Nationalism

Dec 09, 2013 (LBO) I feel being honoured by the invitation by the PIM Alumni Association to deliver the Professor Sudatta Ranasinghe Memorial Oration 2013 which is the first in its series.





I specifically consider it as a privilege that I have got to do the honours for my long-standing friend for more than four and a half decades.

Part I: Professor Sudatta Ranasinghe Both Professor Ranasinghe and I entered the then Vidyodaya University in 1967 to follow a four year special degree programme in Public Administration, the second batch to be taken to the University under the degree’s new and expanded syllabus. Based on the performance of his A/L results, Professor Ranasinghe could have joined the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, to do an Arts Degree, the most preferred destination for higher education by students at that time.





Yet, Professor Ranasinghe chose the course in Public Administration because of his curiosity of and love for the subject, though it was risk-taking on his part since there was no certainty of securing a job after completing the degree. That was because the degree was new an experiment that has not been tested anywhere else in a university in Sri Lank