Uditha Devapriya, via Thilina Walpola in The Island, 10 August 2025 …………….. Review of “Thomia: The Entangled Histories of Lanka and Her Greatest Public School” by Richard Simon. In 2 volumes. Lazari Press. 869 pages.
Richard Simon’s Thomia is a massive undertaking, though to describe it as such is to indulge in cliches hardly deserving of such books. Where does one begin with a publication like this? It is, as the author notes at the beginning, not just a history of “Lanka’s greatest school”, but a fairly comprehensive and I would say eclectic history of Sri Lanka before and after British rule. The author is at his best when he draws attention to the parallel histories of school and country. Needless to say, he is at his best throughout.
This is the nth book on S Thomas’ College, and in many ways the most idiosyncratic. The first book on S Thomas’ came out during its Mutwal years: Christian David’s slim account, first published in 1894. This was followed by a series of special volumes and publications which culminated in W. T. Keble’s magnificent book in 1937, followed more than half a century later by Marc Bilimoria’s 75 Years at Mount. What distinguishes Simon’s book from all these works, fine as they are, is that Simon’s narrative is Simon’s own: it is not authorised, it lacks patronage, and, perhaps as a result, is surprisingly frank and sincere.
Thomia begins with the growth of the Evangelical missionary movement in the tropics. It proceeds to James Chapman’s arrival in Ceylon and describes in broad, evocative detail his efforts at founding a “native” Christian College. Chapman’s contribution, at a time when elite education in Colombo was restricted to the ubiquitous Colombo Academy, was immense to say the least. Yet as Simon notes, Chapman lacked official patronage and had to struggle in the first few years of S Thomas’ founding. When it was established on 3 February 1851, few would have entertained much hope for it.
Yet by the end of the decade, the College had defied all expectations. Given my interest in 19th century Ceylonese history, I found Simon’s descriptions of the early struggles waged by the school interesting. As historians like K. M. de Silva have observed, the period from 1850 to 1880 was marked by crests and troughs in the Ceylonese economy. It was during these years that the plantation sector, in particular coffee, recorded a peak, opening S Thomas’ up to a dedicated, dependable cohort of Old Boys and patrons. Among these, of course, was Sampson Rajapakse, a figure who looms significantly in all accounts of S Thomas’ and who occupies centre-stage in the first few sections of Simon’s book.
Simon does not whitewash the protagonists of his narrative, nor does he apologise for them. He doesn’t have to: they were very much moulded by circumstances not entirely of their choosing, and imposed themselves fervently on an order they felt was ideal in, and for, the society they had settled in. In his first few chapters, Simon explains the great theological battles that became part and parcel of S Thomas’ founding, including the conflict between the High and the Low wings of the Anglican Church.
The two great players in this battle, which I think forms a precursor of sorts to the Royal Thomian, were Bishop Chapman and Barcroft Boake, the latter of whom, while serving at the Colombo Academy, became the most sought-after private tutor among the Ceylonese elite. Royalists venerate him, but he became Chapman’s bête noire, for perfectly justifiable reasons.
This is the nth book on S Thomas’ College, and in many ways the most idiosyncratic. The first book on S Thomas’ came out during its Mutwal years: Christian David’s slim account, first published in 1894. This was followed by a series of special volumes and publications which culminated in W. T. Keble’s magnificent book in 1937, followed more than half a century later by Marc Bilimoria’s 75 Years at Mount. What distinguishes Simon’s book from all these works, fine as they are, is that Simon’s narrative is Simon’s own: it is not authorised, it lacks patronage, and, perhaps as a result, is surprisingly frank and sincere.
Thomia begins with the growth of the Evangelical missionary movement in the tropics. It proceeds to James Chapman’s arrival in Ceylon and describes in broad, evocative detail his efforts at founding a “native” Christian College. Chapman’s contribution, at a time when elite education in Colombo was restricted to the ubiquitous Colombo Academy, was immense to say the least. Yet as Simon notes, Chapman lacked official patronage and had to struggle in the first few years of S Thomas’ founding. When it was established on 3 February 1851, few would have entertained much hope for it.
Yet by the end of the decade, the College had defied all expectations. Given my interest in 19th century Ceylonese history, I found Simon’s descriptions of the early struggles waged by the school interesting. As historians like K. M. de Silva have observed, the period from 1850 to 1880 was marked by crests and troughs in the Ceylonese economy. It was during these years that the plantation sector, in particular coffee, recorded a peak, opening S Thomas’ up to a dedicated, dependable cohort of Old Boys and patrons. Among these, of course, was Sampson Rajapakse, a figure who looms significantly in all accounts of S Thomas’ and who occupies centre-stage in the first few sections of Simon’s book.
