment of such an institution. The Sri Lankan participants argued that Sri Lanka would be an exception.
The origins of my involvement with the research centre to be established began at the Taita Hills conference with a tentative suggestion made to the Sri Lankan group and to others that I should head this new institution. My response was a hesitant agreement to carefully consider it, but no more than that. For my part, I was reluctant to accept such a leadership role because any commitment to it would be at the expense of my research and writing. I was spending most of my time on the preparation of my lectures; and apart from that I had just completed a one volume history of Sri Lanka, something that had not been done before in modern times and needed to be done. The lead publisher was an independent publisher in London, C. Hurst and he was joined in this enterprise by Oxford University Press, Delhi and the University of California Press in the US.
When I eventually agreed to serve as the head of the institution planned by Robert Goldmann and his associates, it was after much persuasion by close friends most, if not all, of them with long experience in academic life and or in running academic institutions; they argued that I should give it a try. These included my close friend at the University of Ceylon (later the University of Peradeniya) Professor A. J. Wilson who had moved to Canada from 1972 and some British and American scholars, above all Professor Myron Weiner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an internationally recognised expert on ethnicity and ethnic conflict, and on South Asian politics, who urged that I should accept the challenge of building such an institution and leading it.
Those who sought to establish this new research institute felt they needed an academic with solid credentials to head it. With 12 years as a full Professor of the University of Ceylon and as a member of Sri Lanka’s University Grants Commission, the apex body of the Sri Lankan university system, I seemed to fit the bill. That was how they saw it.
The Taita Hills conference was followed by a second cross-national workshop held on 7 March 1982; this time at the then Hotel Club Oceanic in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. On this occasion it was on the theme of ‘Preferential Policies and Programs’. By this time, two others had joined the Sri Lankan group, Dr S.W. R. de A. Samarasinghe (known to his colleagues and associates as Sam) and Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy.
It was at this conference at Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, that we learned that the Ford Foundation had decided to establish this research centre, and that they would like it to be located in Sri Lanka. The Ford Foundation had decided that Sri Lanka would be a good location for the centre on ethnicity and ethnic conflict, and had committed itself to funding this centre for two years in the first instance. After two years and an evaluation of its record of work and its prospects for the future, more long-term support was envisaged.
After the Trincomalee conference the preliminary moves for the establishment of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) gathered momentum. Some of these preliminary moves were of vital importance for the establishment of this research institute in Sri Lanka; two of them were classified as crucially important. First and most important of all was the approval of the Sri Lanka government for the establishment of such an institute in Sri Lanka. Secondly, there was the need for Sri Lanka’s Finance Ministry to approve the setting up of a special bank account for the ICES, permitting it to deal with hard currencies both with regard to monies received from the Ford Foundation and other sources; and for payments to be made in hard currencies. The concern was to avoid time-consuming negotiations with Finance Ministry officials for each hard currency item received and each item remitted, that a normal bank account would involve.
I was asked to and agreed to deal with both these matters. Since there was some urgency in regard to both of these, I decided to meet President J. R. Jayewardene and the Minister of Finance, Ronnie de Mel to discuss these issues. In going straight to the President of Sri Lanka and the Minister of Finance on matters relating to the establishment and location of the ICES and its financial vitality, I believed we would be avoiding the long delays that a formal letter moving through other ministerial colleagues of the President and the Ministry of Finance, and of their officials would inevitably involve. Fortunately, Sri Lanka’s very dynamic Finance Minister, Ronnie de Mel, had initiated a notable change in his ministry’s policies on these matters beginning with his budgets for 1978-79.
My discussions with President J. R. Jayewardene took me about an hour or so in the course of which he approved, in principle, the establishment in Sri Lanka, of a research institute on ethnicity and ethnic conflict; but he wanted an assurance that the prime movers of this project (including me) would see to it that the directors of the institution, and its staff, particularly its Sri Lankan members, would not be involved in party politics in Sri Lanka. I had no hesitation in giving him the assurance that we would keep the ICES free of involvement in party politics. Once that assurance was given, he declared himself happy that this centre would be located in Sri Lanka and urged that it be located in Kandy and not in Colombo. This was my preference too; I may not have joined it had it been located in Colombo.
The discussions with the Minister of Finance were equally fruitful. After some reflection he agreed to give the new centre the privilege of the foreign currency account that the Ford Foundation wanted and instructed his officials to expedite this matter; while a foreign currency account was being approved other issues regarding payments by hard currencies were to be decided at a later date or dates.
The decisive phase in the establishment of what later became the ICES was this conference in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. The discussions there endorsed most of the decisions taken in Kenya with one exception.
