Mithrarathna Kanaththage, a retired banker, has introduced five new methods to solve the famous Theorem of Pythagoras recently. He presented his methods to the Kelaniya and Sri Jayawardhanepura Universities. There, they were tested by Maths professors and presented to the National Educational Institution at Maharagama and finally to the International Mathematical Council. The Pythagorean Theorem can be proven by more than 300 methods. Many mathematicians, 
including Greek philosopher Euclid, have found different ways to solve it since ancient times.
Mithraratne’s methods were presented to the Director of Education. Professionals under his service checked them and appreciated Mithrarathna’s efforts; they are now waiting for recognition by the International Mathematics Council. The new methods are expected to appear in Maths textbooks as well. His discoveries were demonstrated to Senior Lecturer, Sarath Kumara at the University of Sri Jayawardenapura, who confirmed his methods to be accurate. Mithrarane made this effort to raise funds for Tamil children’s drama activities, appalled by the injustice he witnessed at the Children’s State Drama Festival after 2013. Being a Sinhalese, Mithrarathna is dedicated to improving Tamil medium children’s stage plays in Sri Lanka.
Background
Mithrarathna studied in the Advanced Level maths stream and joined the People’s Bank, Colombo branch, at the time located at Lake House. As he was very talented with numbers, the bank employed him at the international division’s Foreign Exchange Unit. His passion, hobby and profession are numbers.
Other findings
By far, Mithrarathna has found 7 new maths methods, including 3 new ways to multiply. (He devised 
these systems to make maths easy for weaker students, as he believes the reason for the student’s weakness is their inability to do basic arithmetic.)
He has also introduced a new way to trisect an angle without using a protractor.
Dramatist
He received numerous awards for his dramas in Sinhala, Tamil and English at the State Children’s Drama Festival. Mithrarathna was among those who raised his voice on behalf of Tamil Children’s Drama, established and inaugurated in 2011. Mithrarathna is immensely interested in stage plays and has been writing and directing them for Sri Lankan, especially Tamil, children.
Mithrarathna had been attracted to drama and theatre since his school days. His debut drama was “Achchi Mala”, staged when he was in Grade 7.
While working in the bank, he renewed his interest in drama and began to write plays. Many of his bank friends came to watch his dramas including Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese. His Tamil friends asked him why there were no Tamil dramas and he began to work towards developing Tamil stage plays.
The history of Children’s Drama Festival and the Battle of 14 years
The State Drama Festival was begun in 1959 and since 1996, it has been held in two main sections as open section and limited section. Sinhala and English dramas were held but there was a void in Tamil drama. There was apparently no demand for a Tamil category at the State Drama Festival either. Mithrarathna took steps to end the discrimination first by establishing “The moment to win Tamil Children’s State Drama Festival”. As President of that organization, he informed many officials, parliamentarians, the Drama Advisory Board, the State Arts Council and other relevant officials about this problem. First they asked for a separate Tamil Drama Festival but later the State Drama Panel decided to make The State Children’s Drama Festival tri-lingual by introducing Tamil and English sections.
They translated many Sinhalese stage plays into Tamil and these were staged by his drama association in Habarakada. During the first few years, Tamil participation was low and the Arts Council asked him to bring in Tamil scripts. He went to the North and East in search of Tamil scripts at his own expense and eventually returned with about 10–12 scripts. As the Tamil audience was still small, he travelled to the North and brought Tamil children to the theatre. They were motivated by his efforts and a surge in Tamil children’s drama took place. In 2012, he received 68 Tamil drama scripts. Mithraratne asks, “What more proof do we need to show that unity can be achieved between various ethnicities in Sri Lanka than through stage dramas?”
In 2013, the State Children’s Drama Festival was held as planned and everything took place on time except the awards ceremony. Furious at this injustice, Mithrarathna informed the newspapers about this. Since then, he says his dramas had not been selected for awards and that Tamil dramas were not nominated for awards, either. He says the above activity was evident punishment to him for speaking out about the 2013 incident.
State Drama Council’s promise
The main reason for the negligence of the Tamil Drama awards was “Lack of standards” according to the State Drama Council, Mithrarathna said.
“I asked what the standards were. In return, they promised to organize drama workshops for Tamil children and dramatists, publishing a guidebook for writing and directing dramas, but neither activity had a favourable outcome. For the first time in history, the President participated at the State Drama Awards in 2011 and awards were not given in the Tamil section as they weren’t deemed suitable. As the years passed, dramatists were ignored and they gave up hope regarding the drama festival, their sense of equality vanished and the State Tamil Children’s Drama Festival Section didn’t get the attention it deserved.”
Mr. Mithrarathna further said that although he informed a number of Ministers, Secretaries and officials regarding this situation, some officials gave positive feedback while some, including Tamil politicians, never cared.
Mithrarathna lives in Habarakada, where not a single Tamil family can be found, but he is struggling for the rights of Tamil children in Sri Lanka.
Pix by Damith Wickramasinghe
