rapa
02-09-2007, 04:59 PM
By Janaka Perera
For the past 59 years we have failed to do justice to the memory of Sri Lanka's most important national figure since the beginning of the island's encounter with the European colonialists. His heroic role has never really been acknowledged at any Independence Day celebration. His 400th death anniversary in 2004 passed completely unnoticed.
He was none other than `Appuame Dom Joao' alias Don Juan Konappu Bandara, the swashbuckling nobleman from Peradeniya who was crowned King Wimaladharmasuriya the First (1591-1604).
The Portuguese called him, the `Traitor of Kandy.'
If not for him Sri Lanka would lost her independence more than two centuries before the British landed on this island. And perhaps we would have continued as a European colony long after 1948.
It was Konappu Bandara who prevented this island from becoming a another Goa or an Asian aberration like the Philippines (so named after Spain's King Phillip II), where the Spaniards almost totally wiped out the indigenous Malay culture and beliefs and gave virtually every Filipino a Spanish first name and surname. In Goa, centuries of Portuguese interbreeding with the native population made the Goanese lose their Indian identity. They had to wait till 1961 for their freedom. It was regained only with the help the help of India's armed forces.
Yet we still have among us shameless Sri Lankans here who were trying in 2005 to commemorate on a grand scale the 500 th anniversary of the Portuguese encounter in Sri Lanka . Perhaps they would have succeeded if Mahinda Rajapaksa had lost the Presidential Election that year.
Wimaladharmasuriya saw to it that the Kandyan Kingdom would become a bastion of Buddhist culture in the face of Portuguese plots to seize the whole country by installing their Sinhala puppets on the Kandyan throne. His coup d' e-tat (while ostensibly serving the enemy) not only paved the way for the eventual expulsion of the Portuguese from the island in 1656 but also made it impossible for other European colonizers and white missionaries to totally subvert Sinhala Buddhist traditions - even after 1815.
Going back to the 16th Century, the Portuguese planned to take advantage of a rebellion in the Kandyan highlands against Rajasinghe the First, King of Sitawaka, a fierce warrior, who was then the biggest threat to the Portuguese here. They proceeded to have Yamasingha Bandara installed as King of Kandy. He was a nephew of former Kandyan King Karaliyadde Bandara, who sought asylum with the Portuguese when Rajasinghe's forces overran the hill country. Yamasingha had been earlier taken to Goa where the Portuguese baptized him Don Phillip.
He was sent to Kandy with a Portuguese military expedition led by Don Juan Konappu Bandara, the scion of a highland clan. He had joined the Portuguese when his father Veerasundara Bandara, a Kanydan Chieftain, was executed on charges of conspiracy against Sitawaka Rajasinghe.
Konappu Bandara was a man of practical wisdom and at the core a soldier. He quickly beat King Rajasinghe's troops and won the full trust of the Portuguese.
Bandara was sent for further training in Goa where he mastered the military strategies of the Portuguese.
He bided his time until the opportunity came to drive out the Portuguese from the Kandyan areas. It came when Don Phillip died suddenly not long after they proclaimed him King of `Candia ' (Kandy ).
Before he was crowned, Philip had promised the Portuguese that if he failed to father any children he would make the King of Portugal the sole heir to the Kandyan Kingdom. Having forsaken his Sinhala Buddhist heritage he soon earned the displeasure of his Kandyan subjects. He was no different from that other pathetic Portuguese puppet Don Juan Dharmapala of Kotte who too had willed his Kingdom (by which he meant the whole of Sri Lanka) to the King of Portugal. It is alleged that Don Phillip was poisoned.
Immediately after his death, Konappu Bandara's men mounted a ferocious attack on the Portuguese garrison in Gannoruwa and drove the remnants out of the Kandyan highlands. He then proclaimed himself King Wimaladharmasuriya of Senkadagala. His decision proved to be momentous one for Sri Lanka.
His action angered not only the Portuguese but also Sitawaka Rajasinghe who considered Konappu Bandara as a usurper. Rajasinghe promptly declared war on Kandy but was soon defeated and died three years later. Sitawaka fell into Portuguese hands raising new visions of conquest before them. Only the Kandyan kingdom now remained to be annexed for the completion of their temporal and `spiritual' conquest of Sri Lanka .
The Portuguese decided to use ex-King Karalkiyedde Bandara's only daughter Princess Kusumasana Devi - to consolidate their power in the highlands. She was the rightful heir to the Kandyan Throne. The Portuguese baptized her Dona Catherina (as a compliment to the then Queen of Portugal) and planned to get her married to one of their own race – a Portuguese nobleman. He was the nephew of Portuguese Governor designate and Portugal's first Conquistador in Sri Lanka, Captain-General Pedro Lopez de Souza.
Gen. De Souza commanded the 10,000-strong army - comprising both Portuguese and Sinhalas – that escorted Dona Catherina to Senkadagala, where she was crowned Queen of Kandy in 1594. In a tactical move, Wimaladharmasuriya had withdrawn his troops from hill capital to prepare for a guerilla campaign.
