Archive for the ‘Identity’

Cricketing controversies

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I have always been a cricket fan.  Cricket turns me into a flag waving, national anthem singing patriot and believer in the power of cricket to unite, to overcome all that is ugly and divisive in our country.  As a child I even collected newspaper articles about my favourite cricketers which I pasted neatly in large exercise books.  I remember reading with pride what foreign cricketing correspondents had to say about Sri Lanka’s first test match at Lords, about the spirit of Sri Lankan cricket, the gentleness, humour and courtesy of our cricket team; I was convinced that Sri Lankan cricket and cricketers could do no wrong.  I have no illusions about this: these are clearly my latent middle class, romantic, public school impulses that years of exposure to a harsher and more realistic world have till recently failed to completely subdue. Lately though my love affair with cricket (perhaps in best tradition of all great love affairs) has taken…

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I AM… Identity crisis in Post-conflict Sri Lanka

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Photo by Ishara S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images “There are no more minorities” said the President after the defeat of the LTTE – a secessionist rebel group that waged a war against Sri Lanka in 2009. From now on, everyone is part of the majority. It was a nice feeling after decades of distinction between the communities in the island. I belong to one of the three recognized minorities of the island – the Burghers. A friend of mine noticed that we were the only ones not represented in the National Flag, I assumed that maybe we shared one strip in the flag with another community. This was not the least an issue for me. But with regards to the current conflict which the country went through I find this misrepresentation amusing. As a Sri Lankan of mixed ethnicity- Burgher after my dad and Sinhala, after my mother-  I had some great deal to figure out. Aged 13, I presented myself at an…

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Our Sri Lankan Identity: Another Case of ‘Being Nobody, Going Nowhere’?

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(AP Photo/Manish Swarup, from JDS) The 2011 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture delivered by Kumar Sangakkara was indeed a very thoughtful, courageous and passionate one. Much has been written about the lecture, and it is not necessary to repeat how inspiring it was. But there is that poignant final paragraph in Sangakkara’s lecture which has contributed in numerous ways to a resurgence of an old debate concerning our Sri Lankan identity and what it ought to mean in our contemporary post-war Sri Lanka. The relevant paragraph is as follows: “Fans of different races, castes, ethnicities and religions who together celebrate their diversity by uniting for a common national cause. They are my foundation, they are my family. I will play my cricket for them. Their spirit is the true spirit of cricket. With me are all my people. I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am…

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The absence of Patriotism, Pluralism and Cosmopolitanism: ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ in retrospection

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ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS Former Sri Lankan child soldier Warnakulasuriya Anthony Sunil Rexy (right) laughs with other inmates as they play earlier this month at a government rehabilitation center in Ambepussa. Original in The Washington Times. The TV programme entitled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, produced by Channel 4 of the UK, sparked substantial debate and discussion in every strata of interest on Sri Lanka, including the realms of high politics and diplomacy, national an international journalism, the non-governmental sector and the programme carried sufficient weight to trigger a renewed interest on Sri Lankan affairs in the West – which – due to the absence of key strategic interests in Sri Lanka, does not generally have a place in Western foreign policy agendas. While the Government of Sri Lanka condemned the programme as false and criticised its intent at causing international embarrassment to Sri Lanka, Western governments reiterated their common request that Sri Lanka should seriously investigate the allegations of crimes of…

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KUMAR SANGAKKARA’S COWDREY LECTURE

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Photo courtesy Cric When Kumar Chokshanada Sangakkara, Trinity Lion, Ryde Gold Medallist, and former captain of Sri Lanka, delivered what can only be called a magisterial oration at the 2011 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s on Monday night, he not only rapidly exhausted the stock of superlatives of his audience, reviewers and fans, but also became the first Cowdrey lecturer to receive a standing ovation since Desmond Tutu in 2008. As The Guardian observed, “August company indeed.” In many ways, it is difficult to imagine someone better than Kumar Sangakkara to deliver a lecture memorialising Lord Cowdrey, who was in his time the personification of the thinking man’s cricketer, and Sangakkara has repaid MCC President Christopher Martin-Jenkins’ confidence in full. From the organisation of his argument, its learned substance, the eloquence of its delivery, and above all, its acute self-awareness of which fights to pick and which to avoid, it is abundantly clear that cricket’s gain was…

