පරමාදර්ශී වීරයන් දෙදෙනකු සැමරීම
C.W.W. Kannangara and Professor Senaka Bibile, both remembered in the last week of September, meet Ivan’s test of the ideal hero: a large but practical dream for the public good, pursued by decent means against powerful opposition. Bibile’s drug policy broke the hold of the pharmaceutical companies before it was killed with him. Kannangara’s free education, won against the churches and D.S. Senanayake, spread literacy across the nation; yet, Ivan argues, it stressed quantity over quality, loaded parents’ duties onto the state, and failed in its stated goals of national unity and a thinking democratic citizenry.
චින්තනයේ දුප්පත්කම (3) — ධර්මපාලගේ සිට පැරණි වම දක්වා
In the final part of the series Ivan surveys the currents that shaped modern Sinhala political thought and finds that none could build a nation. Anagarika Dharmapala’s liberationist vision had room only for Sinhala Buddhists; the Ceylon National Congress spoke of one Ceylonese nation but had no plan to unite it; the Gandhian Jaffna Youth Congress had the most progressive vision but wrecked itself with the 1931 election boycott; and the brilliant Marxist Old Left, schooled on Lenin and Trotsky rather than Locke and Mill, cared for class, not nation.