Disaster struck the Portuguese shortly afterwards, when they ran out of food supplies and the Sinhala soldiers in their service began deserting. De Souza and his men had no alternative but to retreat. But Wimaladharma's troops routed the enemy at the Danture marshes in Gannoruwa and annihilated them. Dona Catherina and .De Souza were taken prisoner. He later died of his injuries. The prize of victory for Wimaladharmasuriya was a bride in the form of Dona Catherina. The marriage further strengthened his claim to the Kandyan throne. Repeated attempts by the Portuguese to oust him ended in miserable failure and eventually they lost most of the territory they had seized.
Kandy – the last remnant of Sinhala political power – emerged as the custodian of Sinhala nationalism and Buddhism. The rest of the country was under Portuguese rule - under a Catholic government. Only Kandy was left to take the brunt of all the foreign invasions. From 1594 ( when Portuguese troops under Lopez De Souza made an unsuccessful second attempt to capture the hill capital after enthroning Dona Catherina ) up to 1815, Kandy alone faced the brunt of three European powers – the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. Kandy survived for two and a half-centuries and survived with dignity – maintaining its own independence.
Wimaladharmasuriya's reign saw an upsurge of Buddhist activity that included the construction of the Sri Dalada Maligawa and the re-introduction of the higher ordination (Upasampada) through bhikkus brought from Myanmar. The King held an ordination ceremony at Gatembe in 1603.
Though Wimaladharmasuriya reverted to Buddhism and upheld the age-old Sri Lankan tradition of royal protection for the Buddhist establishment, he was a tolerant ruler. He did not force his Queen, Dona Catherina to give up her Catholic faith. He allowed religious freedom throughout his kingdom. It was this policy that in later years helped low-country Catholics to seek refuge in the Kandyan provinces when the Dutch rulers began persecuting them. If not for the liberal religious policy of the Kandyan kings, there would have been no Wahakotte Catholic festival.
Religious freedom enabled Goanese Catholic Missionary Fr. Joseph Vaz to settle in Senkadagala during the reign of Wimaladharmasuriya II (1687-1706). This noble religious tradition continued until the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815 – after which the crafty British did everything possible to undermine Buddhist influence in the country, though they did not fully succeed in it.
Vimaladharmasuriya was the Sinhala patriot of his century. He had saved his motherland from the throes of alien conquest and his nation from extinction. He had rescued the religion that inspired a great civilization from an untimely end in his country.
Commenting on Wimaladharmasuriya the First in the Daily News, over 40 years ago, Sumitta Kuruppu wrote:
"Few men of stature occupied the throne of Lanka. Among them still fewer have rendered a service so distinct and significant to the life of their country."
For the past 59 years we have failed to do justice to the memory of Sri Lanka's most important national figure since the beginning of the island's encounter with the European colonialists. His heroic role has never really been acknowledged at any Independence Day celebration. His 400th death anniversary in 2004 passed completely unnoticed.
He was none other than `Appuame Dom Joao' alias Don Juan Konappu Bandara, the swashbuckling nobleman from Peradeniya who was crowned King Wimaladharmasuriya the First (1591-1604).
The Portuguese called him, the `Traitor of Kandy.'
If not for him Sri Lanka would lost her independence more than two centuries before the British landed on this island. And perhaps we would have continued as a European colony long after 1948.
It was Konappu Bandara who prevented this island from becoming a another Goa or an Asian aberration like the Philippines (so named after Spain's King Phillip II), where the Spaniards almost totally wiped out the indigenous Malay culture and beliefs and gave virtually every Filipino a Spanish first name and surname. In Goa, centuries of Portuguese interbreeding with the native population made the Goanese lose their Indian identity. They had to wait till 1961 for their freedom. It was regained only with the help the help of India's armed forces.
Yet we still have among us shameless Sri Lankans here who were trying in 2005 to commemorate on a grand scale the 500 th anniversary of the Portuguese encounter in Sri Lanka . Perhaps they would have succeeded if Mahinda Rajapaksa had lost the Presidential Election that year.
Wimaladharmasuriya saw to it that the Kandyan Kingdom would become a bastion of Buddhist culture in the face of Portuguese plots to seize the whole country by installing their Sinhala puppets on the Kandyan throne. His coup d' e-tat (while ostensibly serving the enemy) not only paved the way for the eventual expulsion of the Portuguese from the island in 1656 but also made it impossible for other European colonizers and white missionaries to totally subvert Sinhala Buddhist traditions - even after 1815.
Going back to the 16th Century, the Portuguese planned to take advantage of a rebellion in the Kandyan highlands against Rajasinghe the First, King of Sitawaka, a fierce warrior, who was then the biggest threat to the Portuguese here. They proceeded to have Yamasingha Bandara installed as King of Kandy. He was a nephew of former Kandyan King Karaliyadde Bandara, who sought asylum with the Portuguese when Rajasinghe's forces overran the hill country. Yamasingha had been earlier taken to Goa where the Portuguese baptized him Don Phillip.
He was sent to Kandy with a Portuguese military expedition led by Don Juan Konappu Bandara, the scion of a highland clan. He had joined the Portuguese when his father Veerasundara Bandara, a Kanydan Chieftain, was executed on charges of conspiracy against Sitawaka Rajasinghe.
