Anglicized and reactionary as St Thomas’s appeared to its political critics in the late 1930s, the spirit of nationalism was no stranger to its classrooms and corridors. Even anti-British sentiment manifested itself from time to time, though cautiously – as with this riposte in verse by an anonymous College-former to Bishop Heber’s widely resented description of Ceylon as an earthly Paradise where ‘only man is vile’:

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I hate your hymnic ‘wheezes’

      About this fairy isle:

Their dressing scarcely pleases,

      Their sentiments are vile:

They scarce echo your goodness,

      But ignorance alone:

Perhaps unmeaning rudeness

      Is what in them is shown.

 

Interest in national history and culture was very much alive at the College. In early 1938, Paulus E. Pieris Deraniyagala addressed the Sinhalese Literary Association on the topic of ‘some Sinhalese blood games’ (more correctly, blood sports). Deraniyagala, the son of Sir Paul E. Pieris, was an Old Thomian like his father and a man with a similarly catholic range of knowledge and interest. In keeping with the spirit of the times, he had taken to using one of his several Sinhalese surnames in place of the Portuguese-derived ‘Pieris’. His talk was, of course, delivered in Sinhala. The secretary proudly noted that it was ‘the first time an outsider was invited…to speak to us.’

       The Sinhalese Association was having an active year: soon afterwards, it staged a repeat performance of a well-received original short play on the life of the last King of Kandy, Sri Wickrama Rajasinha. Much more significant in the light of future events at St Thomas’s, however, was a lecture by the linguistic radical Munidasa Cumaratunga on the subject of ‘Sinhalese Idioms’, conducted under the auspices of the Association during the second term. Meanwhile, the Literary, Historical & Scientific Society – not to be outdone by the swabasha men – also put on a series of short plays and brought in the popular author and physician R.L. Spittel to give a talk (in English, of course) on ‘the Veddahs and wildlife of Ceylon’.

       For younger Thomians, these intellectual bonbons were flavourless compared to the news that the Railway Department was to name a steam locomotive after the school. The engine in question was one of five which the department, in a rare attack of public relations, had chosen to designate the ‘College Class’. Warden de Saram was invited to Ratmalana Railway Yard to christen Engine No. 272, St. Thomas’ College –later reporting with satisfaction that the driver, fireman and stoker assigned to the machine had all been old boys. College Class locomotives were used to haul commuter trains along the Coast Line, a stretch of which ran between Big Club and the sea; this gave lower-school trainspotters an immeasurable advantage over the pupils of the other colleges so honoured, for they were able to watch ‘their’ engine at work every day. It is said that the driver never failed to toot a salute on his whistle as St. Thomas’ College chugged and clattered past the school grounds.

       Nationalism was also on the menu at that year’s Old Boys’ Dinner as H.A.J. Hulugalle, in his speech, noted how ‘curious’ it was that

 

the national dress favoured by the Minister of Health [S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike] had not attracted Thomians.

It seemed to have a special appeal for the mathematical genius of men like the Minister of Education… The

learning and teaching of Classics was more conducive to that effortless superiority which finds its finest

expression in a well-sustained pair of trousers. Could they imagine the Public Trustee [Arthur Ranasinha,

another eminent old boy], for example, in anything else? The speaker’s own knowledge of Greek was rather

like that of the cat of the curate of Kew: it did not go beyond the letter µ. He would therefore find no

difficulty in donning the national dress should the exigencies of public life ever demand it.

 

The roll-call of the 31-member OBA committee of 1938, headed by Maha Mudaliyar Sir Solomon Bandaranaike and followed in second place by the Minister of Agriculture & Lands, D.S. Senanayake, read like a Who’s Who of contemporary Ceylon. To those who were sensitive to such matters, however, the near-absence of Kandyan names on the list was noticeable, for Kandyans had been strongly represented on the College rolls ever since 1851. The minorities were represented by six Burghers, an Englishman, a Parsi and five Tamils; the other committee members were, for the most part, Low Country Sinhalese. This distribution reflected neither the demographics of Ceylon nor that of the College, but accurately modelled the contemporary balance of elite power and influence.