Michael Roberts
One of my batchmates at Peradeniya University when I entered in 1957 was Mark Cooray. He resided at Arunachalam Hall and not at Ramanathan Hall where I was. But both of us were churchgoers and attended the Anglican Chapel where Fr Lakshman Wickremasinghe led the flock in charismatic manner.
The various modes of Christian fellowship and the activities organised by the Student Christian Movement – both within Pera-Uni and in island wide conferences – brought Mark and me into frequent interaction. On occasions I even lodged at his parental residence in Kollupitiya [aka Colpetty] within Colombo during visits there for this or that [even though I had two sisters living in the city]. His mother was as sweet and supportive a figure one could ask for.
In brief, we were buddies – a friendship made all the stronger when he and Noreen Fernando fell in love and tied the nuptial know at some point. Noreen had been part of the Peradeniya SCM and was one of the sweetest women one could ask for.
My interaction with Mark continued in the period 1966-to-the 1970s when I was lecturing in Peradeniya and visited Colombo periodically for cricket matches and/or tasks associated with the oral history project tapping local politicians and administrators on their life experiences and socio-political experiences.[1]
And, voila, I discovered from Mark and his mother that his late father GL Cooray has been the Secretary of the Ceylon Reform League – one of the political precursors of the Ceylon National Congress which took form on the 11th December 1919 and spearheaded the pressures for political reform leading to the eventual goal of independent political status in 1948.
As Secretary he had kept the “Minutes’ on CRL affairs. Those minutes remained intact and were now lodged in my hands. They remain secure among the Roberts Mss in the repository sustained by the Special Collections Unit of the Barr-Smith Library, Adelaide University.[2] They will soon be placed in the public domain.
Here, now, however, I pay homage to my departed friends Mark and Noreen by marking their loyalty to the land of their birth and upbringing. Both eventually migrated to Sydney in Australia and their residence was at times one of my pied a terre in Sydney. But prior to that shift Mark was a Lecturer at the Law College in Colombo. His stature was such that when the Ceylon Studies Seminar circle at Peradeniya University decided to stir the island’s intelligentsia about the impending disaster in Sinhala-Tamil relations[3], we chose Mark as the person to chair the sessions and keep a firm control on any passions that overflowed.[4] That conference over a couple of days was held at the forum facilities of the Anglican Church at Buller’s Rd.
While the outbreak of war in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s indicates that the efforts we made in the early 1970s were a failure, THAT does not erase the foresight and the patriotic concerns and vision that animated all of us.
To Mark and Noreen in life and death I dedicate this essay…..AND…. the early nationalist endeavours recorded within the Minutes of the Ceylon Reform League.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.ourcivilisation.com/cooray/cooray.htm
https://slbooks.lk/an-introduction-to-the-legal-system-of-sri-lanka
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Ceylon_National_Congress
https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/collections/35317565-6bd5-4773-b095-40a679dae883
https://thuppahis.com/2020/09/12/the-democratisation-process-in-ceylon-1832-1948/
https://thuppahis.com/2018/05/22/how-it-became-documenting-the-ceylon-national-congress/
https://thuppahis.com/2020/12/11/the-rohp-in-ceylon-1966-70-interviews-and-select-transcriptions/
Reviewing Educational Reform and the Study of History in British Ceylon
FOOTNOTES
1] The short form reference is “ROHP.” The digital and/or converted records of these interviews now repose within the portals of the National Library Service in Colombo, as well as the Dept of National Archives. They also lie with the Special Collections Unit which financed a major process of converting spools to cassettes and then digitalized the lot way back in time…. In the 1990s or so.
2] The SPECIAL COLLECTIONS UNIT can be reached by emailing either Lee Hayes or Mariah Long at special.collections@adelaide.edu.au
3] When a few of us first broached this idea, WI Siriweera – one of my colleagues in the Dept of History who was part of a Left-oriented coterie in the Arts Faculty attached to the ruling coalition government headed by Mrs. Bandaranaike, even stood up from his chair to proclaim: “There is no Sinhala-Tamil problem.” The key CSS personnel did not let this perspective halt their project [not that ‘talk-talk’ prevented the outbreak of war].
4] The keynote speakers included Bishop Lakshman Wickremasinghe, V. Karalasingham and myself. Leading Tamil politicians such as Amirthalingam were present and spoke from the floor …. But my memory is rather like a colander on the events during this two -day conference – one held at the excellent forum facilities associated with the Anglican Church off Buller’s Rd in Colombo – made available to us by Fr Kenneth Fernando.
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Mark Cooray was a fellow Royalist who was at Cambridge at the same time as myself. He lived in a Trintiy Hall graduate residence off Grange Road that was in close proximity to where I lived, on Selwyn Gardens- a graduate residence of Corpus Christi College. So we often got together to cook a Sri Lankan meal. Hemasiri Cooray (Botanist) and Gerald Pieries (Geographer) too occasionally joined in. Steven Hawking (astophysicist and author of “A short history of time”), a bit senior to us, also lived in Trinity Hall, and sometimes joined in to eat “curry”, and would also join in a sing song, with his voice already slightly cracking from his impending disability. Mark was active in Christian Fellowship activities, and once requested me (1965 summer, I think) to join in as an agnostic/atheist in an event he organised in Manchester. Mark had bought an old car and we travelled to Manchester in it. Unfortunately, near Kettering he drove off the rode and the car was a complete wreck, but we miraculously survived! contributed by Chandre Dharmawardana