Konappu Bandara was a man of practical wisdom and at the core a soldier. He quickly beat King Rajasinghe's troops and won the full trust of the Portuguese.
Bandara was sent for further training in Goa where he mastered the military strategies of the Portuguese.
He bided his time until the opportunity came to drive out the Portuguese from the Kandyan areas. It came when Don Phillip died suddenly not long after they proclaimed him King of `Candia ' (Kandy ).
Before he was crowned, Philip had promised the Portuguese that if he failed to father any children he would make the King of Portugal the sole heir to the Kandyan Kingdom. Having forsaken his Sinhala Buddhist heritage he soon earned the displeasure of his Kandyan subjects. He was no different from that other pathetic Portuguese puppet Don Juan Dharmapala of Kotte who too had willed his Kingdom (by which he meant the whole of Sri Lanka) to the King of Portugal. It is alleged that Don Phillip was poisoned.
Immediately after his death, Konappu Bandara's men mounted a ferocious attack on the Portuguese garrison in Gannoruwa and drove the remnants out of the Kandyan highlands. He then proclaimed himself King Wimaladharmasuriya of Senkadagala. His decision proved to be momentous one for Sri Lanka.
His action angered not only the Portuguese but also Sitawaka Rajasinghe who considered Konappu Bandara as a usurper. Rajasinghe promptly declared war on Kandy but was soon defeated and died three years later. Sitawaka fell into Portuguese hands raising new visions of conquest before them. Only the Kandyan kingdom now remained to be annexed for the completion of their temporal and `spiritual' conquest of Sri Lanka .
The Portuguese decided to use ex-King Karalkiyedde Bandara's only daughter Princess Kusumasana Devi - to consolidate their power in the highlands. She was the rightful heir to the Kandyan Throne. The Portuguese baptized her Dona Catherina (as a compliment to the then Queen of Portugal) and planned to get her married to one of their own race – a Portuguese nobleman. He was the nephew of Portuguese Governor designate and Portugal's first Conquistador in Sri Lanka, Captain-General Pedro Lopez de Souza.
Gen. De Souza commanded the 10,000-strong army - comprising both Portuguese and Sinhalas – that escorted Dona Catherina to Senkadagala, where she was crowned Queen of Kandy in 1594. In a tactical move, Wimaladharmasuriya had withdrawn his troops from hill capital to prepare for a guerilla campaign.
Disaster struck the Portuguese shortly afterwards, when they ran out of food supplies and the Sinhala soldiers in their service began deserting. De Souza and his men had no alternative but to retreat. But Wimaladharma's troops routed the enemy at the Danture marshes in Gannoruwa and annihilated them. Dona Catherina and .De Souza were taken prisoner. He later died of his injuries. The prize of victory for Wimaladharmasuriya was a bride in the form of Dona Catherina. The marriage further strengthened his claim to the Kandyan throne. Repeated attempts by the Portuguese to oust him ended in miserable failure and eventually they lost most of the territory they had seized.
Kandy – the last remnant of Sinhala political power – emerged as the custodian of Sinhala nationalism and Buddhism. The rest of the country was under Portuguese rule - under a Catholic government. Only Kandy was left to take the brunt of all the foreign invasions. From 1594 ( when Portuguese troops under Lopez De Souza made an unsuccessful second attempt to capture the hill capital after enthroning Dona Catherina ) up to 1815, Kandy alone faced the brunt of three European powers – the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. Kandy survived for two and a half-centuries and survived with dignity – maintaining its own independence.
Wimaladharmasuriya's reign saw an upsurge of Buddhist activity that included the construction of the Sri Dalada Maligawa and the re-introduction of the higher ordination (Upasampada) through bhikkus brought from Myanmar. The King held an ordination ceremony at Gatembe in 1603.
Though Wimaladharmasuriya reverted to Buddhism and upheld the age-old Sri Lankan tradition of royal protection for the Buddhist establishment, he was a tolerant ruler. He did not force his Queen, Dona Catherina to give up her Catholic faith. He allowed religious freedom throughout his kingdom. It was this policy that in later years helped low-country Catholics to seek refuge in the Kandyan provinces when the Dutch rulers began persecuting them. If not for the liberal religious policy of the Kandyan kings, there would have been no Wahakotte Catholic festival.
Religious freedom enabled Goanese Catholic Missionary Fr. Joseph Vaz to settle in Senkadagala during the reign of Wimaladharmasuriya II (1687-1706). This noble religious tradition continued until the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815 – after which the crafty British did everything possible to undermine Buddhist influence in the country, though they did not fully succeed in it.
Vimaladharmasuriya was the Sinhala patriot of his century. He had saved his motherland from the throes of alien conquest and his nation from extinction. He had rescued the religion that inspired a great civilization from an untimely end in his country.
Commenting on Wimaladharmasuriya the First in the Daily News, over 40 years ago, Sumitta Kuruppu wrote:
"Few men of stature occupied the throne of Lanka. Among them still fewer have rendered a service so distinct and significant to the life of their country."