‘Gentle, brilliant, disarming’: How Sri Lankan PM Harini Amarasuriya is remembered by mentor, Hindu College peers

As Amarasuriya is set to return to Delhi as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, her alma mater is preparing to honour her with an honorary doctorate at a special convocation. The ceremony, planned in mid-October at Hindu College, marks a homecoming for the former undergraduate who once sat by the window in Room 27, debating Karl Marx and Max Weber with her classmates.

From the US to Edinburgh

Born in March 1970 in Galle on Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast, Amarasuriya was the youngest of three children in a family whose fortunes shifted when her father’s tea estate was nationalised. She moved with her family to Colombo, studied at Bishop’s College, and spent a year in the United States as an exchange student. But as political violence escalated in Sri Lanka in 1988-89, she was forced to discontinue her studies there.

Later, on an MEA-sponsored scholarship, she enrolled in Delhi University’s Hindu College, where she completed her BA (Honours) in Sociology in 1994. She went on to earn a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and Development from Macquarie University in Australia and a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh.

Amarasuriya’s early career unfolded not in Parliament but in community health. Her first job was as a social health officer in a community mental health centre, working with institutionalised women. Later, as head of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at the Open University of Sri Lanka, she built a reputation as an academic and activist. She entered politics only in 2021, joining the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Last year, she was appointed Prime Minister—only the third woman to hold the office in the island nation’s history.

Room 27 and a student who stood out

Visvanathan still remembers the first time she encountered Amarasuriya as a student in the early 1990s. “I came back from a Teen Murti Fellowship in 1992, to Hindu College, and was delighted to find a quartet of students, Ruchi, Ranu, Harini and Amrita, who stood out in a small class of 15 students. They came for all the lectures I took on Sociology of Religion, Urbanisation and Stratification, and in 1993, they sat in on a hundred lectures on Marx, Weber, and Émile Durkheim. Harini sat in the front row, first seat near the window in Room 27, and they answered and questioned one another as their curiosity and imaginative interventions were unique. I had the freedom to integrate questions around everyday contexts of reading and interpreting Sociology with them.”

“They had such a wonderful gang life, each maintaining their unique identity, not quarrelsome or competitive, that I did keep in touch with them in the following 30 and more years as a friend, who occasionally got to hear from them about what they were currently busy with. In my mind, I could not quite separate them, as their gang life was so erudite,” she said.

When Visvanathan met Amarasuriya again in 2024 while following up field work in Sri Lanka’s tea plantations, she was struck by the continuity. “She had not changed at all…as we were both 32 years older, it was interesting for me that she had continued her rehabilitation work with Tamil and Sinhala workers through the organisation called NEST, had a PhD from Edinburgh University and was currently editing a book describing the status of refugees from the War Years in Sri Lanka, who were now diaspora from UK. Her simplicity and charm and her sense of humour were the same as in 1992,” Visvanathan said.

Together, they travelled to villages and small towns around Colombo and Galle. “Crowds of people would turn up to hear her, and so also in hotels and on street corners. The fact that they trusted her and communicated an ardour of hope and optimism was the most striking thing about her. When I returned to India, it was with the knowledge that she had made an impact on her people, resulting in the success of the party in the elections last year,” Visvanathan said.

“I am so delighted that Dr Harini Amarasuriya is being honoured by the Indian government, as she integrates theory and praxis, and democracy and dialogue are regenerative forces implicit in her vocabulary,” she added.

‘The sane voice of friendship’

Among her peers in Hindu College, those memories take a softer and more personal hue. Her classmate Ranu Jain, now a photographer, recalls her fondly. “It gives me much joy to share a little about my association with Harini, whom I first met in Hindu College, University of Delhi, and got to know over the course of three lovely years studying Sociology. In a class polarised by intellectual differences, it was easy to see one person always standing out as the sane voice of friendship. That was Harini, with the most disarming smile. She could mediate between groups with kindness and laughter. And her quiet intelligence, gentleness, and warmth were and continue to be her most striking qualities,” Jain said.

Jain met Amarasuiya again in Colombo in 2013. “It was then that I learnt of her interest in the grassroots movements in Sri Lanka. I enjoyed reconnecting with her and seeing how she was still the same person that I knew way back in college, her simplicity and brilliance unchanged. She told me about her cat and her rabbits and how they lived happily together, and I could imagine how her parenting would have played a definitive role in their amicable co-existence,” Jain added.

Watching her rise to leadership, Jain said, “I am happy that she is visiting India and New Delhi as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and a guest of the state and am certain that her leadership will inspire generations of Sri Lankans and people all over the world. I think of her fondly and wish her well.”

When Delhi University gathers in mid-October to confer an honorary doctorate, Hindu College will be hosting not just a head of government, but a former student remembered as “gentle,” “brilliant,” and “the most disarming smile” in a class of 15.