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Rambling in Jaffna: An ode to the past

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Photo courtesy Dushiyanthini‘s Jaffna: Moments of Nostalgia The roads in Jaffna are long and unending. The day time is dusty and windy. If you listen to the air for a while, you will certainly hear some silent utterances and silent whispers. There are many mysteries hidden inside these silent whispers in Jaffna. There are mysteries about war, blood, devastation, destruction, death and many more. The eyes of its people portray many feelings. No one, as I believe, can dissect or classify those feelings, but their eyes certainly speak volumes. This is undoubtedly a reawakening period in Jaffna. Jaffna is raising its head. A three-decade long war, as we all know, anaesthetized Jaffna and its people. They heard all the unpleasant stories about firings, killings, devastation, curfews and sanctions on a daily basis. The citizenry was arrested by war. Growth and development were halted. ‘People’ were entrapped in the middle of the hostility. There were serious deficiencies in infrastructure. There was…

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Resource book for historians, researchers and media: A year of tweeting from Groundviews

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Visualisation of our Twitter followers. See larger version here. We used the web service Tweet Book to capture all our tweets over the past year in a single PDF. We’ve tweeted thousands of times over the past twelve months and have covered, The media fallout of the farcical fast of senior government Minister Wimal Weerawansa in front of the UN HQ in Colombo. Praise for our model of journalism on C-SPAN video in the US, captured from an event at the United States Institute of Peace. Key statements by world leaders like Desmond Tutu on post-war reconciliation and accountability for war crimes Bell Pottinger’s sickening relationship with the incumbent government, largely hidden from public scrutiny Key reports on Sri Lanka from, inter alia, HRW, AI, ICG and the US State Department, including responses from senior Ministers and the Foreign Ministry Foreign relations and the tussle in Sri Lanka between India and China The court proceedings on Sarath Fonseka The UNP’s perennial…

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Identities And Borders In South Asia: A View From The Left

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Partition, 1947, courtesy The Hindu Introduction From the partition of British India to the civil war in Sri Lanka, the attempt to impose national borders in accordance with ethnic, linguistic or religious identities in South Asia has spawned civil wars and crimes against humanity, resulting in almost unimaginable suffering and bloodshed. This is all the more preposterous in a region where migration and the mixing of peoples and cultures have been occurring from time immemorial. The Left potentially has a conceptual and theoretical framework which would allow it to propose solutions to these conflicts, yet flawed interpretations of ‘the right to self-determination’ have led many on the Left to compound the problems instead. A different interpretation suggests that the key goals should be less violence and more democracy, and taking down barriers between peoples rather than erecting more and more of them. The birth of India and Pakistan It is surely a paradox that a non-violent movement in India for…

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Burning of the Jaffna Public Library: 30 years on

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Image taken from Jaffna Photo Gallery 1st June marked the 30th anniversary of the burning of the Jaffna Public Library. An eye witness account was delivered at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies by Mr Silan Kadirgamar,former senior lecturer University of Jaffna, former President of Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality, Jaffna branch and Founding member of Jaffna Citizen’s Committee(1981). The speaker recounted the events that contributed to the heightening of ethnic tensions since Sri Lanka attained Independence in 1948 culminating in the fateful incident which he felt was a turning point in the ethnic conflict. His analysis of the event was primarily to remind society that they must ensure that such a crime should not recur as ‘those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it’. Unfortunately, the limited few comments from the audience seemed to trivialize the subject by recounting details of the incident rather than discussing its substance. Others tried to offer dubious leads to the…

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Sri Lanka May Yet Be Lost, or Saved

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Original photo Ranga Sirilal | Reuters Two years after the comprehensive defeat of the LTTE, the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war is still playing itself out.  Take the events of the past month for example:  the public release of a UN Panel Report supported accusations of war crimes against both main parties to the conflict;  government functionaries decried international conspiracies and local traitors;  a government minister claimed to have trained suicide cadres in the Western Province; and in the Eastern Province, a pair of tit-for-tat political killings were a reminder that full disarmament of paramilitaries and personal armies has not taken place.  With the warfare over, the horrendous loss of human life no longer continues.  However, the post-war situation in the country remains far from ideal, and its future does not seem entirely secure. Thinking about the current state of the nation, my thoughts have returned to a moment in Sri Lanka’s political history when an alternative end to…

