It is with great sadness that we record the death of Devika Goonewardene on Monday 6th July after a brave battle against cancer. An inter-faith memorial service was held on Thursday 9th July to pay tribute to a life of rich promise that was cut short. The following is the eulogy delivered by Phillip Darby, Director of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, and supervisor of Devika’s Ph.D thesis.

We are here this afternoon to pay tribute to the life of Devika Goonewardene. It was a life of rich promise that was cut short. When Shelagh telephoned me on Monday to tell me of Devika’s death, she quoted that powerful line from Hamlet – “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. And so it was.

Thinking of what I might say today got me pondering on how it would be if people wrote their eulogies. Don’t laugh, self-promotion is so much the order of the day that we are almost at that stage. But Devika would have done poorly in this respect. She was far too modest.

You will understand that in this eulogy I can only catch parts of Devika’s life. There are many stories to be told and I can only tell a few. Still I hope that what I say may connect with other parts of Devika’s life that many of you will know more about than I.

Devika was born in Colombo. She spent two years of her childhood in Georgetown, Guyana in South America where her father had an assignment with the Commonwealth Secretariat. The family moved to Australia in 1986. I need hardly say that Devika grew up in a household with lots of books and an appreciation of the creative and performative arts. So she started with that great advantage. She went on to Monash where she took degrees in law and arts. On the arts side, she majored in politics and history. This was a time when both departments at Monash were leaders in their fields. In politics she came under the influence of David Goldsworthy and Chris Reu Smit. Her B.A. thesis was entitled Freedom at Midnight; Darkness at Dawn: The Partition of India – an interest she maintained for the rest of her life.

I first met Devika a little more than a decade ago when she came to enquire whether I would supervise her Ph.D thesis. I read her honours thesis and of course said yes. Thereafter our lives became intertwined in various ways. There was the thesis. It was inevitable, given her interests, that she became heavily involved with the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. There was the added attraction – as Marcia Langton who is with us today, often says that the Institute is a “safe” place – meaning in part that one could feel at ease. Then she took up tutorship in the Department of Politics at the University of Melbourne.

So Devika became part of an extended family of my Ph.D students and tutors – all of whom were involved with the Institute. To mention only a few: Edgar Ng with whom she struck up a close and comfortable friendship, Simon Obendorf who is now in the UK, Carlos Morreo who is in Caracas, Christine Deftereos, Adam Driver and David Martin who are with us today. And then there was Albert Paolini – another much loved person who was struck down by leukaemia and did in 1996 at the age of 33. I have become wary of taking on new Ph.D students because, healthwise, the record is not encouraging.

To say a little about Devika’s thesis. It was about the intersection of International Relations and postcolonialism in South Asia. It had three prongs: • politics – especially about decolonizing International Relations • history – about the various ways of remembering the past and how they relate to contemporary politics • culture – focussing particularly on literature and film, with Bollywood receiving extensive treatment. I have slabs of Devika’s writing on various sections of the thesis – a point to which I will return.

In a time of extremely competitive self-interest, what stands out in my remembrance is how much she gave to others and to the improvement of projects that was not hers in any proprietary sense. Think of the contribution she made to the writing and related work of the late Vin D’Cruz. I was thrilled when she was acknowledged as one of the co-editors of his book As Others See Us that pays tribute to the thought of Ashis Nandy – one of Devika’s heroes. Think of the work she did for the postcolonial bibliographical project of the Centre for Postcolonial Writing at Monash. Then there was her teaching at the University of Melbourne, her sense of commitment and the care she took with students, I have in mind most of all the contribution she made to my IR and its Others course which challenged the mainstream Eurocentric narratives of the receiving end, starting in Asia and Africa instead of in Europe.

I should add that in the last two years our reading pack begins with a wonderful essay by Devika on this theme. It was originally given at a conference in Calcutta, jointly sponsored by the University of Calcutta and Monash to celebrate the University of Calcutta’s 150th year. Ashis Nandy was present and much admired Devika’s paper.

Devika was greatly respected by her students, although it must be said that some found her daunting because she expected them to read whole books and to know that mostly sentences should have a verb – which cuts across the grain of the contemporary university. In these respects, she followed in the footsteps of her brother Antony whom she revered. He taught in the course some years before. Both shared these somewhat unworldly expectations.

Then there was Devika’s work at the Institute as executive office, along with Edgar. She contributed so much and always put down the most modest hours, although she needed the money. She played a crucial role in advocating that our postcolonialism must go out into the world and not be yet another academic exercise, cut off from daily life. In the phrase that now badges the Institute: “knowledge to change the way we are”.

Finally I will mention the work she did for me and the influence she had on my thinking. She convinced me that International Relations was too important to cast aside and she helped to bring me back at least to the edge of the discipline. In recent years – until the last six months – everything I wrote I vetted with her first. Her encyclopaedic knowledge and her editorial skills have greatly strengthened my writing.

In short, Devika had integrity; she was committed to principled scholarship; she showed little regard for her own self-advancement.

It was my great good fortune to travel twice in south Asia with Devika. The first was a visit to India and Bangladesh in the company of Simon Obendorf. The second was also to India with Simon – the conference in Calcutta I have mentioned – on this occasion enriched by Marcia’s presence. Now Devika wrote a great deal about everyday life but it was another thing to confront it in the reality of India – the cheap hotels of our first visit, the difficulty of crossing Chowringhee Road in Calcutta, the stomach problems and the peering into toilet bowls.

I could go on but I will just give one snippet. You can imagine my dismay when I went out to the airport in Delhi to meet Devika. She arrived, not with a rucksack that she couldn’t have managed anyway but, with various suitcases and dilly bags containing a veritable library. And of course in Delhi we collected more books. And then when we reached Calcutta, Devika was in her seventh heaven. It was February and it was the book fair in the maidan. so she purchased more and more, and we trekked up to the post office in Park Street to see an old man I have known for many years (come to think of it, he is probably younger than I am) who sits cross-legged on the pavement and stitches up the piles of books in cloth parcels, ties them with string and seals the ends with hot wax affixed with a distinctive stamp. They duly arrive by seamail six months later.

I will conclude by saying there is much in Devika’s life that needs to be followed up – no doubt in different ways by different people. A number of my former students have suggested that we make a book out of our International Relations course. A year or so ago I discussed something of this nature with Devika. Perhaps it should be rather different kind of book, drawing not only on Devika’s work but the knowledge and experience of others who have nothing to do with International Relations and postcolonialism as disciplinary formations. Some poetry written by Shelagh, for instance. I intend to make the time to think through the possibilities and it would be good to hear from others who would like to be involved. I know Devika would have been deeply touched by a project of this kind.

May I express, on behalf of us all, our heartfelt condolences to Devinda; to Antony who has provided such wonderful support; and to Shelagh who has been a towering strength from the beginning and most of all through the final chapter.