Maiden visit to India as PM: Sri Lankan PM Amarasuriya visits Hindu College, her alma mater

It marked a homecoming for the former student who once sat by the window in Room 27 — as her former professor sociologist Susan Vishwanathan remembers — debating on Karl Marx and Max Weber with her classmates.

“Further increasing and strengthening our (India-Sri Lanka) relationship” — that was how she described the aim of her India trip. The Sri Lankan leader, who is on her maiden visit to this country as the Prime Minister, during an interaction with students, also reflected on her time at Hindu College. Amarasuriya landed on Thursday.

“It is lovely to be back. It is lovely to see the current students. I become so hopeful when I see them,” Amarasuriya said.

Earlier in the day, during her address at the University of Delhi, she called for transforming the political culture by removing corruption and nepotism, while urging citizens not to turn away from politics, saying it remains the key to bringing meaningful change.

“Let’s change what we don’t like about politics — the cultures of some political parties, the corruption, the nepotism, the distance from normal, ordinary citizens … but don’t reject politics, because without politics, you won’t be able to change the world, and that’s what we have to do,” Amarasuriya said.

She also praised India’s progress in digital governance, describing it as an example for others to follow. When asked how technology could be leveraged to make governance more participatory, she said, “I think India has done that amazingly well. The digitalisation of governance systems is making the public sector digitalised. I think India is actually an excellent example of how digitalisation can lead to more accountable governments, more accessible, transparent systems.” She added that Sri Lanka is looking closely at India’s model to see how similar initiatives could be implemented at home.

Hindu College Principal Anju Srivastava, in an official statement on Thursday, highlighted the evolution of Hindu College over the years, saying: “From about 1,500 students a year when you (Amarasuriya) entered college, we have now grown to over 4,500 students a year. The spaces in the college that you traversed have grown in step with the student body, with over 190,000 square feet having been added in the last 12 years. Even with these large changes, the soul of the college and its driving spirits remain the same, in service of the Music of Truth.”

Her former professor, sociologist Susan Visvanathan, still remembers the first time she met 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 … who stood out in a small class of 15 students… 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.”

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…,” 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.

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… In a class polarised by intellectual differences, it was easy to see one person always standing out as the sane voice of friendship.”

Jain met Amarasuiya again in Colombo in 2013. “It was then that I learnt of her interest in the grassroots movements in Sri Lanka…,” Jain added.

Born in March 1970 in Galle on Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast, Amarasuriya later moved with her family to Colombo, studied at Bishop’s College, and spent a year in the US as an exchange student. But as political violence escalated in Sri Lanka in 1988-89, she was forced to discontinue her studies.

Later, on an MEA-sponsored scholarship, she enrolled in Hindu College, where she completed her BA (Honours) 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 a social health officer at 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.