“Help of a more immediate kind came from that unswervingly loyal friend of the College, Sampson Rajapakse. A keen supporter and benefactor of the Sinhalese Buddhist revival as well as a loyal subject of Queen Victoria, the old mudliyar was also, besides, an indefatigable philanthropist… a man who could afford to entertain four thousand guests at home to celebrate his appointment as Gate Mudliyar.” (page 129)
In the colonial order of things, Rajapakse occupied a high layer, as Gate Mudliyar. This gave him and his colleagues the agency they required to be many things at the same time: committed philanthropist, fervent Buddhist, loyal subject of the Crown, and in Rajapakse’s case, dedicated old Royalist, who like all dedicated Royalists, I suppose, came to the rescue when S Thomas’ needed it most. It was this milieu – the colonial bourgeoisie – that provided the two boys’ schools in Colombo the patronage they required in their formative years. Simon delves deeply, and evocatively, into this class, and from it draws a rich storehouse of facts and anecdotes that keep drawing the reader in.
It is a paradox of colonial society that colonialism produced both the most loyal subjects of Empire and its most fervent critics. The contribution schools like S Thomas’ made in this regard cannot be discounted or put aside: they produced Gate Mudliyars but also a stream of radicals and freethinkers, not to mention nationalists, who did not just question colonial rule but raged against their inheritance in doing so.
Simon discusses these aspects well and goes deeper than official accounts of the school – particularly with controversial episodes like Warden Miller’s disowning – there is no other word for it – of A. E. Buultjens from the College roll of honour. Buultjens, who wound up as the father of the trade union movement in Sri Lanka, went to great heights as Principal of Ananda College, Ceylon’s premier Buddhist school. Yet none of these accomplishments could redeem him in the eyes of the unremittingly Evangelical E. F. Miller.
In fact, there is no doubt that the early Wardens at S Thomas’ – seven or eight of whom served at Mutwal – were ardent Anglicans. They were products of their time and made no secret of their allegiances, and in fact displayed them, with pride, on their collars. An essay on Warden Cyril Wood in the Centenary Number, published in 1951, for instance, describes him as taking “an earnest interest in the spiritual welfare of the poor ignorant Gettara people, Buddhists, behind the College premises.” We are told that he would go and preach to them, “explain to them the Christian religion and admonish them.”
Simon does not whitewash the protagonists of his narrative, nor does he apologise for them. He doesn’t have to: they were very much moulded by circumstances not entirely of their choosing, and imposed themselves fervently on an order they felt was ideal in, and for, the society they had settled in. In his first few chapters, Simon explains the great theological battles that became part and parcel of S Thomas’ founding, including the conflict between the High and the Low wings of the Anglican Church.
The two great players in this battle, which I think forms a precursor of sorts to the Royal Thomian, were Bishop Chapman and Barcroft Boake, the latter of whom, while serving at the Colombo Academy, became the most sought-after private tutor among the Ceylonese elite. Royalists venerate him, but he became Chapman’s bête noire, for perfectly justifiable reason
By the turn of the century, things had begun to move quickly. The BuddhistRevival, and the subsequent uptick in anti-imperialist agitation, fuelled a thirst for self-government which eventually found expression in the Crewe-McCallum Reforms (1911) and the Donoughmore Commission (1931). The battle for the Educated Ceylonese seat in 1911 was fought by two Royalists – Marcus Fernando and Ponnambalam Ramanathan – while the first State Council, in 1931, was occupied by some Thomians, including S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and D. S. Senanayake. The situation reversed by the time the country secured independence: the few Thomians had reached the top of the greasy pole.
Here we come to a rather troubling period in our country’s history, one which Simon reviews in great, excruciating detail in the second volume of his book. There were, as he points out, Thomians on all sides of the divide: Senanayake representing the vanguard of the colonial bourgeoisie; S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike founding an alternative outfit, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, on a more left-of-centre and nationalist platform; and S. J. V. Chelvanayakam agitating for the rights of his people, at a time when linguistic nationalism, and majoritarianism, had reared its head and was drowning out all moderate voices. Simon depicts the tragedy of it all, the 1958 riots, and the almost fatalistic trajectory that leads to the even more violent racial riots of 1983, as inevitable but avoidable, something which could have been stamped out had the country, its people, and its rulers stopped to think.
My take on the matter differs somewhat from Simon’s, though I share his agony at what has transpired since then. As Regi Siriwardena has correctly noted, by 1956 it had become more or less impossible to stem the tide of linguistic nationalism. Part of the fault lies with the old guard who, having recognised the oncoming deluge of majoritarianism, did nothing to stop it. Simon himself critiques D. S. Senanayake on what he quixotically calls his hemin, hemin policy: by 1952, his death, such policies could only provoke a backlash in the form of Sinhala Only in 1956 and the Vaddukoddai Resolution 20 years later.