At the Kenya conference, delegates had spoken of the need to locate the Centre within a university. That may have happened had it not been for the intervention of Professor Uma Eleazu, a distinguished Nigerian delegate who became one of the first directors of the ICES. He made an impassioned plea that the Centre should not be located in a university. He cited Nigeria’s experience of how divisions and rivalries within the universities worked their way into these centres and made it virtually impossible for them to function as they were expected to do. Professor Uma Eleazu’s sage advice was that we locate the Centre close to a university, but keep it entirely independent of the university. The recommendation of all those consulted on this matter was that the location of the Centre should be in Kandy close to the University of Ceylon (University of Peradeniya), and independent of it.
From the time it was established in 1982 the ICES was identified as a Kandy-based operation with a small Colombo unit established for administrative convenience in regard to meeting the needs of delegates arriving for the conferences it was going to hold and if necessary, for scholars seeking permission for research opportunities in Sri Lanka. It was this small unit which later developed into a Colombo office; there were many stages in this. One important step in this regard was the entry of Radhika Coomaraswamy. Robert Goldmann had met Radhika Coomaraswamy in the US, and after some discussion, persuaded her to join the ICES. He recommended that she be permitted to work in the Colombo unit of the ICES. I accepted this recommendation on the terms suggested by Robert Goldmann, and no more than those.
The origins of what became the Colombo office of the ICES emerged from decisions such as these.
In the 30 years since the ICES was founded that is to say, from 1982 to the time I chose to retire, i.e., in 2008, the ICES remained firmly located in Kandy; and firmly committed to very exacting standards of scholarship in our analyses of the complex issues that had disturbed the peace of Sri Lanka, and of South and South East Asia, and the world. Evidence of this is seen in the large body of publications that emerged from the ICES, and most, if not all, still available in the library of ICES Kandy.
The Establishment of the ICES
Our records will show that the origins of the ICES go back no further than July 1982. Within a few months of its establishment, it faced an unexpected and formidable challenge—the riots of 1983. It confronted and overcame this challenge. The Sri Lanka group associated with the discussions, indeed debates, at Nairobi and Trincomalee remained united in the desire to ensure the survival of the ICES. They succeeded in their efforts to protect the institution and to ensure its survival at a time of unusual difficulties.
Reflecting today on the events of these years, one of the most important factors in ensuring the survival of the ICES at a time of crisis was the firm commitment of the ICES leadership, especially those located in Kandy, to honour the ICES obligations to hold the conferences it had planned before the turmoil of 1983. All the conferences planned were held, as scheduled, in Kandy, Sri Lanka, at two or three small but high-quality hotels—the Topaz and the Tourmaline—in particular. Also we had the enthusiastic support of a group of Indian, Pakistani, Malaysian and Filipino scholars in the field of contested ethnicity and ethnic conflict.
Just as we persuaded scholars to come to Sri Lanka, to participate in these conferences, those from the ICES leadership and others from Sri Lanka who were invited to conferences abroad honoured their invitations even when it meant travel to trouble spots in other parts of the world including the Philippines at the time of the Aquino challenge to the Marcos regime; even more significantly to Belfast during long periods of violence in Northern Ireland. For instance, I travelled to Manila at this time and even more significantly to Belfast.
The ICES had great support from several scholars from various parts of the world, in the conferences we held, and financial backing it received for these conferences from grants-giving sources, especially US sources such as the United States Institute of Peace, and of course, the Ford Foundation which supported us with grants of money to fund projects including individual research initiatives in the study of contested identities; such grants were beyond the establishment grant it provided in 1982.
One other factor that helped the cause of the ICES was a series of scholarly volumes the ICES published through a small but dynamic London-based publishing house, the house of Frances Pinter. This publisher produced, for the ICES, nine to ten volumes mostly containing papers chosen from those presented at ICES conferences. These volumes began in 1984 and continued for about five years or so thereafter. Many of these volumes were edited by persons associated with the ICES in Kandy; some were co-edited with foreign scholars. A full set of these volumes is available in the library of the ICES in Kandy. Some of these volumes sold so well that they were subsequently published as paperbacks. Some of these volumes may be seen in university libraries and research centres in Europe and the US.
The conferences organised by the ICES and its publications firmly established the reputation of the ICES as a major player in the scholarship on contested ethnicity and ethnic conflict in most parts of the world.
Within five years of its establishment in 1982, the ICES was an internationally recognised institute in the world of scholarship, especially the world of scholarship relating to ethnicity and ethnic conflict.
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Between 2000 and 2003, the ICES Kandy was associated with the Clingendael Institute in the Hague, the Netherlands, in an international study on conflict; and on coping with internal conflict. These conferences were funded by the Clingendael Institute with the money being provided by the Netherlands government; and these conferences brought together researchers from Central America, South Asia and West Africa. The ICES conducted three conferences in Kandy as part of this project between 2000 and 2003.