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Going beyond mainstream media: The best Twitter feeds on and from Sri Lanka

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Just over a year ago, in April 2010, Groundviews launched two curated Twitter lists on Sri Lanka to help those in and outside the country access news, information and critical conversations that went far beyond mainstream media’s economic and partisan shackles. One list featured some of the most compelling bloggers in Sri Lanka. The other, a list of news sources and Twitter accounts of journalists. Because they are oriented towards an international audience, the lists largely capture content published in English, though feeds like @vikalpavoices publish mostly in Sinhala. Coupled with our own feed, the two lists are comprehensive and by the very nature of the medium, constantly updated windows into issues, processes and events mainstream media could not, or would not cover. And even when they did, the Twitter updates on these feeds added new perspectives and often, information vital to understand context. On occasion, they have also served to hold mainstream media – both domestic and international –…

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A review of ‘The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lankan & The Last Days of the Tamil Tigers’

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I was elated to take delivery of my copy of The Cage by Gordon Weiss yesterday. Having pre-ordered it off Amazon UK, I fully expected it to be held up by Customs officials in Sri Lanka, given the incendiary issues the book is anchored to and its author, an erstwhile employee of the United Nations (UN) in Sri Lanka. As a friend quipped, they probably thought it had something to do with the Dehiwela Zoo. This may be true for now, but it is highly unlikely, in a country that has repeatedly even blocked issues of The Economist with articles perceived to be against the incumbent government, that this tome will be freely sold in bookstores. The publication and release of The Cage comes soon after the hugely controversial and deeply distressing report by the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts, which found credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by both the LTTE and government armed forces…

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Tuyilam Illam: Positivist readings and new debating grounds

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[Author's note: Though I was invited around February 2011 to respond to the discussion in Groundviews on the issue of Tiger ‘cemeteries’ being desecrated, I was so busy that my draft article simply stayed as draft and got lost in the computer debris. I was simply overloaded with cricket and other vital issues during March-April. Having discovered the draft, I present it with apologies.] Some sections of the Tamil intelligentsia remain biter and defiant today after the demise of their plans for national self-determination. “We are a defeated people,” said one articulate professional in the Jaffna Peninsula in June 2010 in an unsolicited remark that conveyed his defiance. The heavy presence of security forces and the proportion of land occupied by the various arms of state power in the northern reaches were among the grievances throbbing in the hearts of those hostile to the new dispensation (a body whose proportions I am in no position to assess). Thus, the HSZ spaces…

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Vesak and Violence Against Women

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Original photograph REUTERS/Damir Sagolj I have not hidden my increasing disdain for the way Buddhism is practiced and promoted in Sri Lanka. To say the least, we have not only forgotten what it is truly about, we often downright contradict and insult it. I wrote about it here, almost exactly a year ago, after the Poson holiday of 2010. In the last year, I have become even more disillusioned with the establishment of Buddhism in Sri Lanka – I am always shocked by the bigoted sermons given on TV, the terrible behaviour displayed by monks turned politicians, and how the Nationalistic element of Sri Lankan Buddhism has seeped into everything. I felt even more wary as we as a nation approached Vesak this year. For anyone that needs a heads-up, the Vesak full-moon Poya day is a special day for Buddhists. The Buddha was apparently born, attained enlightenment and passed onto Nirvana all on Vesak poya days. Don’t ask me how…

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The burka ban: Europe and Muslims on collision course?

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‘I think someone forced you to wear this. I will help you. Here is a fine of €200’. Sounds stupid? Well that’s the bizarre logic of the French rescue plan/law to help around 2000 Muslim women get out of the burka. Whilst prostitution and pornography flourish it is the burka that is banned. The debasement of women in the sex industry is well known but it is the attire of Muslim women that inspires French chivalry. I doubt anyone’s being fooled here – this has nothing to do with helping women but is another instance of the exploitation of women and women’s issues. The ban is ridiculous. It’s another blemish in the deteriorating relationship between European Muslims and White Europe. But why is Europe getting all jittery about what Muslims wear or to state another example, how they build their mosques? In Switzerland they banned minarets when there were only four in the country. Minarets and domes are fairly controversial…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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