Cricketing controversies
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…
Year: 2011
TNA MP Suresh Premachandran on the result of the Local Government elections
Photo from Wikipedia Updated, 27 July 2011: Listen to exclusive interview with Suresh Premachandran here. This statement on the results of the recently concluded local government elections (covered in detail by here)…
Post-Conflict Peace-Building: A Gradualist Perspective For Evolutionary Reform
Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena / AP, taken from Christian Science Monitor In his most famous and controversial work, Prof Samuel Huntington listed Sri Lanka’s armed conflict as an example of his key…
Northern Local Government Elections
(Photo: Reuters, from International Business Times) is curating news and updates from the ground, as well as domestic and international media coverage on the historic local government elections in Jaffna. Polling started…
Climate-Induced
Plantain leaves, steaming yellow rice, katta sambol, seer fish, passion fruit, the island’s culinary pleasures I think of first, batting then for a day, stopping for lunch and tea, but this strain…
I AM… Identity crisis in Post-conflict Sri Lanka
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…
Our Sri Lankan Identity: Another Case of ‘Being Nobody, Going Nowhere’?
(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…
A ‘Sri Lankan identity’ and race relations
– Prof. H. L. Seneviratne, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, Lanka Monthly Digest, June 2011 – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, June 2011 A regular contributor and commentator…
Trail Sri Lanka: Pressure by the International Community may have made a difference?
Photo courtesy Iromi Perera Some argue that International pressure will not change Sri Lanka for the better; however, recent evidence reveals the contrary. D.B.S Jeyaraj in a recent blog post argued that…
Looking at Sangakkara’s speech from governance perspective
Image courtesy World Cup Cricket 2011 Photos The former Cricket captain Kumar Sangakkara, in his great Sir Colin Cowdrey speech at Lord’s, spoke of a shared fanatical fashion and collective joy and…
Kumar Sangakkara steps forth like Young Ceylon
Kumar Sangakkara’s Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture for the MCC this summer was the antithesis of that presented within the same portals in 2006 by Martin Crowe.[i] Where Crowe returned to the…
Trail Sri Lanka: Celebrating the Sri Lankan spirit
(Are you folk walking to the North?) Not exactly the kind of question one is asked at 7.30am on a Friday morning. But it wasn’t your average Friday morning. At that point,…
The absence of Patriotism, Pluralism and Cosmopolitanism: ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ in retrospection
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…
Sri Lanka’s War Burden: Two years on
Photo credit Eranga Jayawardena/AP, Encyclopædia Britannica Online During the last couple of months, the former UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka – Mr Gordon Weiss has been promoting his book titled “The Cage”…
Can a ‘Sinhala patriot’ explain pesticides, arsenic and fertiliser?
Photo courtesy Arsenic and toxins found in baby rice food – what you need to know There is a new Sinhala nationalist political trend that now throws out a completely novel discourse,…
