NEW DELHI : A painting that brings together Mahatma Gandhi, pioneering Sri Lankan architect Minnette de Silva and a little-known story from Gandhi’s 1927 visit to Ceylon was gifted to the High Commission of Sri Lanka in New Delhi on Friday, 7 August 2026, by Sri Lankan artist Raja Segar and Ms. Namita Swamy, Founder-Director of Tapobhumi – Oko Centre for the Arts, Bengaluru.
Titled Gandhi and Minnette de Silva (2023), the 40 x 30-inch oil-on-canvas work reimagines an episode from Gandhi’s visit to Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, in 1927. According to accounts by historian, feminist scholar and author Kumari Jayawardena, a young Minnette de Silva, aged nine, was tasked with finding goat’s milk for Gandhi.
It is a small, intimate episode within a much larger historical encounter, but one that offers a glimpse into the young woman who would later emerge as one of Sri Lanka’s pioneering architects and an influential voice in South Asian modern architecture.
Segar interprets the episode through his distinctive “Refractive” style, bringing Gandhi, the young Minnette and the goat together within a vibrant landscape of geometric forms and vivid reds, greens, ochres and blues. The figures appear woven into the architectural and natural landscape of Sri Lanka, giving the painting a sense of memory and movement.
The goat, an apparently incidental element of the original story, assumes a quiet symbolic presence in the work, connecting Gandhi’s philosophy of simplicity with the rural landscape of Sri Lanka.
The painting also has a personal resonance for the artist. Raja Segar lives in a house designed by Minnette de Silva, giving him a direct connection with the architectural legacy of the young woman he has portrayed almost a century after the episode depicted in the painting.
The High Commissioner expressed her appreciation to Raja Segar and Namita Swamy for their generous gift and for choosing to place the work with the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi.
The painting will become part of the High Commission’s collection, contributing to its celebration of the rich cultural, historical and people-to-people connections between Sri Lanka and India.
About the Painting
Gandhi and Minnette de Silva (2023)
Artist: Raja Segar
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 40 x 30 inchesg
Gifted by: Raja Segar and Namita Swamy, Founder-Director, Tapobhumi – Oko Centre for the Arts, Bengaluru
