A central tension in de Silva’s oeuvre is his ambiguous relationship to the figure of the witness. Many of his poems are written in the first person, yet this “I” is notoriously unstable. It shifts between a child, an adult, a ghost, and sometimes a collective entity. In poems dealing with the disappeared—a hauntingly common trope in post-war Sri Lankan literature—de Silva refuses the redemptive arc of testimony. Instead of a speaker who remembers and thus overcomes trauma, we find a speaker who is constituted by forgetting.
His poem “The Identified” exemplifies this. The speaker lists objects found in a mass grave: “A belt buckle. / A school pin. / A right shoe. / The left one // still walking / somewhere else.” The movement from tangible evidence to surreal impossibility (“the left one still walking”) collapses the distinction between forensic fact and spectral imagination. De Silva suggests that memory is not a retrieval system but a haunted house. The disappeared do not return as full subjects; they return as dislocated objects—a shoe, a fragment of cloth—that refuse to be integrated into a coherent narrative. The poet’s task, then, is not to bear witness in the classical sense (to speak for the dead), but to bear the failure of witnessing. He presents the silences, the gaps in the archive, as primary data. This is a radical departure from the testimonial poetry of survivors; de Silva writes from the perspective of the second generation, or the peripheral observer, for whom trauma is inherited not as memory but as an absence—a black hole in the family album.
De Silva’s most tangible impact has been in the realm of taxation. He has frequently contributed to policy discussions on:
Industry insiders note that several pragmatic amendments to Sri Lanka’s tax codes can be traced back to white papers and committees on which he served—often anonymously. prasannajit de silva
Before ascending to the bench, Prasannajit De Silva had a long and impactful career as a practicing lawyer.
In the landscape of Sri Lanka’s corporate and legal sectors, few names carry the quiet weight of Prasannajit de Silva. While he may not be a headline-grabbing public figure, those who navigate the upper echelons of finance, taxation, and corporate law recognize him as a formidable architect of modern regulatory practice.
Unlike traditional litigators, Prasannajit de Silva carved a path as a corate strategist. He is best known for his long association with some of Sri Lanka’s largest conglomerates and financial institutions, where he served as a board director, legal counsel, and audit committee member. A central tension in de Silva’s oeuvre is
Colleagues describe him as a "lawyer’s lawyer"—someone who can parse the fine print of a Companies Act while simultaneously advising on billion-rupee mergers. His expertise became particularly vital during Sri Lanka’s post-civil war economic opening (2010–2015) and again during the recent debt restructuring negotiations, where his understanding of fiscal law and central bank regulations proved invaluable.
Prasannajit becomes known as a reformer in the Kandyan Kingdom, advocating for a synthesis of Buddhist ethics and pragmatic governance. His seminal work, Sathya Prasanna ("The Path of Light"), argues that societal harmony arises not from rigid dogma but from compassionate action and introspection. Key tenets include:
His ideas echo modern concepts of eco-spirituality, emphasizing coexistence with nature—a lesson still urgent in today’s climate-conscious world. Industry insiders note that several pragmatic amendments to
Prasannajit De Silva is widely regarded as a:
One of the most significant milestones in his career was his leadership of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), the apex body of the legal profession in the country.