Too brown, Too dark, Too Ugly
Top left to bottom: Advertisements for Fair & Lovely, Clean and Dry Intimate Wash and Vaseline’s Fair & Handsome, from Recently, a close member in my family gave birth to a beautiful…
Year: 2012
Dambulla Mosque Attack: A Litmus Test of a Nation in Transition from Chauvinism to Civility
This is in response to the comments to my previous post – Dambulla Mosque Attack: Is there a hidden hand? At the time of writing this, there were nearly 50 comments displaying…
Not In Our Name: Campaign update and video
After the email update reproduced below was sent on 2nd May, less than a week after the Not In Our Name initiative was launched, Deshabandhu Jezima Ismail, senior lawyer and HR activist JC…
The Mind of Compassion: Buddhism and Violence
A lion carries a dead wild boar in his mouth. He is walking through the grasslands, victorious after the hunt. On the dead boar is a crudely imprinted crescent moon and star….
Some Critical Reflections on the Silences on Secularism: A Response to Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge
Photo courtesy Hemant Buch via JDS In a piece published on on 29 April, Ms. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge (CBK) makes many pertinent observations on religion and society in South Asia. Underlying all her arguments…
Photo essay: Freedom, Religion, and Dambulla
Navin Weeraratne’s photo essay around the recent violence in Dambulla has already been shared widely on Facebook, and elsewhere on the web. Describing himself to us as “an amateur photographer, toy painter,…
Where do we come from?
Photo by author The current controversy on the identity and significance of the series of mounds linking Rameshwaram in India with Mannar in Sri Lanka has attained international attention due to a…
The State and Religion in South Asia
Photo by Massimiliano Clausi, courtesy SAJA Secularism implies the relationship between Religion and Politics, more specifically between Religion and the State. The concept of secularism has drawn its sources from the philosophy that…
The middle finger to the middle-path in Sri Lanka
A week ago, we disgraced ourselves. Racist louts, some in the garb of Buddhist monks, engaged openly in speech and behaviour so violent, even those who led it were forced to suggest…
The Geneva Debacle of March 2012: The lessons not learnt
Photo courtesy Vikalpa The outcome in Geneva last year (March 2011) of the voting on Sri Lanka’s conduct of the war and related human rights record was very clearly in favour of…
Discovering the White Van in a Troubled Democracy: An analysis of ongoing “abduction blueprint” in Sri Lanka
In a country that has achieved so much in literacy, education and social development, is it not indeed unfortunate that “White Van” has frightened the entire nation? Appearance of a white van…
Buddha wept as we beat our women
54% of adolescent girls in Sri Lanka feel that a husband is justified in beating his wife. The UNICEF Global Report Card on Adolescents 2012 however is not available yet to try…
Coping with little support: Batticaloa’s women ex-combatants and their reintegration
The end of hostilities in May 2009 saw some 270,000 to 300,000 Tamils fleeing the conflict zone in the North and settling in camps for internally displaced people. Fleeing the fighting, together…
Cluster bombs in Sri Lanka: From denial to discovery
Ravi Nessman from Associated Press has broken what’s perhaps the most important story on the war, since it ended three years ago. In a story published by AP a few hours ago,…
Not In Our Name: Against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
A week ago, a violent a mob of about 2,000 Sinhalese, including a group of Buddhist monks led by the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu chapter Inamaluwe Sumangala thero, stormed and vandalised…