Leel Gunasekara: A public-spirited literatus

by Rajendra Alwis

It is a time-honoured tradition in Sri Lanka to felicitate her great sons in appreciation of their outstanding contributions to the country. Dr. Leel Gunasekara, a greatly respected national icon in Sri Lanka, is one who deserves such felicitation. He was felicitated, time and again, on different occasions for his unparalleled success in generating exceptional results, in whatever field of work he performed. He is a dynamic public servant and an exemplary individual of a rare intellectual calibre well known for his administrative literary, cultural, academic, and social service excellence, over the years at home and abroad.

Dr. Leel Gunasekara who is celebrating his 80th birthday entered public service by passing the then highly competitive and prestigious Ceylon Civil Service Examination in 1957. Success at the examination, and also at the Ceylon Foreign Service Examination held at the same time, earned him the rare distinction of being selected to both the Ceylon Civil Service and Ceylon Foreign Service simultaneously. Being the patriot he is, he opted to join the Ceylon Civil Service to serve his motherland. In the Civil Service his fields of specialisation were administration, social development, policy formulation, planning literary and cultural affairs, community development with special reference to socially vulnerable groups.

Government Agent

I can still recall the glorious days Dr. Leel Gunasekara served as the Government Agent of the Kalutara District at a time when I was a student reading for the University Entrance at Vidyarathana Pirivena, Horana. Some of our beloved teachers at Vidyarathana such as the late Hemapala Ratnasooriya, former Scout Commissioner, and his wife Mrs. Daya Ratnasooriya, a retired Principal, were Dr. Leel Gunasekara's batch mates in the university.

Dr. Leel Gunasekara

As Advanced Level students, we looked up to Dr. Leel Gunasekara as our hero in the field of literature. He was such a creative writer so much so that for his first novel Pethsama, he won the State Literary Award way back in 1961. The novel Pethsama was based on the experience he derived when he was functioning as the GA of the Anuradhapura District. He has characterised the villages of Nuwarakalaviya, in Anuradhapura District, in an efficient manner bringing out their genuine redolence of village life. In this story he tells us the dreams of young people and how they try to spin the dreams into reality. The beauty of this novel is that it is not only confined to the lifestyles of Nuwarakalaviya, but also it generalises into the other rural villages as well, scattered around the country.

Dr. Leel Gunasekara's literary skills are quite suggestive of the literary skills of that of Leonard Woolf, an Englishman, who too was a CCS officer and a former AGA of the Hambantota District.

In the backdrop of rural life, Leonard Woolf wrote his best-known classic novel ‘Village in the Jungle’, in 1913 (his novel was later translated into Sinhala as ‘Beddegama). The story takes place in a remote jungle village in Giruwapattu, depicting the life and the hardships of the villagers in the Southern Province, under the Colonial Rule. Both writers share a common ground as top-level administrators who could masterfully bring out the hard realities of rural life.

Continuing his interest in literary works Dr. Leel Gunasekara wrote two more novels, ‘Athsana’ and ‘Mang Nethi Da’ and a collection of short stories named ‘Ira Handa Kodiyata Adhipathi Pedese'. He has also written children's books and released more than six of them. He has his research publications too. Similarly, he is a literary critic and poet as well.

Homecoming invitation

There is one particular incident embedded in my memory about Dr. Leel Gunasekara. It is his poetic home coming invitation, written and extended by his mother to their near and dear ones. The invitation reads as follows:

Mage puthu Leel Gunasekara Disa Pathi
Athi natha gath manaliya piya Indumathi
Gedarata ena davase havasata yedi ethi
Ulelata eraumai oba hata sithin bathi

The invitation has also been sent to I.M.R.A. Iriyagolle who was the then Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs. In response, he too had sent a reply by an equally beautiful poem accepting the invitation to attend the home-coming. The two poems were given publicity in the then Ettha tabloid, but I remember only the aesthetic invitation stated above.

As a Class 1 Senior CCS Officer Dr. Leel Gunasekara had the privilege of holding many topmost positions in some of the important Ministries in Sri Lanka such as Foreign Affairs, Youth Affairs, Cultural Affairs, Social Services and Defence. He was invited to be the Secretary to the Cabinet of Ministers of the Government in 1970. I can distinctly remember the turbulent days in early 1971 created by the followers of the JVP causing a massive bloodbath victimising the youngsters in the country.

At a time the country lost law and order, the Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike appointed Dr. Leel Gunasekara as the Inspector General of Police, for a brief period, until Stanley Senanayake, the then Inspector General of Police, returned to the country from Scotland after completing a special training.

Dr. Leel Gunasekara, with the help of a few other influential people, initiated a government program to rehabilitate the youth misled by the JVP. The noble and compassionate act saved the lives of many thousands of young people.

