Modi’s April 5th Colombo Splash and Trump’s Tariff Turbulence – As Time goes by!

Prime Minister Modi is visiting Sri Lanka this weekend, from Friday, April 4th to Sunday, April 6th.

- RAJAN PHILIPS

This is Modi's third official visit as Prime Minister, and the first since Anura Kumara Dissanayake became President and led the NPP to form a new government with a massive electoral victory. The official welcoming ceremony will be at the Independence Square on Saturday April 5th, 54 years to the day after the April 1971 insurrection launched by the JVP, the political progenitor of the present Sri Lankan government. Whether the historical irony of the occasion, if not the underlying coincidence, will be mentioned or memorialized at the official ceremony is unknown at the time of writing to meet the printer's Friday evening deadline.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake was five years old in 1971 and, if my memory serves me well, Vasudeva Nanyakkara and Mahinda Rajapaksa might be the only living politicians from the 1971 parliament.

They were both elected to parliament as young first time MPs in 1970. And quite by coincidence, there will be another wholly nostalgic gathering tomorrow in Colombo to remember Kumar David as comrade, professor and friend. In the 1970s, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, Wickramabahu Karunaratne and Kumar David were young LSSP Turks who were critical of both the JVP and the United Front Government of the SLFP, the LSSP and the Communist Party.

Vasudeva Nanayakkara has the singular distinction of being perhaps the only parliamentarian to be detained by the government both in 1971, in the wake of the first JVP insurrection, and after 1983 that ultimately precipitated the JVP's second coming. In the now long historical perspective, the JVP campaigned for the United Front parties in the 1970 election and then took guns against them in 1971.