Building communal harmony

Reconciliation and communal harmony are two words that are being constantly used at various platforms these days. Yet it’s rarely that we read or hear about something concrete happening. In that context, the lead given by Ananda College recently is indeed praiseworthy.

The Old Anandians took the initiative in planning an annual cricket match between Jaffna Hindu College (JHC) and Ananda.

The inaugural match was played last weekend at the Ananda playground.

It was the bright idea of Sanjiva Senanayake, a past cricket captain of Ananda. He saw it not merely as a cricket match but also as a catalyst to promote the bonds that so steadfastly existed between the Tamil and Sinhala speaking communities of the country from the beginning and undoubtedly helped Ananda to become a premier national institution.

That set the ball rolling in forming an alliance between the two schools, both of which have a proud history of over a century. They were established to uplift the children of Sri Lankan parents who could not provide a modern education in English to their sons, either due to social circumstances or financial limitations.

The enthusiastic President of the OBA, Thilak Karunaratne, got in touch with the President of the JHC OBA Colombo Branch, S. Raghavan and a committee was formed.

Another fine gesture was the decision to play the match for the ‘Sivagurunathan Trophy.’ That was to remember an early stalwart at Ananda – V.T.S. Sivagurunathan. A product of Jaffna Hindu College, he was a teacher and head master at Ananda for 25 years (1916-41). An important contributor to the phenomenal growth at Ananda during that period, he was invited to be the chief guest at Ananda prize-giving in 1958 - the only teacher, who was not a principal, to be so honoured.

Incidentally, among those who taught at Ananda in the early days were Prof. C Sunthalingam, the fighting politico in the post-Independence era who was in the first Cabinet of Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake, and T.B. Jayah who later revolutionised Zahira College with some initial help from Ananda.

In later years there were other popular teachers like E.M. Selvaratnam (botany), K.M.N.Panikkar (zoology), Thanbalasingham  (English), K. Arulambalam  (chemistry) and Underwood Manicavasagam (history).

Though the inaugural match itself was badly affected by rain, it certainly achieved the objective of bringing together two prominent schools – one from the South and the other from the North. An interesting feature at the opening ceremony was JHC principal, V. Ganesarajah addressing the gathering in Sinhala and Ananda principal, L.M.D Dharmasena in Tamil.

A dinner was also held to mark the historic occasion when genuine warmth and goodwill was seen on all sides. Anandian national cricketers Thilan Samaraweera, Thilina Kandambi, Dinesh Chandimal and Sachitra Senanayake were present and it was heart warming to see JHC schoolboy cricketers crowding round them to take photographs and collect autographs.

Both teams went on a joy-ride to Leisure World where they got to know each other better.

While it has been decided to play the next year’s match either in late April or early May in Jaffna, there are also plans to have several joint activities earlier.

For the Project Convenor, Deva Rodrigo and his team, it was surely a highly satisfying exercise – a major breakthrough in re-establishing a relationship between two major educational institutes in the country.

It’s a pity that there wasn’t much interest on the part of the media to give coverage to a historic event.