Ellawala Medhananda Thero

Ellawala Medhananda Thero (එල්ලාවල මේධානන්ද) is a Sri Lankan politician and a former member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka. He had also organized many charities and engaged himself in educational activities in under-prevailed rural communities.^[1] As an academic scholar (see Pieris, op. cit.) he has published 40 books of academic and archaeological research of which the book on the "Sinhala-Buddhist Heritage in the Northern and Eastern Provinces" published in 2003 by Jayakody Publishers in Colombo is most well known^[2] Medhananda was a parliamentarian elected by the Jathika hela Urumaya, a party which campaigned for the so-called rights of Buddhists. As a consequence, many Marxist as well as minority Tamil writers have criticized him for his alleged right-wing political leanings and pro-majoritarian sentiments.^[3] He presented himself for elections twice first in 2004 then in 2010. Since then he has devoted himself to charitable works, teaching and scholarly activities in rural regions of Sri Lanka