At the Commonwealth Youth Ministers Conference held in Nairobi in 1974, having judged the situation in Sri Lanka quite closely, the Commonwealth Secretariat in London was highly impressed with the prominent role played by Dr. Leel Gunasekara in this scenario, especially in rehabilitating insurgents.

As a result he was invited to take up the Regional Director post at the Asia Pacific Youth Development Directorate, based in Chandigarth, India, under the patronage of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. He functioned in this post from 1975 to 1978, and during the tenure of his office he introduced significant innovations to transform the youth policies in the countries of the Asian Pacific Region, paving the way for them to reach their high institutional goals within a short span of time.

Helping Helpage

Having represented Sri Lanka in his capacity as the Director, Social Service at the United Nations World Assembly on Ageing held in Vienna in 1982, Dr. Leel Gunasekara committed his services to the elderly. He retired from public service after an unparalleled and impeccable track record. But his services were frequently sought after by many reputed organisations. Of the many prestigious positions he held after his retirement from public service, a special mention should be made of the position he held at HelpAge Sri Lanka.

He was the founder National Director of the international organisation. His selfless and untiring efforts strengthened this comparatively young organisation and finally he was able to transform HelpAge into a service oriented dignified institution that operates effectively up to this day.

As a tribute to the service he rendered at HelpAge Sri Lanka to enhance the quality of life of the aged in the country, he was presented with a prestigious award by the same organisation in 2007 in conjunction with the Ministry of Social Services.

While I was the president of the Lions Club of Ingiriya, in 1991 we organised an Eye Camp headed by young Dr. C. A. B. Makuloluwa, to eradicate visual impairment stemming from cataract. Thanks to Dr. Makuloluwa's surgical skills all the operations were successful covering more than 75 patients.

The drawback we faced was how to supply eyeglasses to the patients who had undergone surgery. In the circumstances, the best thing was to contact Dr. Leel Gunasekara for some redress, having known his leaning towards the elderly. When we contacted him he readily agreed to help us and later on he made arrangements to supply eyeglasses to the needy patients.

His pet subject was Gerontology (study associated with old age and ageing) and his love for it went still further until he completed his Phd in Gerontology, in 2005 at the Sri Jayewardenepura University, at the age of 73, where the title of his thesis was ‘Social change and problems of elderly in Sri Lanka: Strategies to meet challenges'. His research contribution was very valuable to the field of Gerontology in view of the worldwide demographic problems with special reference to the ageing population.

United Nations

When I was working for the Freedom From Hunger Campaign Sri Lanka, I was in the habit of reading the London Economics magazine and when there was a fitting vacancy for any of my close associates, I used to send it to them. Accordingly, I sent the details of a UN vacancy to Dr. Leel Gunasekara. One day I received a telephone call from him saying he had sent his applications to the United Nations ESCAP based in Bangkok and they had informed him they would come to Sri Lanka to interview him.

After a couple of months he telephoned me again to thank me and revealed the good news that he had been selected to the UN position he applied for, acting on the information I had sent him. In 1992 Dr. Gunasekara entered the International Civil Service under the flag of United Nations, and served the UN/ESCAP in the capacity of the Regional Advisor Social Development Policy and Planning based in Bangkok, Thailand.

During his tenure of office, he attended the First Global Conference on Ageing held in Bombay and Pune, in India, in 1992, organised by the International Federation on Ageing. Dr. Leel Gunasekara delivered the keynote address in the plenary session and he set the tone for the day.

He proved on this occasion, once again, that he is a silver-tonged orator who could address any audience and was quite capable of catching the attention of listeners. He rendered a yeoman service to the entire Asian and Pacific region, as the Regional Advisor Social Development Policy and Planning till 1995 and returned home to continue his services to his motherland.

He left a lasting impact of his humanitarian services in social development, in the Asian Pacific countries with invaluable advice on policy formulation for social development to uplift the quality of life of the vulnerable groups.

Bridging ethnic polarity

He enjoys an enviable honour derived from all directions and even today he is considered indispensable. To his credit, since 1967 he was able to bridge, of course to a certain extent the ethnic polarity among the Sinhalese and Tamil communities establishing the Sinhala Writers' Organisation, which includes Tamil writers as well to unite the two main ethnic groups.

He organises seminars and workshops, particularly promoting the translation of literary and creative works from Sinhalese to Tamil and vice versa. This noble activity continues to this day. Dr. Gunasekara is one of the very few public officers who has received the highest number of awards for his services.

He has been amply recognised and honoured with several awards such as the State Literary Award for his novel Pethsama in 1961, and the Deshanethru State Award for 50 years of his continued cultural services, the Presidential Award for active Senior Citizen, and the Sarvodaya National Award for community development.

The writer is a former CEO/General Manager of the Freedom From Hunger Campaign (FFHC) Sri Lanka and a former consultant at the Canadian Hunger Foundation (CHF) Ottawa, Canada.