Giving Dona Catharina her due place
R. Batty Weerakoon is better known as a political activist who has, for more than six decades, been in the forefront of the leftist movement of Sri Lanka. Now, retired from active politics, he’s taken the time to research and write a book on the life of a prominent figure in local history Kusumasana Devi who is better remembered by her baptismal name Dona Catharina.
Batty Weerakoon: Taking up an old skill. Pic by Mangala Weerasekera
Mr.Weerakoon’s quest is to restore Dona Catharina to her rightful place in the nation’s history. “She has been largely ignored by historians and her contribution and that of the dynasty created by her to rid the country of the Portuguese has been largely overlooked,” Mr. Weerakoon says.
In his recently released book titled ‘Kusumasana Devi as Dona Catharina – Empress of Tri Sinhala’, the author uses the ancient oral tradition of storytelling and the Jathaka Tales style to narrate the story. It was while studying at the University of Ceylon in the early 1950s that Mr. Weerakoon first put his writing skills to the test by taking up the challenge posed to the students to write a story using the “epiphany” style of writing used by James Joyce.
He won the first prize for his story titled “Boy on a Bicycle” but it was in later years that he began to study the style of the Jathaka tales and in 1974 published the book titled ‘The Buddhist Jathaka Tales- an Evaluation’.
“The short story as the narrative form employed in the Buddhist Jathaka or life stories have been for me not merely a creative achievement of an oral tradition of communication of experience but also a mode of multidimensional experience and its preservation within an oral, cultural and spiritual tradition,” he writes in the postscript to his book. This, he says, differs from the highly subjective form of writing that a reader gets from the English novel, the popular literary form chosen to communicate life and its experiences to a reader.
Talk of Jathaka tales and novels seem a far cry coming from a man who has been immersed in the politics of the left from his university days. Being a member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), he calls himself a creation of the “hartal” politics of the 1950s. Having faced a prolonged period of suspension from the university along with a group of other student activists accused of causing a noisy stir when the then Prime Minister of the country Sir John Kotalawala, was being conferred a doctorate by the University, today he recounts the experiences with glee. “‘Oka hora’, someone shouted from among a group of students in the back and the result of it was an indefinite suspension of a group of students including myself. I was suspected to be the instigator of the interruptions that took place while the convocation was in progress.”
After university, he settled down to teach at Sri Rahula College in Kandy but he was not destined to live the quiet life of a teacher. He was invited to take over as the Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition when Dr. N.M. Perera was elected to the post in 1956. It was also on the insistence of N.M. that he decided to enter the Sri Lanka Law College and pursue a career in law. Since then he has appeared in numerous cases but recalls the case of murdered journalist Richard De Zoysa which he took on when many others had refused to do so.” “His mother approached me to take on the case which I did even though many other lawyers refused out of fear for their lives,” he remembers.
Later he served as Minister of Justice and Science and Technology under the administration of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
Though no longer in active politics, at the age of 82, Mr. Weerakoon is pursuing his literary passion with enthusiasm. He has now taken on the task of writing the story of Kusumasana Devi or Dona Catharina for the benefit of the Sinhala reader and hopes to have it completed by the end of the year. It will be in the form of a history lesson. “It is very important to understand our history and see today’s happenings in the light of that history,” he says.