Some Outstanding SL Civil Service Personnel in the Recent Past

Recruitment to that Service had come to be by an examination with some leeway left open through an interview. This resulted in mostly those who had been at or within the top in their university examinations getting within the chosen few. An outcome of that was that it facilitated the creation of groups of relatives-by-marriage among ‘landed people’ (such as ‘the Horana Horde’). There were variations to that: among examinees from Jaffna, it tended to depend on the wealth of a potential bride regardless of how her father had gathered that wealth (a common, occasionally spiteful. tale was that ‘he was an overseer in the PWD’ who had enriched himself by doing his own bit of moving men and materials around). But there were instances of a candidate who had failed to secure access to the interview having a better result negotiated for a second try by agreeing to marry the daughter of an examiner at the CCS exam.

In addition to those there were, latterly, instances of a Minister from an area deprived in educational facilities as in other ‘infrastructure’ recommending a candidate from such a background and such candidate being given due or overdue recognition at the CCS interview.

Not all appointees, whatever the route they came to it by, fulfilled the promise associated with being a member of that service. Some would have done better in other vocations – say, in academia or business or agriculture.

It was also the case that some, better suited therefor, were not selected through that system of recruitment. Among those who would have done very well in the CCS were Leelananda de Silva, whose account of his career has been serialized by you. The greater part of his working years had been with the UNDP and other such international organisations in the service of developing countries.

There are others who left no such notes behind them. One such was the late Donald Abeysinghe who was among the most gifted administrators of his time in the public service.

As is now clear, few officers whether of the CCS or other services, recorded their experience in the public service – or put them out in print. Among those who did were V L Wirasinghe, whose book I commented on at the time, and Godfrey Goonetilleke, now in the latter 90s, whose autobiography was published not long ago.

Accounts of some segments of their career and/or professional or personal interests, are seen in L B (Malcolm) Abeyratne’s selection from the diaries of his predecessors as Government Agent, Ratnapura.

Most-to-be valued among such are S D Saparamadu’s introductions to the books published/ republished by Tisara Prakashakayo, set up by his father-in-law, Martin Wickremasinghe. They include the many issues of the Ceylon Historical Journal that he edited and his accounts of the sort of ground realities that he encountered as head of the department of Wild Life.

Those who wish to obtain concrete details of what such administrators did over the years would find much information in the writings of J P Lewis (‘Sinhalese Place Names in the Jaffna District’, ‘Inscriptions on Tombstones and Monuments in Ceylon of historical and local interest’, his struggles to claim ‘crown’ ownership of land the Brits hoped to grab and much else. More recently we have A E H Sandaratne’s ‘Glimpses of the Public Services of Ceylon: During a Period of Transition, 1927-1962’.

Some of them took to the study of our cultural artefacts, some came to value the engineering skills of the Sinhalayas in centuries gone by. Among such endeavors an early effort to discover our legal system occurred when C J Le Mesurier worked with the Panabokke Rate Mahattaya to put into English the Neethi Niganduva. Among the most notable accounts of the state of a district they were called on to administer, is Le Mesurier’s Manual of the Nuwara Eliya District which recorded the decimation of the Sinhala population through the appropriation of their land plus other forms of assault.

The records left by such as H C P Bell and John Still’s book, Jungle Tide, and his notes on sites of archaeological interest are of value today as are Emerson Tennent’s exertions towards reconstructing the history of this country and its people.

Much could and needs to be added to this brief note while there are persons around who could yet do that.

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