Major conferences on these themes were held in the Hague in San Jose in Costa Rica (The Arias Foundation), Kandy and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Conferences were also held in Port Harcourt, Nigeria (The Centre for Advanced Social Science); the conferences in Nigeria were planned as the final phase of part one of this project. While the conferences at Port Harcourt maintained the high standards attained in the Hague, in San Jose (Costa Rica) and in Kandy and Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Port Harcourt segment— the last phase—of the project ended in tragedy when the plane taking the participants at this conference from Port Harcourt to Lagos crashed into a swamp near Lagos, killing all aboard including the leaders of the Costa Rica and Port Harcourt groups on 7 November 1996. Fortunately for all concerned the Netherlands participants had moved to the Hague and to Amsterdam earlier and thus escaped the fatal air crash. The Sri Lankan participants did not participate in the final phase of the Port Harcourt conference. They moved instead to a meeting in Brussels in Belgium at which the problems of Belgium were discussed. After a working dinner in Brussels we moved to Amsterdam by train next morning to take our flight by KLM to Colombo; at Amsterdam we learned, for the first time, of what had happened to those who had gone to Lagos.
One consequence of this air crash was that the Clingendael organisers of this project virtually abandoned the preparation of a volume of comparative studies on contested ethnicities or indeed even a conference to precede the preparation of a volume of essays on the theme. As for the ICES, we had prepared a volume on conflict and political violence in South Asia edited by me Conflict and Violence in South Asia (Kandy, ICES, 2000). This volume was published in 2000 and is available in the ICES libraries in Kandy and Colombo. After the air crash the ICES did not proceed with our plans for a companion volume on conflict and violence in South-East Asia although some of the preliminary papers on conflict in South East Asia had already been published in the series of volumes by Frances Pinter in London.
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The third item that needs to be specified here is the brief association the ICES had with the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC over the period 2000-03. On a personal level this association was facilitated by the fact that I was a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center in the year 2000-01.
The Woodrow Wilson Center’s active interest in the study of contested ethnicities and ethnic conflict stemmed from the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the arrival of scores of scholars and officials from the former Soviet Union and from Central Europe to research centres in the US, including the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. At this time several former officials from Gorbechev’s staff secured short fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center and within units of the Woodrow Wilson Center such as the Kennan Center.
The Woodrow Wilson Center held several conferences to study the collapse of the Soviet Union and scores of scholars and officials including diplomats from the former Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe either participated in these conferences or attended the conferences.
The Woodrow Wilson Center had a wider interest in the issues of contested ethnicities in parts of the world apart from the Soviet Union, most notably in South and South East Asia. Its association with the ICES in conferences on ethnic conflict in South and South East Asia shifted the focus to those parts of the world. The first of these conferences on South and South East Asia was held in Washington; the second, organised by the ICES in association with the Woodrow Wilson Center, was held in Colombo.
The third conference on ethnic conflict organised by the Woodrow Wilson Center in association with the ICES took place in Trinidad and Tobago. For those of us who attended these workshops and conferences in Trinidad, it was a fascinating introduction to the complexities of contested identities and conflicts in Trinidad, and of course, other islands in the West Indies; these included a study of the impact of diasporas, Indian and African, and the contests between them, contests which included the composition of official statistical handbooks, such as censuses.
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One of the sadder aspects of our conferences and discussions in this period was the sudden death of a reputed scholar—Myron Weiner, who at the time of his death, caused by a brain tumour, was hard at work on a series of monographs on South Africa during and after the collapse of apartheid. He had discussions with me about a link with this organisation and the ICES, for studies on the politics of South Asia, particularly on contested ethnicities and ethnic conflict.
Myron Weiner had a number of associates at the MIT who would make a mark in the study of ethnic conflict in India. As for Myron Weiner, himself, probably his last work on India was a monograph he published on Education in India, a monograph which received enormous publicity in India not merely in universities and research centres but also in national newspapers such as The Hindu. The Hindu gave it much prominence.
For the ICES this period is associated with events leading to the assassination of Neelan Tiruchelvam by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a theme which will be dealt with in Chapter 17.
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[1] This item was sent to me by Iranga Silva of the ICES in Kandy (a lady who has been a foundational pillar in the Kandy branch for decades now). Note that there will be overlaps between this account and chapter 14 in Professor KM De Silva’s Memoirs (as yet unpublished). From personal knowledge I emphasize the centrality of several factors in the successful initiation of the ICES: viz (A) Kingsley de Silva’s standing and drive; (B) the aura and reputation he held in international circles; (C) the support of reputed personnel with affiliations to parties other than the UNP –for example, Professor AJ Wilson and Neelan Tiruchelvam; and (D) the acceptance of this project by President JR Jayewardene and Finance Minister Ronnie De Mel….. Michael Roberts as Editor, Thuppahi