Simon is at his best in the last few chapters when he relates these developments to what was happening at College. He notes a steady but inevitable drop in intellectual standards at the school, brought about by what he sees as the privations that successive educational policies foisted on it. The (often) polarising figure of Reginald de Saram, one of the greatest Wardens any school in Sri Lanka has had, looms significantly in these pages, and it is fitting that Simon should quote from the Prize Day speeches and other interventions that de Saram made at a crucial turning point in our history. One of those interventions, his decision to employ the Hela Havula cohort, gets more than a passing mention, though it remains one of the more glaring gaps in all historical accounts of S Thomas’.
Warden de Saram
The most rewarding section in this book – and I am hard-pressed to make a selection – is the period to which the author belongs and of which he remains a definitive product: the early 1970s, when S Thomas’ encountered what Rohan Edirisinha once described to me as an intellectual renaissance. In the course of my research for a book on the Church of Ceylon, I went through the College Magazines – many of which were edited by Edirisinha and his comrade-in-arms Chanaka Amaratunga – and the English Literary and Debating Society Minute Book from this period, and found in them a rich storehouse of topics, themes, and debates that I felt were unprecedented for a school in Sri Lanka.
Richard Simon does his best to explain the sorry decline since then; suffice it to say that any intellectual history of Sri Lanka should consider what S Thomas’ College underwent in these years from 1970 to 1977, when the best and the brightest were given the space and the freedom to write, debate, and discuss. That we have gone a long way back reflects badly not just on S Thomas’, but more damnably, on the country – and on us.
Uditha Devapriya is a researcher, writer, and analyst from Sri Lanka who contributes to various publications. He can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.
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In the Southern Americas, the Bible preceded the sword, elsewhere it accompanied Colonial conquest.
Education was key to jobs in both Government and Private sectors. But the Religious denomination of the institution was paramount. When it aligned with that of the Coloniser, it distinguished the Institution and its Alumni from its peers.
Anglican educated elites and their networks dominated till the Colonial influence was spent.
And so, today – the ‘Greatest Public school’ has joined the Rest.
Alas, Uditha Devapriya uses the term “majoritarian,” a perjorative. The essence of democracy is the rule of the majority. Nelson Mandela fought for rule by the majority. The minorities use the term in the sense “The dominance of majority community to rule the country in whichever way it wants, totally disregarding the wishes and needs of minority community.” This of course ignores the fact that democratic rule only extends so far – it has to be fought for tooth and nail in the face of the dictatorship of the possessing classes. Look for example at the official languages – even after “Sinhala Only”, even after Tamil was granted official status, the de facto language of rule remains English, the lingua franca of the ruling class. Anyone who has worked in the Government Sector knows that government business is conducted in English – often by government servants whose knowledge of the language is limited.
The ruling class is very a much one of the national minorities – Sinhalese Buddhists are a minority within it, and even they are shaped by the ruling class ethos. Of course the common religion of the ruling class is Mammon, so it will support candidates (such as JR Jayawardene) who would perpetrate horrors such as the 1983 Pogrom against the minorities.
A TANGENTIAL SUPPLEMENT TO VINODs incisive comment. As a SIDE-ISSUE during a recent ZOOM discussion organised by Nandasiri Jasentuliyana I brought up the role of major clubs in Colombo where BIG POWERBROKERS get to be ‘friends’and meet very now and then to fashion DEALS … possible examples being the Colombo Club, Orient Club, Capri, SSC, Kinross CCC (q-marks for some of the names as I speak of the 1940s to 1980s). I would appreciate Vinod’s and other opinions on this point and wd welcome an article by an investigative journalist in the near future AFTER some detective work.
I have no comment on the main article – Thomia. But, I criticize Vinod Moonesinghe’s interpretation of ‘democracy’. He states, ‘The essence of democracy is the rule of the majority.’, and distorts Nelson Mandela’s message of freedom.
I checked the dictionary definition of democracy. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th ed. 1982, p. 254) says, “form of society ignoring hereditary class distinctions and tolerating minority views”. The last three words ‘tolerating minority views’ are vital for a functional democracy. By this yardstick alone, we should accept that independent Ceylon/Sri Lanka has a defective democracy.
I also checked Mandela’s autobiography ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ (1994). In it, he says – “Our creed was the creation of one nation out of many tribes, the overthrow of white supremacy, and the establishment of a truly democratic form of government.” Mandela’s prime emphasis was ‘overthrowing white supremacy’.