Sri Lanka Matha

There are differing accounts as to the origin of the "Sri Lanka Matha". The most widely held view is that Sri Lankan composer Ananda Samarakoon wrote the music and lyrics to the song, inspired/influenced by the Indian Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. A minority suggest that Tagore write the anthem in full. Some have suggested that Tagore composed the music whilst Samarakoon wrote the lyrics. Tagore being directly involved in the creation of the song has been denied by some historians like Indian Lipi Ghosh and Sri Lankan Sandagomi Coperahewa. Samarakoon had been a pupil of Tagore at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. After returning to Ceylon Samarakoon taught music at Mahinda College, Galle. The song, which was then known as "Namo Namo Mata", was first sung by students at Mahinda College. After it was sung by the choir from Musaeus College, Colombo at a public event it became hugely popular in Ceylon and was widely played on radio. Prior to Ceylon's independence (1948) the Lanka Gandharva Sabha had organised a competition to find a national anthem. Among the entries were "Namo Namo Matha" by Samarakoon and "Sri Lanka Matha Pala Yasa Mahima" by P. B. Illangasinghe and Lionel Edirisinghe. At the first independence day ceremony held on 4 February 1949 at the Independence Memorial Hall in Torrington Square both "Namo Namo Matha" and "Sri Lanka Matha Pala Yasa Mahima" were sung, in Sinhala and Tamil, as "national songs". More specifically, in 1950 Minister of Finance J. R. Jayewardene requested that the government recognise Samarakoon's "Namo Namo Matha" as the official national anthem. "Namo Namo Matha" was first sung as Ceylon's official national anthem at the independence day parade in Colombo in 1952. In the late 1950s controversy arose over its first line, "Namo Namo Matha, Apa Sri Lanka". == Multilingual ==

The Sri Lankan national anthem is available in an identical version in two languages, Sinhala and Tamil, both official languages of the country. It is just one of a number that are sung in more than one language: Belgium (French, Dutch, and German), Canada (English, French and Inuktitut), Finland (Finnish, Swedish), New Zealand (English and Māori), South Africa (Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English), Suriname (Dutch and Sranan Tongo) and Switzerland (German, French, Italian and Romansh). Although it has existed since independence in 1948 it was generally only sung in the north and east of the country where the Tamil language predominates. The majority of Sri Lankans (around 75%) speak the Sinhala language. More specifically, "Tamil is the native language for the Tamil people, who constitute about 15% of Sri Lankans, and for Muslims who are nearly 10%", according to the BBC. Some reports indicate that the Tamil version was used at official events held in the Tamil speaking regions in the North and East of Sri Lanka. The paper had drawn on the Singaporean model where the national anthem is sung in the official lyrics and not any translation of the lyrics. Government minister Wimal Weerawansa had labelled the Tamil version a "joke" on Derana TV, and had cited India as an analogy. Some journalists, such as D. B. S. Jeyaraj, Although sources based on an official Government of India website state that the Indian National anthem was adopted in its Hindi version by the Constituent Assembly of India, the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly of India on 24 January 1950 does not mention that the National Anthem was "adopted", nor does it mention that it was done so in its Hindi version. In actual practice the unaltered Bengali version is the version sung as the National Anthem, with its words in original Bengali Tatsama, a highly Sanskritized form of Bengali that has Sanskrit words common to both Hindi and Bengali. The Cabinet's December 2010 decision to scrap the Tamil translation of the anthem (which was not subsequently enacted) caused much furore in Sri Lanka. Later, the government denied allegations that the Tamil translation was to be abolished. The Presidential Secretariat has stated that there was no basis to the media report and follow up reports which intimated the same. Nevertheless, an unofficial ban The Sri Lankan Army forcefully stopped any use of the Tamil version and taught school children to sing only the Sinhala version. In March 2015 newly elected President Maithripala Sirisena announced that he would be issuing a circular which would state that there was no ban on singing the national anthem in Tamil. Sirisena's announcement was attacked by Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists. During Sri Lanka's 68th national independence day celebrations on 4 February 2016, the Tamil version of the anthem was sung for the first time since 1949 at an official government event, the independence day celebrations. Lifting of the unofficial ban on the Tamil version had been approved by President Maithripala Sirisena (who had said he would unite the nation after the nearly 26-year civil war that ended in 2009) and by others in the government. In 2020, the Sri Lankan government stopped using the Tamil version of the national anthem at the main Independence Day celebration. However, regional independence day celebrations including those with government involvement in regions with significant Tamil populations continue to sing in both Tamil and Sinhala. In 2024, the government once again reinstated the national anthem at the 76th Independence Day. ==Lyrics==

Sinhala version Tamil version Poetic English translation == Notes==