Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★☆ (4.6/5)
Genre: Letters, Political History, Sri Lankan History, Biography, Memoir

Book Review:
''Grandfather's Letters'' is a remarkable historical document that offers readers an intimate glimpse into the mind of one of independent Ceylon's founding political figures. Professor C. Suntharalingam—mathematician, lawyer, and cabinet minister—occupies a unique and controversial place in Sri Lankan history, and this collection of letters he composed to his grandchildren provides an unparalleled window into his thinking and his times.

The roll call of Suntharalingam's colleagues in the first cabinet reads like a who's who of Sri Lankan nation-building: D.S. Senanayake (the ''Father of the Nation''), S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, J.R. Jayewardene, J.L. Kotelawala, Sir Oliver Goonetilleke, T.B. Jayah, Dudley Senanayake. To have sat at that table was to participate in the foundational moment of modern Sri Lanka. Yet Suntharalingam resigned his post, disillusioned with the direction the newly independent nation was taking.

The letters collected here, first serialized in newspapers over fifty years ago, give voice to that disillusionment. Writing to his grandchildren—and, by extension, to future generations—Suntharalingam vented his concerns about rising communal tensions and the failure of leadership to address them. His perspective is that of an insider who became an outsider, a participant who stepped back to critique.

What makes this collection particularly valuable is its temporal span. Covering nearly a century from 1895 to 1985, the letters trace not only Suntharalingam's personal journey but the larger arc of Sri Lankan history from late colonial period through independence and into the turbulent decades that followed. They offer insights available nowhere else—the observations of someone who was there, who knew the players, and who had both the education to analyze and the courage to speak frankly.

For historians, political scientists, and anyone seeking to understand the roots of Sri Lanka's communal conflicts and political challenges, this book is essential reading. It reminds us that the questions facing the nation today—questions of identity, representation, and the meaning of independence—were already being asked in the earliest days of statehood, by those who helped bring that state into being.

The availability of an e-book edition through Perera-Husseyn makes this important work accessible to a new generation of readers. It deserves to be widely read and carefully considered, both for what it reveals about the past and for what it might teach us about the present.