Productive Diplomacy

Singapore and Sri Lanka at 50: Perspectives from Sri Lanka an anthology reviewed by

- Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

I was pleasantly surprised to receive recently, from Shashikala Premawardhane, Sri Lanka High Commissioner in Singapore at the time, a volume that commemorated half a century of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Entitled Singapore and Sri Lanka at 50: Perspectives from Sri Lanka, it had been published in 2023. The High Commissioner had handed over the editing of the book to two Sri Lankans and a Singaporean, who had chosen a range of topics to cover.

I was struck by the fact that I knew just four of the contributors, with a nodding acquaintance with two Foreign Service members who had contributed. I think this was because the work had been entrusted to younger writers and scholars, with particular interest in the fields they covered. So, it was just three of the economists, and reliable Prof Amal Jayawardane whom I knew, the latter from our time together on the Board of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.

It surprised me that we had only established diplomatic relations 50 years ago, but as the then Foreign Secretary put it, the relationship went back for well over a century before that, practically to the time when Singapore was established by Sir Stamford Raffles. The first section of the book records the many emigrants from here, who established themselves in business and professions, with several senior Singaporean politicians having Sri Lankan roots. There is much too about the Amarasuriya family which married into B.P. de Silva’s, who had set up the iconic B P de Silva jewellery firm, and also about doctors and lawyers.