Emeritus Prof. D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke

A Titan of English education

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Prof. Goonetilleke

Among most of the academics Sri Lanka’s national university system has produced under her free education policy, Professor D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke stands apart, because of his patriotic sincerity in addressing the countries crises, rational approach to problem analysis, and genuine intellectual concern in dealing with Sri Lanka’s postcolonial issues.

He is an internationally renowned key personality in postcolonial literary scholarship embracing Sri Lanka as well as the other countries, which have been victims of colonialism and are still suffering from numerous postcolonial developments. He has used the recognition he earned thereby to serve Sri Lanka by preserving her true image in the international area of debate on the social, political, cultural, economic, and security issues precipitated by various recent political, ethnic, linguistic, and religious upheavals. At such times of crisis, many go fishing in the troubled waters to win postgraduate scholarships or academic placements. What they do is criticise Sri Lanka’s Sinhala-Buddhist culture as an obstacle to Sri Lanka’s progress in the modern world, justify the baseless human rights allegations against Sri Lanka’s security forces made by those seekers of asylum status in Western countries, and dehumanise Sri Lanka public service as an instrument of racial discrimination. Amidst hoards of such opportunistic slings and arrows cast at Sri Lanka, Prof Goonetilleke has all his life stood strong as a literary critic thorough in both the conceptual and contextual aspects of the material he dealt with and made a constructive effort to defend Sri Lanka’s image in a challenging geopolitical environment. That is why I see him as a stalwart. Sri Lanka misses him mainly in this concern.