Prairie Awards To Wijewardene Clan For Fostering Lankan Journalism
By Shelton A. Gunaratne –November 2, 2015
Dr. Shelton A. Gunaratne
Prairie Awards to Wijewardene Clan for Fostering Lankan Journalism; Focus on Ranjith S. Wijewardene (Part 1)
A ‘Chip’ Off the ‘Old Block’
Am not I a child of the same Adam…
a chip of the same block, with him?
— Bishop (of Lincoln) Robert Sanderson’s Sermons (1621)
a chip of the same block, with him?
— Bishop (of Lincoln) Robert Sanderson’s Sermons (1621)
[Note: In this essay, I use this old saying “a chip of the same block” to mean someone who resembles his/her parent, especially in character. In Buddhist thinking, however, no namarupa can be identical because of bhava (becoming) that engenders the three marks of cyclic existence: anatta (no selfness), anicca (inconstancy) and dukkha(unsatisfactoriness).]
MOORHEAD, MN — Although Ranjith Sujiva Wijewardene, 78 (b. 30 June 1937), is only a couple years older than I, the dynamics of the Five Aggregates that make up him and me, which the Buddhist theory ofpaticcasamuppada (dependent co-arising) says conditioned our respective state of dukkha(unsatisfactoriness) in our current bhavacakra (wheel of becoming), invariably worked out in his favor. Thekarma (intentional action) etched into his sankhara (dispositions) aggregate apparently had a great impact in shaping his namarupa by scuttling many of the defilements that afflict most of the hoi polloi.
The proverb “like father, like son” fits well with Ranjith’s obsession with newspaper business. While his father Don Richard Wijewardene (DRW) dominated Lanka’s journalism and newspaper publishing industry in the first half of the 20th century, Ranjith and his cousin Upali Wijewardene (1938-1983), son of Don Walter, the youngest brother of DRW, dominated the island’s newspaper scene in the last two decades of the same century with the launching of two successful publishing houses to compete with the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (ANCL), the venerable publishing company that DRW had meticulously built up, only to be taken over by the state in 1973 as political vengeance.
In retrospect, however, from Ranjith’s current perspective, “The takeover was not all political vengeance. Revenge must have been sweet, but there was much cold calculation between 70 and 73 as to who would control ANCL eventually. This contention kept the wolves from the door, until the Dudley Senanayake funeral in April 73.”
